Review by Karl Verhoven

Chew is a madcap eleven volume series about police detective Tony Chu, able to glean information from the food he eats. Consistently imaginative, it won Eisner and Harvey Awards, and kicked off the careers of writer John Layman and artist Rob Guillory. However, neither creator’s profile has risen greatly, in comics at least, and five years later Layman returned to a world before Chu’s departure to introduce a new family member Saffron. She’s a career criminal, although that’s kept secret from her family, and also has a food-related power, being able to learn secrets from the people she eats with. Unfortunately, that might not be protection enough when a gangland boss wants her head.

Dan Boultwood may be an artist new to the Chu family, but he’s an accomplished cartoonist whose people are richly drawn and animated and he fills the backgrounds with little jokes just like Guillory did. That being the case, and Layman certainly having no problems, The First Course is one of those examples disproving the maxim “you can’t go home again”.

However, don’t come to Chu expecting exactly the same deal as Chew. Layman tones down the madcap elements and although Tony features periodically, such as filling in the circumstances in which he first partnered with John Colby, it’s largely Saffron’s frantic experiences related here in what’s a funny crime story. Layman reveals she’s not the only family member with criminal connections, and as a sideline he cleverly works in the avian flu epidemic, the consequences of which were seen in Chew. Saffron’s downfall in so many respects is her choice of partner, small time crook Eddie Molay, a wonderfully devised character never able to see beyond the moment or short term gain. “It was your passport Don Bucatini took for safekeeping to make sure you paid off your gambling debts”, explains Saffron, slowly, one more time “instead you convinced me we should rob him, which is why we’re in this mess”.

There’s less emphasis on wacky food powers in The First Course, but although a good gimmick, that was never Chew’s primary strength, which was the stream of likeable characters on either side of the law. That’s repeated in what’s a story pretty well complete in itself, but you’re going to want to know what happens next. Fortunately for you there’s (She) Drunk History to come.