Chew #30

Writer: John Layman

Artist: Rob Guillory

This is a difficult review of sorts for me. If you have gotten to read a few of my other reviews on the site, I tend to break down certain panels/scenes to really illustrate my points on why I enjoyed/disliked a comic so much. The reason I can't really do that for this comic is because literally all of the pages are....unexpected. The whole 20+ pages blindsides you. I don't even think the die hard Chew fans would have been able to guess how this issue plays out, and because of that I'm going to be keeping things very brief and *ahem* generic.

First of all, its a good comic. A really good comic. It's the end of an arc so it's certainly not a great jumping on point, but if you're at all familiar with these characters you owe it to yourself to grab issue 28-29 and catch up to read the end of this story line. Chew has a very solid balance. It hits upon a lot of emotions and I commend Layman for keeping them all in check and not to let the reader drown in a certain feeling. Since it was the 'wedding' issue (that's on the cover so I'm allowed to talk about it!), there were a lot of characters. Layman was able to really nail each one in just a panel or two and keep up with the breakneck pace of the comic. Even after the wedding, the dialogue remained spot on.  I don't have much to say about the writing side negatively, it felt extremely polished and refined and the final product shows.  After seeing what he can do with this issue, it makes it harder each week to avoid adding Detective Comics to my pull list.

The art gets just as much credit as the writing though for issue 30. The panel layouts really gave Chew a good flow and I breezed through it just so excited to see what was on the next page. Sometimes with certain comics,  I turn the page and I have to connect the dots to properly read the layout. This had no such problem, even if they removed all of the dialogue I could have been able to follow the story and that is solid art. I really like how unique each panel is that Guillory draws. Even if its something as small as changing the background to more properly reflect the characters emotion, but it's little things like that though that can keep me entertained and make me pay more attention to the art in front of me. To properly nail the script for Chew 30, Guillory had to bring his A-game, and he certainly did. I could have seen alot of scenes within this comic flouder with a sub par artist, but Guillory kept up with the polished/refined writing and made one very satisfying complete package.

If you've never read Chew get it. If you do read Chew, buy it ASAP so no one ruins it for you on the interwebs.  I can guarantee the comic book community will be talking about this one, so make sure to be apart of it!