I’m completely hooked on these graphic novels featuring Tony Chu-the cipopath who can tell the provenance of what he’s eating, among other things. Working for the FDA (which, in this post pandemic world, spends a lot of time tracking down illegal poultry eaters) he sometimes has to eat things like people or rotten or decayed parts of things. Sure, they’re kind of gory and gross but it’s completely bearable. I had to wait quite a while for this 3rd volume but I didn’t have a hard time picking up on what was going on. It ends with one big reveal and the promise of something big. One of the things I like about the books is you just don’t know what’s going to happen-the author is totally comfortable killing off, wounding, betraying characters you thought were safe.
You could conceivably jump right in to this volume without having read 1 or 2, but it’s a treat to read all of them–just not while you’re eating 
Category Archives: Layman John
Chew: International Flavor (#2) by John Layman
Just as gross, action packed, and awesome as the first volume. This volume has its own story arc involving the mysterious fruit and the gorgeous food writer (whose name I forget). Agent Chu heads off to a tropical island on his own to investigate the mysterious fruit, a story which also happens to involve his brother. Oh? And remember the “vampire” in the Arctic with the Russians from volume 1? That gets explained in this volume. I must admit, when they showed up again and I heard vampire I thought, “oh no, is this turning into another vampire story?”, but happily it is not.
Can’t wait to get volume 3 from the library…
Chew: Taster’s Choice (Volume 1) by John Layman
I read a recent review of this and decided I had to check it out for myself. Perhaps I was inspired to try something I don’t usually read by the Out of Our Comfort Zones podcasts I did for The Hub. This is a graphic novel and the premise is that Chu is an FDA agent with a rare skill-he can taste things and psychically know the whole history of them. For example, if he eats an apple he will know the where exactly it came from, who handled it, and so on. If he were to chew on a piece of you, he would know all about you. You can see how handy this skill is for solving crimes, and also how disgusting it is.
Because, yes, he is made to eat people, dogs, rotting things, etc. There are some fairly gross pictures, but not nearly as graphic as you might think. And it’s not spooky or scary, so I found it pretty manageable. In fact I found it equally funny/entertaining as well as an engaging mystery. I was very happy when I got to the end (I read the whole thing during my kids’ gymnastics class) to have cleverly ordered volume 2 at the same time, so I’ve got that all ready to read.
