Chachu #1 Review
When I see a celebrity has signed on for a comic, my first thought is that they are looking to IP farm a comic into a movie. But that isn’t how I felt when I saw that Iman Vellani was writing a comic with Image Comics and Tiny Onion. She has spent years talking about comics with such love and passion that I knew this was a true passion project for her instead of cashing in on the medium I love so much. She knocked it out of the park with her first solo comic, Chachu, with such flair, charisma, and a fascinating concept. Iman is joined by Marianna Ignazzi on art, Jordie Bellaire on colors, Lucas Gattoni on letters, design by Dylan Todd, and edited by Eric Harburn. This sun-drenched mystery is going to turn heads for those unfamiliar with Iman’s game.
Chachu stars Leila, a 19-year-old Pakistani-Canadian girl who stands on the cusp of adulthood, eager to experience the “real world” for the first time. With a head full of Hollywood dreams and a penchant for pulp novels, she ventures to California to connect with her estranged uncle—her “Chachu”—a middle-aged, semi-retired private eye who gained brief fame after marrying the starlet he was initially hired to find. Everything starts to unravel on night one, and the book puts the pedal to the metal for the two estranged family members.
There was one line in Chachu that made it click for me that Iman was not messing around as a writer. Leila’s description of her uncle as “his hair staged a coup against its own follicles. Oh, the fury of tangled casualties…” made me lean back in my seat and take a minute. It’s such a creative freedom of description that it made me instantly fall for this book. That type of wordsmithing is what makes this comic special. There is so much character to the writing that it draws you into every panel with personality that is overflowing from every character you meet in Issue 1.
It’s clear the book is going for the noir pastiche in its own way with just how funny it is from a teenage girl’s POV. The first few pages have Leila lighting a cigarette, but when it’s finally in her lips, she goes into a coughing fit and spits it out to replace it with a pencil. It defines this character with flair from the beginning. We are seeing this world from her POV, which makes it easier to be more fun with how things are shown through her eyes rather than some hard-boiled detective. The sections of her writing in her notebook bring so much characterization to the world around her that makes it all so much bigger than it could appear otherwise. Chachu does everything a debut issue needs to do with a real fire.
There is a certain aesthetic I have in mind when it comes to Hollywood pulp noir style stories, and it’s exactly how Marianna Ignazzi and Jordie Bellaire depict it in Chachu. There is one panel that is an upshot of a spiral staircase with a window at the top that perfectly encapsulates why the art sings in this book. There is a mystery to this single panel of who Leila’s Chachu is. The staircase leads to a silhouette of him framed by an eerie California orange color that defines so much of this book in just one of many incredibly illustrated panels. Ignazzi’s design for the characters makes them fit snugly into the 1979 setting with their aesthetics, mustaches, and cigarettes that scream noir. Bellaire’s sun-tinged color palette makes this book fit the pulpy aesthetic while never losing the beauty that comes with a Bellaire colored book.
Good lettering, unfortunately, means that you don’t even notice the lettering, but sometimes it’s used to show a character’s voice. Lucas Gattoni’s lettering choices in Chachu for Leila’s inner thoughts and journal writing are a strong aesthetic choice to give the letters more of a voice for the character. There is a warmth to the typography that is an extension of the character herself, who has so much personality. It’s a great choice by Gattoni to help tell the story with choices that can otherwise go unnoticed.
Iman Vellani has put her flag down hard in the world of comics with such a strong debut as a solo writer. Chachu is a brilliant start to a story I look forward to digging deeper into as the issues come out. Nothing about the book feels like it’s just meant to be a platform to base a movie on, but rather a strong comic that embraces the medium to its fullest extent.
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