It came out of nowhere. A detective solving food-based crimes with his psychic abilities does not exactly scream best seller, but that was exactly the case here, as John Layman and Rob Guillory had the surprise hit of 2009.
With the first story arc completed, I had a chance to sit down with John to discuss where the book’s been and where it’s going.
Where did the initial idea for Chew come from?
That’s one of those questions I wish I had a good answer for, because I get it a lot. The truth is, I don’t know. CHEW had a very long gestation period. I knew I wanted to do it, but I also needed to fund it, and find a publisher, and a million other things. As a struggling freelancer, it’s hard to get a creator-owned, self-funded project off the ground, especially when you are constantly hustling for work, and writing things like Xena: Warrior Princess in order to keep a roof over your head.
I’d been writing video games as well as comics, and it led to a job at Cryptic studio, initially to write the Marvel MMO, but what turned into a job writing Champions Online. On the plus side, the income gave me the means to finance Chew.
But as for the actual idea—that was the question, right? I know the bird flu aspect sprung out of a lot of the panic that was in the news at the time, and my anger at the Bush administration over rights lost during his Reign of Error. The idea of a post-bird flu avian prohibition sprung out of that… what if the government responded to a bird flu in the same over-reactive way they did to a lot of other events? The odd thing was that by the time Chew got off the ground, things had come full circle and people were now panicking over a swine flu, and suddenly Chew was timely again.
Was there any concern that such an oddball idea – a short, Asian detective that gets psychic impressions from food – might have flopped?
Yeah, that was the expectation. I thought it would attract a quirky cult audience, much like my previous creator-owned efforts: Puffed, Armageddon & Son, and Bay City Jive. I never thought it would do well at all… I don’t think anybody did.
Did the immediate success come as a shock at all?
It certainly did to me. Rob Guillory, he’s new to the comics business, and was convinced—and still is—all you have to do a created a quality comic, and the people will come. As somebody who has been in comics since 1995, I know plenty of great books never find an audience, and I assumed Chew would be one of those. I guess maybe I underestimated the comics reading audience… but I still maintain the response to Chew was just sort of a freak “perfect storm” of timing and, uh, other stuff.
I know variations of Chew had been floating around in various pitches you had made to Vertigo, but when did Rob Guillory become involved, and how did that come about?
It had been pitched around a few places, but the only place it went formally was to a few Vertigo editors (because Vertigo was the only serious option, I thought, where I would not have to finance the book myself.) I informally pitched it to a few other places… not so much pitched it as talked to various people about what I was doing, and one of those people was Eric Stephenson at Image. I had called him not so much to pitch it as to pick Eric’s brain about potential artists, and let him know I would be pitching it. But Eric liked the idea and told me on the spot if I found a good artist he’d approve the book – which inadvertently put me over a huge hurdle.
Rob was introduced to me by comics writer Brandon Jerwa, who had been working with Rob on a Tokyopop book which got scuttled. He showed me Rob’s stuff, and Rob had a lot of different styles, and really only one of them I thought was right for Chew. We met in San Diego ’08, and I showed him the first two or three scripts, and Rob was really enthusiastic for it. And, as it turned out, the style I liked of Rob’s the most of Rob’s “true” style… he’d gotten a lot of work where editors told him “draw like this person, draw like that person,” but what I liked was Rob when Rob was drawing like himself. I told him that, and it was liberating for him to not be art directed to draw like someone else. As it turned out, it really was the absolute ideal match. Rob is perfect for the book. I don’t know of anybody else who could pull off the mix of action and whimsy Chew needs. Under different hands, or an artist who does not get the humor, Chew could simply be a very dark and ugly book, which is really the opposite of what I wanted to do. I wanted some thing gross and gory, but also funny and fun.
Why chicken?
Not just chicken. All poultry. I have not made that clear, perhaps, since chicken so dominates the poultry we eat, but it’s also duck, turkey, quail, and what have you. It is going to make for an interesting Thanksgiving issue, that’s for sure—issue #15!
What can we look forward to in the second story arc, besides fruit that tastes like chicken?
The introduction of at least three other characters, one very major character. And even though the majority of the arc takes place in a remote island, the arc does a lot of “world building,” and helps flesh out this strange world even further. There will also be at least one major hint into the larger “conspiracy” behind everything.
How many more arcs do you have planned out beyond this one? Do you have a definitive end in mind for Chew?
I know pretty solidly what’s going to happen through issue #30, and how it wraps up in the last five or ten issues. I never go into a story without knowing the ending, and I’m definitely working toward it. But we’ve said we want this to run 60 issues, a good, solid run the same length as many other finite ongoing series I’ve loved over the years. Things get a little more nebulous between issues 30 and 50, but I keep introducing new characters and new story possibilities keep presenting itself, so I don’t think the wiggle room Rob and I have given ourselves will be a problem. And if it is, there is no law saying we have to go 60 issues.
I cannot end this interview without the obligatory question one has to ask whenever an indie comic takes off – is there any movie or television talk yet?
I get inquiries on a weekly basis, and had to get “people” to help me out, the same great folks who put together the deal for The Walking Dead at AMC, Circle of Confusion, and who represent a lot of other fantastic people and properties in comics. That being said, any movie or TV show that comes out of Chew is gravy, and completely secondary to my goal, which is to make the best comic book series I possibly can.
