Tag Archives: John Layman

Chew: Taster’s Choice (2009)

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Quote:
Dammit. You rather die than go to jail? Fine. But I’m still getting those names.

 

This book collects the first five issues of the ongoing series Chew from Image. It was written by John Layman who wrote the Fantastic Four House of M story that I read recently. It features some great, cartoon-style art from Rob Guillory. Chew is his first major comic book but I hoping to see a lot more from him.

Chew is set in an alternate reality where 23 million American citizens have been killed by avian flu and the eating of fowl is prohibited. Tony Chu is a cop on a stake out of a speakeasy selling illegal chicken cuts and dinners. When warned off raiding the place by an FDA official, Tony and his partner decide to go and have a dinner. But Tony is cibopathic – a fictional condition which means that he gets psychic flashes from anything he eats – and on eating the soup is aware that an uncaught serial killer is working in the kitchens. When the killer dies rather than be taken alive, Tony starts eating his flesh to get the information on the killer’s victims.This leads Tony to be recruited by the FDA and into further bizarre cases and adventures.

This is a great book. The narrative is a little confusing as Tony changes cases from issue to issue but comes together nicely at the end. This introductory volume introduces some characters and sets up a lot of situations that are unresolved, such as a scene on a planet 24 light years from Earth, but that is fine given that it is an ongoing series. The book comes to an open-ended resolution that, in combination with some of the ideas introduced in the series, makes me want to read more. Definitely a series that I will be revisiting.

House of M: Fantastic Four/Iron Man (2006)

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Quote:
“You just killed those people.”

“No. Not people. Mutants.”

 

This book collects two mini-series related to the House of M crossover event – Fantastic Four: House of M 1 – 3 and Iron Man: House of M 1 – 3. The creative team on the Fantastic Four series are all new to me – it was written by John Layman with pencils by Scott Eaton and inks by Don Hillsman. The Iron Man series was written by Greg Pak, whose work I know from the Planet Hulk and World War Hulk books, and the art was by another unknown to me Pat Lee.

The Fantastic Four story actually stars the Fearsome Four, a mystically powered team led by Victor von Doom with only Ben Grimm as the It surviving Reed Richards space mission to examine cosmic rays. Doom is allowed to rule Latveria under the global mutant superiority but finds himself at the beck and call of Magneto. His vanity will not allow this and he directs his scientific research to the problem of how to rid the world of the House of Magnus and install himself as world ruler only to find his plans scuppered by the one person for whom he has utter contempt.

In the Iron Man story, Tony Stark is a successful entrepreneur and competitor in Sapien Death Match – an arena sport where he battles with other humans in mechanical suits – however he finds himself constantly overshadowed, in all his pursuits, by his father. Searching for Henry Pym, a rogue scientist who was researching the mutant genome while in Stark’s employ, Stark uses a new mechanical suit that he developed in secret. He traces Pym to a hideout of the human resistance but soon finds himself in a battle with a sapien hunting sentinel controlled by his father. When Pym is revealed as a terrorist who has planted a number of devices targeted at mutants only, Stark must decide between being his own man and the future seemingly mapped out for him by his father.

For a world that is supposed to give the heroes their dreams come true neither Victor von Doom or Tony Stark are particularly happy with their lot – though this could be seen as some dormant, nagging sense that something is not right. The stories are both fine in themselves without really adding much to the central story.

Pat Lee’s art in the Iron Man story is quite strange. There is a lot of it that contains sentinels, armoured humans and other mecha and this is all really good but when it comes to the depiction of the people it just does not do it for me.