SLICED REVIEW – PIZZA WARS, FAMILY BEEF & SMALL BUSINESS WITH A SIDE OF CHAOS

WEPAAAAA! You ever see two people hate each other so much you know the beef started before either one of them was old enough to understand why? Sliced takes that kind of generational nonsense, drops it inside two rival pizza shops, then throws a shiny corporate competitor across the street just to make everybody’s blood pressure worse. Rafael Scavone understands immediately that pizza is not just food here. It is ego, family history, identity and the thing these people use to measure whether their lives meant something.

Silvio Zampini and Pietro Pizzutti are rival pizzaiolos carrying baggage that goes back to their families, and Guilherme Grandizolli has a blast making that rivalry feel lived in. The expressions are big without turning everybody into cartoons, the kitchens feel busy and hot, and every argument has that specific flavor of people who have rehearsed the same damn fight for years. Then the new high-tech pizza operation arrives, all polish and money, and suddenly the two guys who cannot stand each other have a much bigger problem staring them in the face.

What I dug most is that Scavone doesn’t treat the corporate threat like some faceless evil machine just because the story needs a villain. The book is really about what happens when tradition runs into scale, money and efficiency. Small businesses survive because somebody cares enough to make things personal, but caring can also turn into stubbornness, resentment and refusal to change. Sliced keeps poking at that contradiction, and that is where the story gets more interesting than a simple pizza-shop comedy.

Grandizolli’s art gives the whole book its personality. Kitchens are cluttered, storefronts feel distinct, crowds actually look like crowds and the food has enough texture that, yeah, you are probably going to want pizza before you finish reading. Cris Peter’s colors push the warmth of the traditional shops against the cooler, slicker feel of the new competition, and that visual contrast does a lot of storytelling without somebody having to explain it in a speech.

The pacing is strong because the book knows when to lean into comedy and when to let the family history breathe. There are stretches where the rivalry gets ridiculous in the best way, but underneath the jokes is real hurt. The story keeps peeling back why Silvio and Pietro are the way they are, and by the time cooperation stops feeling impossible, it does not feel like the script suddenly ordered them to become buddies. They earn the shift.

If I have one knock, the corporate side occasionally feels a little broader than the two families, which makes the personal material hit harder than the larger conspiracy. I cared more about the old wounds, the shops and the people trying not to lose themselves than I did about every piece of the business plot. But that is also proof the character work is doing its job.

Sliced is funny, warm, occasionally mean and a hell of a lot smarter about small-business pride than the pizza-war setup might make you expect. It understands that sometimes the person across the street is not your real enemy, and sometimes the fight you inherited is the thing keeping you from seeing what is actually happening. Come for the pizza. Stay for the family dysfunction. Just do not read this hungry, fam. That part is on you.

CRUSADERS SCORE:
4.5/5

Writer: Rafael Scavone
Artist: Guilherme Grandizolli
Colors: Cris Peter
Letters: Deyvison Manes
Publisher: ABLAZE / originally Comixology Originals & Stout Club
On Sale: September 1, 2026