If you’ve never read John Layman and Rob Guillory‘s Chew, I think you should now. Like stop scrolling on your phone, leave your desk, walk to the nearest comic shop and get yourself the first trade now.
Because then you’ll be prepared for the animated Chew movie starring Steven Yeun and Felicia Day.
On a short list of favorite comics of all time, Chew would be near the top for me. It’s about a cibopath (a psychic who gets his visions from what he eats) named Tony Chu, who also happens to be a cop. That gives him an advantage when investigating murder cases, if nibbling on corpses seems like an advantage to you. His love interest is Amelia Mintz, a newspaper food critic and “saboscrivner” — she basically can describe a meal with such accuracy that you immediately have to go out and try it. (Which is awesome for restaurants that get great reviews.)
With a premise of “Guy eats dead people,” Chew could have been an off-puttingly gory and disturbing comic in the hands of anyone other than Rob Guillory. Instead it’s brilliant, and the casting of Yeun as Tony Chu would actually work both in live-action and as a cartoon — though we’re all probably going to be grateful it’s a cartoon. (Unless they went the candy-coated over-stylized route of Pushing Daisies.)
I mean… look at it, it’s cute. It kind of has to be, considering the topic. I’m so excited that it looks like it’s going to be a feature length animated film instead of a series. (Showtime once tried to make it work.)
The new owner of Heavy Metal magazine, Jeff Krelitz, will be directing and producing, with John Layman writing the script. It started voice recording last Friday, according to Layman’s Twitter. There’s no release date yet, but it looks to be a direct-to-digital / blu-ray deal. There’s also been no talk of which part of the comic it’ll be adapting, but I’m just assuming it’ll start at the beginning of the series.
Which is why I’m going to go re-read those issues today.
(I’m serious, go find a book store, get Taster’s Choice right now.)