Chew Volume Five: Major League Chew

When last we left off, Tony Chu’s daughter Olive had just been kidnapped by Mason Savoy. His reasons are at least generally clear: he wants to act as her mentor, bringing her cibopathic powers along so that she can aid him in his plans, which have something to do with uncovering the conspiracy behind the bird flu. And as bad luck would have it, Tony himself is also kidnapped at the same time, by one of Amelia’s coworkers, a guy who wants to feed him the body parts of long-dead baseball players so that Tony can spill the beans on their sordid sex lives. This will allow him (the kidnapper) to score a big advance for writing a sleazy book on the subject (Superstar Sluggers’ Untold Sex Tales) after which he’ll auction Tony off to underground figures who want to do scientific testing on him.

This volume doesn’t do a lot to advance the main storyline, but it does throw in a lot of the sort of madcap madness that fans will love. Tony is busted from the F.D.A. and becomes a traffic cop, leaving his former partner Colby teamed up with a cyborg lion while working for the lusty ladies of the U.S.D.A. And once again Colby has to hop in bed with the boss to help Tony out.

A lot of the regulars are sidelined. Tony’s brother and sister only pop in as cameos, and the redoubtable Poyo doesn’t appear until the triumphant final page. It looks like he’s had some work done and is even more of a mean fighting machine than ever. There’s also nothing said about the aliens or the vampires. But we do meet Hershel Brown, a xocoscalpere. This means he can sculpt anything out of chocolate so realistically that it exactly mimics its real-world counterpart. So a chocolate machine gun or samurai sword is totally lethal. Alas, this skill doesn’t save him from being cut into pieces by some Russians (or Serbians, or “some damn thing”).

Tony gets rescued by Amelia, Colby gets a new partner, and Olive is starting to grow into her awakening powers. I haven’t been disappointed by this series yet and look forward to what’s next.

Graphicalex