A review by crookedtreehouse
Chew, Vol. 6: Space Cakes by John Layman
5.0
What I find to be a major failing of many comic series (or any serialised media) is a lack of consequences. Something terrible happens in an issue or a storyline, and it's eventually erased or made inconsequential by another writer. It's why I mostly gravitate toward creator owned books where a single writer and artist work together to tell a specific story. This doesn't guarantee consequences for characters or plots but it does solidify that any non-consequences were probably intended by the writer and artist and not merely overruled by an editor or new creative team.
With Chew, for the first five volumes, we've seen small consequences for the characters that they have to overcome to reach their goals. All of the life changing occurrences happened in their pasts. We see glimpses of them but all of the Oh Fuck moments have centered around plot twists rather than character development. Sure, sometimes we've seen things that we, the readers, didn't know about the characters, but that didn't alter the characters' lives in a significant way. Here, at the halfway point of the series, that changes., as John Layman turns the book in a more serious direction, and Rob Guillory makes the shift cartoonishly stunning to look at.
With Chew, for the first five volumes, we've seen small consequences for the characters that they have to overcome to reach their goals. All of the life changing occurrences happened in their pasts. We see glimpses of them but all of the Oh Fuck moments have centered around plot twists rather than character development. Sure, sometimes we've seen things that we, the readers, didn't know about the characters, but that didn't alter the characters' lives in a significant way. Here, at the halfway point of the series, that changes., as John Layman turns the book in a more serious direction, and Rob Guillory makes the shift cartoonishly stunning to look at.