The tax agent as a comic hero

I recently read a tremendous graphic novel called Chew.

It concerns the adventures of Tony Chu, an unassuming American cop who’s ‘cibopathic’.

That is, he makes an involuntary psychic connection to whatever he eats (except beetroot) – which means he can solve, say, a murder simply by munching on a chunk of the victim’s corpse.

His wacky ability gets him reassigned to the government’s Food and Drug Administration, the USA’s most powerful crime-fighting force, to join the fight against chicken trafficking. (The meat’s been banned following a bird flu epidemic.)

And then things start to get weird…

How about, I wonder, a similarly bonkers comic book based on the far-out carryings-on of a tax adviser? What would be the set-up?

Perhaps the humble hero would fight organised crime with his immaculate bookkeeping skills.

Nope! That’s been done in real life.

So maybe our guy – or gal – could be a goody forced underground by a corrupt administration of the near future.

Nah! That’s been done in print. Really, really badly.

Put these two devices together with a nick from Chew, however, and we might have something: the lead character just has to touch a person to know his or her true tax liability down to the last penny.

This power makes our protagonist the most powerful weapon in the country – and the most dangerous.

He or she is therefore cajoled, threatened, double-crossed and hunted by all manner of shady government divisions, psycho gangsters, and oddballs with their own enigmatic agendas.

I’ll be happy to write it, if one or more of you will draw, ink, colour and letter it.

What we need first is a title…

• Log in to view and post comments
• Email this page
• Printer-friendly version