Posted in: Comics, Comics Publishers, Current News, Image, Swipe File, TV | Tagged: chew, dead set

Separated At Birth: John Layman and Rob Guillory's Chew and Dead End

Separated At Birth: John Layman and Rob Guillory's Chew and Malin-Sarah Gozin's Dead End/Dood Spoor in the comparative spotlight.

Dead End, or Dood Spoor, is a new Belgian TV drama from Bad Sisters co-creator Malin-Sarah Gozin starring Peter Van den Begin and Elise Schaap about a man "who is able to see flashes of what happened to something in the past when he tastes it — be that tasting a toothbrush, sucking on a lipstick or, as it emerges, chomping down on human flesh." Which is basically the entire premise of the comic book series Chew created by John Layman and Rob Guillory, and which also went through the TV development process until… it wasn't any more.

Chew is about a U.S. Food and Drug Administration agent, Tony Chu, a cibopath, who solves crimes by receiving psychic impressions from whatever he consumes as food, no matter what. First published in 2009, it ran until 2016 and won two Eisner Awards and two Harvey Awards. Two sequels were published in 2020 as a three-issue crossover with Outer Darkness and the spin-off series Chu.

The series was set in a world where poultry was prohibited after a breakout of avian flu killed 23 million Americans. Tony Chu, a police detective who, after eating a bowl  of chicken soup and receiving the psychic impression of the cook killing people and putting them into the soup, goes after the cook who kills himself. He eats p[art of the dead cook to find out who else he killed, which gets him fired from the Philadelphia PD – but hired by the FDA for his willingness to go the extra mile.

Dead End has the character Ed Bex, played by Van den Begin, set up a business, The Aftertaste, that helps grieving families cope by reconstructing the final moments of their loved ones. But, as one might expect, he is then called upon by a police inspector to help solve a murder by tasting a corpse. The trailer has Ed saying "I'm trying to help catch a crazy killer. To be sure, I need to taste… I can't remember the last time I had meat for dinner."

In 2010 and 2011, Circle of Confusion announced they were adapting Chew for Showtime as a half-hour comedy series based on a script by Terri Hughes Burton and Ron Milbauer, but it fell through. In 2014, it was announced Chew would be getting an animated feature produced by Jeff Krelitz and David Boxenbaum via Heavy Metal, with Jeff Krelitz directing and John Layman writing, with Steven Yeun as Tony Chu and Felicia Day as Amelia Mintz. But that died too.

Call it Separated At Birth or call it Swipe File, we present two or more images that resemble each other to some degree. They may be homages, parodies, ironic appropriations, coincidences, or works of the lightbox. We trust you, the reader, to make that judgment yourself. If you are unable to do so, we ask that you please return your eyes to their maker before any further damage is done. Separated At Borth doesn't judge; it is interested more in the process of creation, how work influences other work, how new work comes from old, and sometimes how the same ideas emerge simultaneously as if their time has just come. The Swipe File was named after the advertising industry habit where writers and artists collect images and lines they admire to inspire them in their work. It was swiped from the Comic Journal, which originally ran a similar column, and the now-defunct Swipe Of The Week website, but Separated At Birth was considered a less antagonistic title.

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