Chew: Secret Agent Poyo #1 Review


As far as I know, Chew: Secret Agent Poyo #1 and Adult Swim’s “Robot Chicken” have nothing to do with each other, aside from the fact that they both have cyborg poultry and they’re both hilarious. Here’s the official description from Image:

Hey retailers/readers/speculators! Still kicking yourself for not ordering and/or passing by CHEW #1, now that you see what it’s going for on eBay? Here’s your chance to get sweet, sweet, revenge, with an all-new CHEW #1, a one-shot spinning off CHEW’s most popular supporting character, and comics’ most beloved homicidal cybernetic kung-fu rooster. Concentrated mayhem. Feathers, rage and hate! Plus: an all-star pin-up gallery from some of the most staggeringly talented artists in the industry!

Chew: Secret Agent Poyo has all of the main series’ humor and quirkiness. With both the same writer and artist as Chew proper, it could easily be a standalone issue, without being a one-shot. In fact, that’s my only real complaint: why print a whole new book?

John Layman offers an origin story for our plucky hero (Sort of. We see how he became a cyborg, but not what caused the injuries that made the transformation necessary). Most amusingly, we see flashbacks of Poyo facing off against more of Layman’s signature bizarre villains (and teaming up with some other well-known heroes), before going out on his latest mission, which will see him find love at 20,000 feet. Layman constantly makes a point to show that Poyo is an unstoppable fighting machine. Think of him as Cluck Norris.

Rob Guillory‘s art is the same weird fusion of funny, gross, whimsical, and disturbing that makes it a hallmark of the series proper. Here he gets to have fun with not only the weird villain cameos, but also with Poyo’s robotic limbs (I especially like the jet engines concealed under his wing). He takes his coloring to new eye-popping heights in this book, saturating the pages with red, magenta, and blue.

If you’re unfamiliar with Chew, you won’t have any problem following along with Secret Agent Poyo #1, but neither will you receive an introduction to the larger series’ story. Longtime fans will  definitely want to pick it up, however. Not only is it consistent in terms of art and writing, but it has some ties to events in Chew #27. These seem cursory enough, but might be important going forward. Regardless, if you enjoy Chew, you need this book.

4/5

 

 

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