Chew, Vol. 1: Taster's Choice

Tony Chu has a weird psychic ability: he can sense the individual history of any food he eats. He's also a detective. You can probably figure out what disgusting-but-hilarious road this is heading down.

The fun surprise for me was the world this is set in - it's not just a cibopathic detective functioning in our modern society, but rather a near-future America where there's a thriving black market for chicken, and the conspiracy theorists might be on to something with their distrust of the most powerful federal agency in the government: the FDA.

Chew is the story of Tony Chu, a special agent of the US Food and Drug Administration. What makes Tony a special agent is that he's a cibopath; that means he gets psychic impressions from anything that he eats, and can see the history of the food, where it came from, etc. In a world where avian flu has killed tens of millions of people, and the USFDA's been given wide-reaching powers to ban the consumption of poultry as a result, it's a handy power to have.

This was a fun, fast-paced read that built from an interesting premise in surprising ways. Layman tells the story in a dark, humourous way that prevents it from becoming too gross or bizarre.