Graphic Novel - Chew (14)

Chew, Volume One, Taster's Choice
By John Layman & Rob Guillory

Chew is a crime-busting, gimmicky cop comic. Tony Chu is a vice cop and a cibopath - when he tastes something, he receives a vision of its past, like pesticides from an apple or the death of a cow from a burger. I think you have an idea of where this is going... how many disgusting things will Tony have to eat in his crime solving career? The possibilities are myriad and revolting.

There is a little more depth to the story than Fear Factor-esque gross-outs. There is a mysterious government conspiracy making chicken illegal to eat, a saboscrivner, and all of the things that make cop shows like CSI so fun and addictive.

The art is a perfect for the story. Harsh, intentionally sloppy, with caricature characters in full color. Y The Last Man is another conspiracy-ridden, mystery/action comic, but all the lines are clean and nearly every female character is Wonder Woman. Hardly a problem like that in Chew, and the comic is better for it. I like illustrators who are unafraid of drawing ugly characters.

Peace Like A River by Leif Enger (13)

Once when I was reading Peace Like A River on the subway, I bumped into a friend as I got off at my stop. She was right next to me the whole ride, but said that I looked so happy reading my book that she didn't want to interrupt me.

This is a story of a small family in rural Minnesota in the '60s. The protagonist is Reuben, an eleven-year-old with severe asthma. He adores his family and so does the reader. His father is the school janitor (what horror for a kid!), but is wise and kind and a man of such great faith that he performs miracles. Reuben's younger sister is Swede: fiesty, smart, and obsessed with westerns. His older brother, Davy, is convicted with murder early in the book. He is a cowboy type of hunk: he escapes prison, rides horses through the prairie, expertly wields a shotgun, and drifts in an out of his brother's life as he pleases, evading the law.

It is a great story, one that's been told and retold, but is always worth hearing. The familial relationships are precious and deep. The characters are well-crafted, and the landscape is unfamiliar and wild. Peace Like A River is also full of religious experiences, Biblical references, and talk of faith, but it never feels preachy. Perhaps because the reader sees it all from Reuben's perspective, with childhood bewilderment and awe at the separate world of adults.