“Chew” #1 from John Layman and Rob Guillory arrived on June 3rd, 2009, and I didn’t buy it.
At first.
It took the relentless harping of Multiversity EIC Matthew Meylikhov for me to go back to my shop and buy the last remaining copy at my local shop, and I couldn’t be happier that I did, because that remains one of my favorite debuts of any comic ever.
Now, five years, multiple Eisner and Harvey Award wins and nominations, seven trades, three massive collections, 41 issues and a few random one-shots later, this is one of my all-time favorite series, as Layman and Guillory have created a perpetually shocking, frequently hilarious and surprisingly emotional world with a cast of characters I’d put up against damn near any other book, and we’ve seen both of them cultivate their skills to the point they are absolutely amongst the best in the business. They’ve developed legions of fans who cosplay as the characters, tattoo them on their body, and worship at the Poyo based shrines they’ve created in their homes. It’s kind of a big deal, guys.
To help celebrate today’s fifth anniversary of the arrival of the first issue, I reached out to Layman and Guillory to look back on the first five years, what they loved, what they didn’t, and everything else that helped make this book such an incredible and beloved experience. You can find all of that below, and please, share your thoughts on the book after five years in the comments, and make sure to peruse to the bottom of the post for an exclusive first look at a Poyo splash page from the upcoming 42nd issue. You’ll be happy you did.
Favorite Issue(s)
RG: That’s a tough one. I tend to like issues like #14, which is a really plot-heavy, CHEW mythology-heavy issue. Savoy finally makes his big return, beats the hell out of Colby and hints at the larger story. Plus #14 was the first real look we had at Tony’s backstory. Up to this point, CHEW had been a “funny” book. But from here, we introduce the more dramatic elements like Tony’s deceased ex-wife and eventually his estranged daughter. This is the point where we started to flesh the book out, and I think it started to be a much more well-rounded, richer series.
JL: I think #30 was and is my favorite issue. It packed such an emotional wallop and it was something that was very intimidating for me going in. I wanted it to shock, and surprise, but I still wanted it to have the CHEW humor and whimsy. I feel pretty strongly about how lots of comics –and DC is very guilty of it—use rape or killing woman as a very lazy plot device to shock and propel a male protagonist into action, so I needed the female lead to die, but I wanted her to go out strong, with dignity, in control and, most of all, in character. CHEW #30 was this razor thin high-wire I had to walk, and I look back and it and am still amazed at how perfect it turned out.
Recently, I’m very fond of bout #36 and #40, which are in many ways codas and companions to issue #30.
Favorite Arc(s)
RG: Again, that’s a hard call to make. I think Major League CHEW, our fifth arc, might be my fave. And much like issue #14, I liked it best because this is the arc where our characters started to become more fleshed out and organic. Over the four arcs before it, it felt like we were building the CHEW world, characters and all. It was sorta like taking our toys out of the box. The fifth arc was the point where I feel like we started playing with our toys and really letting them breathe. We took Tony totally out of the story by having him kidnapped, so that allowed all these great supporting characters to step up. CHEW really became an ensemble book during this arc.
JL: Major League Chew is my favorite as well, mostly because I still laugh when I think about it… Tony being kidnapped by crazed baseball fans and be put in a dungeon and fed dead baseball players so they could write a definitely sex biography on baseball pros. It’s dark and ridiculous and absurd and that story, in a nutshell, is all the things I like about CHEW, and wanted to accomplish with it. I was pretty happy with the way Family Recipes turned out as well.
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Favorite Moment(s)
RG: I have a LOT of moments that I love, but I think the double-page spread from issue #1 is my absolute favorite. It set the tone for the entire series, and it was the moment where all the things I’d learned in my young art career sorta came together and sung through one image. It was a convergence of sorts for me.
JL: I dunno. Too many to list. A lot of John Colby’s one-liners are my favorites, but I forget them until I reread a particularly issue. They stay fresh and funny to me.
Favorite Cover(s)
RG: I’m partial to the CHEW #1 cover, just because I struggled so long with nailing down one image that could summarize this insane multi-faceted premise. And most recently, I’m really proud of the cover to #42. It’s just so much fun and represents so much of what I love about this series, its ability to be completely ridiculous.
JL: As somebody who digs typography and likes to design, I really like the #13 Pulp Fiction cover. I like the #23 baseball card cover, and the #36 “She’s back” cover. But all those covers have in common the fact my lettering and design is incorporated into it, so I feel like I have a little more connection and ownership of them. I love the buddy-cop movie poster vibe of issue #12, and epic-ness of the #15 and #30 trifold covers. It’s weird, because 45(ish) covers in, and all their variants, even though we try to keep variants to a minimum, there is a lot of damn covers to pick from. I really like both #19 covers as well, standard and SDCC glow in the dark.
Favorite Non-Main Cast Member(s)
RG: D-Bear. He’s just a personal fave. I love his short stature and the fact that his afro is bigger than the rest of his body. Really, I’m astonished that more people haven’t gotten mad at me for drawing this huge-afroed black guy who’s always eating chicken. And fun fact: I based his look on Kanye West, who I always picture as being cartoonishly short.
JL: I like Vorhees, the retarded-looking agent who eats things and mumbles the ingredients, mostly because he’s funny and largely useless. In #45 we meet his wife and family, just for a panel or two, and I love it when I plant the idea there are entire backstories of characters we don’t know, and probably won’t learn.
I’d also really enjoyed that issue #36 with Sage Chu (who we will NEVER see again in Chew — and I knew that when I was writing #36.) And Paneer Sharma, who was engaged to Toni, who is pretty much the only male character in the book that doesn’t have some element of dickishness to his personality.
Favorite Main Cast Member(s)
RG: Tony. Or Toni. Or Colby. Or maybe Savoy. Possibly Olive. I sorta love all of the main cast for different reasons.
JL: Well, Toni and Colby were the most fun to write, so those are my favorites. I like Savoy, but when he does not show up in the book for a while, he’s damn hard to return to. His dialogue, and his lofty voice, is hard to “find” if I haven’t been doing him for a while, so I guess I both love and hate him, depending.
Favorite Easter Egg(s)
RG: I honestly forget 95% of them. I just Googled it, and my current fave is a sign I drew in an Italian restaurant that said “HIRING ITALIAN PLUMBER. MUST BE FLUENT IN TURTLE-FIGHTING.” I don’t even remember coming up with that one, but I think it’s funny.
JL: I dunno. Most of these are Rob’s and a lot of times I don’t really see them until after the book comes out. He sends me low rez files to letter off of, and I don’t really get a good look at the Easter Eggs. And then when high-rez files come in we’re usually rushing the production to get them to the printer, so again I don’t have time to look at it. I feel like half the time I don’t even see the Easter Eggs until the book is printed, which makes rereading for me as fun as well. Of course, once in a while Rob puts in a great gag and I have to cover it with word balloons. I always feel super guilty about that, but what choice do I have? I figure whoever buys the page ends up with the bonus of having a gag that’s there for their eyes only.
Continued belowMoment(s) That You Most Wish You Could Have a Do-Over On
RG: A lot of the art in the earlier issues is pretty primitive. Especially when you compare it to more recent issues. But I’ve just made peace with it. The shit’s out in the real world now!
JL: I don’t tend to naval gaze books that way. There’s no point in it, and I’d rather look forward than backwards. Little things that bug you have a tendency to disappear in a couple of months, when an issue comes out and nobody notices or care about the thing you kicked yourself about for days. Currently, I wished I had two more pages to give the bad guy/fight in #42 a little more real estate, but that would have had the domino effect of making Warrior Chicken Poyo late and maybe not come out for SDCC. And, really, like I said, what bothers me this month won’t bother me in a month or two, because I’ll have all new and different things to stress and obsess about. There’s nothing I wish I can change so badly I’d go back in time to change it, at least in CHEW’s case (there’s a correction I’d make to IDW’s Scarface TPB, though—and this is weird, but I’m always REALLY bothered the shitty designer on Bay City Jive #2 did not add more line weight to the logo. Those are a couple of things I STILL obsess about to this day.)
Favorite Food Power(s)
RG: The Great Fantanyero’s power is the absolute best. Cibolocuter: Someone that can transpose messages, music or entire plays or novels into a meal. That’s pretty fantastic.
JL: I got a kick out of the felon who created “contagious clam chowder,” only because it’s so ridiculous and non-sequester. The food powers are getting more and more ridiculous, as I burn through the “obvious” one, and the crazier they are, the more I get a kick out of them. The politician who morphs into the foods he eats is a favorite. And I’ve got a time travel power I’m gonna be busting out pretty quick here. Typically, something like time travel would not fall within the “rules” of CHEW (yes, CHEW has rules, whereas the Poyo spin-offs do not,) but I think I’ve figured out a way to make time travel work “realistically,” at least within the framework of CHEW.
Favorite Quirk(s) of the Chew World
RG: I love that each government agency has its own quirk. The USDA have comicbookishly large breasts and cyborg animals. DEFRA are all mustaches and bowler hats. Traffic Cops all wear kilts for some reason. The Navy all dress inexplicably like Freddie Mercury. And what makes it especially funny to me is that we NEVER, EVER address why.
JL: I don’t know. I didn’t really set out to make specific quirks to the world, so I’ll just go along with Rob’s answer.
Favorite Fan Moment(s)
RG: Our first SDCC after CHEW’s release was the most awesome, humbling and simultaneously terrifying interaction with our fans, hands down. That was the moment when I realized that people were actually reading the crap I’d been drawing in my smelly little room. I immediately stapled a Post-It note that said “THERE ARE NO FANS” to my drawing desk, just so I could cope with the idea of having fans without being freaked out. It was insane.
JL: I once was hanging out with another comics creator after hours at a show and a fan gifted the creator a first edition of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, which was just mind-blowing and inconceivable to me. But since CHEW, I’ve had the equivalent of that scene dozens of times over. At this point, CHEW has taken me all over the world, Canada, Mexico, France, Belgium, Germany, Italy, Algeria, English, Ireland and India. Meeting people from every corner of the world who read and love your stuff and your characters is very humbling. Or meeting somebody who’s gotten a CHEW tattoo. Or is cosplaying your characters. Or bringing you gifts. Cookies. Or drugs! Even just somebody wearing a CHEW shirt or writing a fan letter. I never expected any of that shit to happen, and five years later it’s still all very amazing and gratifying to me.
