Chew: Omnivore Edition, Volume 3

Chew Omnivore Edition Volume 3 Hc by John Layman
Illustrated By: Rob Guillory
Format: Hardcover Comic
Collects: Chew #21-30 and the Chew: Secret Agent Poyo one-shot
Published: 2013
Publisher: Image Comics

I love Chew, so I was really excited when I saw the third Omnivore collected edition had been released. These oversized hardcover editions really let the art shine, and they look great on the shelf. They have bound bookmark ribbons. That’s classy.

Tony Chu was the only Cibopath in the FDA, but after a replacement was found he was given the boot. He’s now the only Cibopath in parking enforcement. A Cibopath is someone who can get a sense of the history of an object by eating it. This means he can eat a carrot and see where it was grown, but he can also eat a steak and see where it was butchered. This comes in handy for crime investigation in a rather unfortunate way, as you can probably imagine.

The Chew universe has expanded to include many different types of these ‘food superpowers’ – taking a bite of something to catch a glimpse of its future or being able to write about food in a way that lets readers actually taste what’s described, for example. Another aspect of a Cibopaths, we discover, is that they can retain information from the items eaten. This includes people and the powers or skills they may have. Another Cibopath who refers to himself as The Vampire is trying to collect powers this way, and Chu needs to stop him.

At the end of the second collection, I was starting to lose interest in the plot a bit. I still really enjoyed the humour and the art, but the story itself was beginning to become wacky in a slightly uninteresting and aimless way. This one jumped right back on track and made me interesting in the story again.

The one downside of these beautiful Omnivore editions is that I have to wait a year for another one to be published.