Chew vol. 1; A Hardcore Review

So the "IT" book has landed on the Hardcore Review. The first trade paperback of Chew from Image is titled, "Taster's Choice." It stars Tony Chu, and very unstereotypical Asian American police officer. Tony Chu is one of three known Cibopaths in the world. A Cibopath is defined as a person who can take a bite of an apple and immediately tell the orchard and region it came from, if it had pesticides used on it and what kind. He can even tell about the person who harvested the fruit. Invariably, Chu can see details about the slaughter of beef or pork and the hormones and the suffering the animal went through. This causes Chu to not want to eat all that much. As with any power there is bound to be some limitation. Tony Chu's limits, strangely enough, beets. His power won't work on beets. So when Chu does eat, let's just say he eats a lot of beets.
In the world of Chew, America has put a ban on chicken, due to the alleged Avian Flu pandemic. Chu and his partner are on a stakeout of a Chicken House. Things get tangled as a local chicken kingpin walks through the front door.
During the mixup, Chu and his partner are invited in by an FDA agent to partake in chicken dinner. Yes, the FDA is the most powerful law enforcement agency in the United States. Chu gets the soup and immediately knows there's something wrong. His partner gets killed in the fracas. And suddenly police officer Tony Chu is the FDA's newest agent.
The remaining five chapters of "Taster's Choice" deal with a surly and cantankerous boss, who sees Chu only as some circus sideshow act, the cannibalizing of dead and at times festering flesh; and a seriously weird fight with Russian vampires.
The writing of John Layman (Tek Jansen) and the amazing artwork of Rob Guillory bring this topical story to maddening, vivid life. Not your typical, overly muscled super cop, Tony Chu is rendered as a regular guy, complete with bad posture and receding hairline. Guillory's line style is coupled with great coloring, and a biting sarcastic wit wrought on by Layman, who was made famous with Stephen Colbert's Tek Jansen. I got a chance to talk to John Layman about the making of Tek Jansen, the notes of which I might reveal in a review of said book. Meanwhile, this was a fun, fast paced ride with all the trimmings of a fantastic fried chicken dinner.
Chew volume 1 rates pretty fucking high up on my list of must read comics for 2010. In fact if you were to watch a wrestling match of equal entertainment value from the annals of wrestling history, only one man would come to mind that is ALWAYS worth the price of the show. And that match would be Anarchy Rulz 2000 Television Title rematch between the incumbent Rhino and the man who never lost the belt to begin with, Rob Van Dam. The match was purely physical on Rhino's part and high flying on Van Dam's. Everything Van Dam did, Rhino powered out of. He even pulled Bill Alphonso into the path of the "Vanterminator!" And then scooped up Rob and sitout piledrivered him from the ring apron through a nearby table. And even though RVD lost and never did regain the World Television Title he is always worth the cost of the entire pay per view. Even ten years later.