There is a great charm and sweet vibrancy to Flavor by writer Joseph Keatinge and artist Wook Jin Clark (with colouring by Tamra Bonvillain and lettering by Arian Maher) which deep into a world where food and its preparation, presentation and consumption is akin to a high religion which governs every aspect of life.
That dominance of one particular belief system, much like a theocracy, means that people like Xoo, an aspiring and highly-talented unlicensed cook – the true cooks are considered those who have been properly trained at cooking academies and have been certified as such giving them near god-like celebrity status – live in a highly structured, near-authoritarian society where the elite are very well treated and have great freedom and those lower down the pecking order such as Xoo and her parents, who run a crêperie, most clearly do not.
While Xoo’s childhood friend Anant, who has neither the passion nor the skill to be a top chef but whose family connections and expectations all but mandate that he will follow that career path, is given a red carpet entry to the city’s top academy, Xoo can only dream of what that kind of access and privilege would be like.
With her parents not able to work as they once could, it falls to Xoo, and her well-meaning but goofily inept Uncle Geof, who is awarded custody of his niece because her disabled parents are not deemed to offer the sufficient level of care (it’s a punitive society and while Xoo is given some grace to forge her own path, that leniency comes with strict limits that are ruthlessly enforced) to keep their shop open and much-needed funds coming in.
The brilliance of Flavor is the way in which it takes what might seem like a dream come true for many people, a society devoted to and in love with food to a decidedly extremist bent and gives it some dark and sinister overtones, the likes of which can’t be discussed without delving too far into spoiler territory but which add some rich darkness to a premise which seems light, bright and appealing.
And indeed, there is much about this world that is appealing in the most uplifting of ways, but Keatinge is clear that much of this bounty of culinary experience and opportunity is open only to those who can afford the high payments needed to gain access.
For people like Xoo, it’s all hard slog, desperate gambles (at one point, she goes into the underground, black market cooking scene to get what she wants and it is eye-opening as a graphic underscoring of the yawning chasm between the cooking haves and have-nots) and rolls of the competitive dice, in the hope that she can take her passion and turn it from a menial day-to-day proposition into something that truly fulfills her obvious potential.
Quite how impossible this chasm is to bridge is given vivid expression when we see Xoo and Anant making Crêpes Suzettes in wholly different circumstances.
While Xoo has to fight hard to make her creation in trying conditions, Anant, who has neither the talent nor the inclination and whose only impetus is pleasing his aristocratic parents) is given all the best ingredients, time and energy to do his best; his life is not without possible consequence but it pales in comparison to what Xoo has to endure just to get by.
Clark brings Keatinge’s inspired and insightful storytelling to life with artwork that bursts forth the page, thanks in crucial part to Bonvillain’s vivacious colouring, and swirls around you with the flavours and luscious works that are seemingly conjured up from nothing.
Keatinge’s immaculately immersive worldbuilding is given vibrant life by artwork which understands that for all the darkness ebbing and flowing just out of sight – it is more than hinted at that the behind-the-scenes mechanisms that keep the Bowl as the city is known humming along in its manifestly unequal way are very dark and not the sort of things its citizens either want to see or acknowledge – this is a world where everything is, on the surface at least, alive and bustling and exquisitely exciting.
Flavor very much understands that what we see upfront is not what happens for real for many people and much like picture postcard-perfect depictions of New York or Paris, the city Xoo inhabits is only ever as beautiful as the official line says it is when people’s assumptions and perceptions are allowed to occupy a bright and happy place.
Xoo somehow manages to retain some optimism and hope in the face of a thousand reasons not to, chief among them being her loyal dog Buster and her close relationship with her loving parents, and it is her bravura that infuses Flavor with so much effervescent hopefulness and life.
There are a million reasons why Xoo should just give up and settle for a life deep down in the muddy troughs of the very ordinary, but Xoo, despite having to live by some salient realities that come with no wiggle room or offer no luxury of choice, remains delightfully upbeat (though also wearily and wisely cognisant of how much her life teeters on a knife edge and how easily everything she dreams of could come to naught).
For all its grim truthfulness and honesty about how the world, even one as outwardly as gloriously fantastical as this one, works, Flavor is a sheer, zestful and gorgeously colourful delight, a promising premise well-executed that takes fully fleshed-out characters, an intriguing and layered narrative and a some stinging societal commentary that is balanced with the raw hopefulness of humanity and turns into a tale so engaging that you race through the pages eager to see where it heads next.
The sad part alas is that the story ends on a cliffhanger and two and half years down the track, there is no sign of a sequel from Image Comics in the offing so we may well have to do what Xoo does best and dream about what might be, hoping all the time that it comes to pass.
