Yuck! #3 (2010)

Sex :
Violence :
Editor James Andre
Publisher Milk Shadow Books
Writers David DeGrand, Christoffer Saar, Craig Collins, Tom Motley, Dexter Cockburn, Ryan Vella, James Andre, Aska Wang, Frank Candiloro, Scarlette Baccini
Art and Colours David DeGand, Christoffer Saar, R Thomson, Tom Motley, Dexter Cockburn, Ryan Vella, I Laurie, Luke Pickett, Heronimous Wang, Scarlette Baccini, Jacek Zabawa, Brendan Halyday
Cover Jason Paulos
Genre Collection
Country

Review

“It would include dirty dominatrixes with never emptying machine guns!” - James Andre

Issue number three of Yuck! sees James Andre continuing his campaign for moral standards and quite possibly poo as a barometer of social consciousness. We get thirteen tales of mayhem over the magazine's thirty-eight pages with once again a little something for everyone, if you are not a young Liberal or moral campaigner. Whether you have picked up the magazine for the sleaze, social commentary, or the stories themselves, James Andre has you covered.

Missing from the issue is my regular instalment of Square Of The Crossbones, so if fanging for the continued adventures of our Panzer dudes then you are going to be sadly disappointed. Thankfully the rest of the magazine makes up for the initial disappointment however so you're still in for a good time tonight. If on the hunt for Crossbones action however try Jacek Zabawa's personal blog. I didn't see a whole lot of options to dial into the comic but you may have better luck.

The cover of Yuck! #3 is a solid sleazy effort from one Jason Paulos, a name regular readers will be familiar with. The lurid cover sets just the right atmosphere for the rest of the magazine and you get the feeling that you are quite possibly in good hands from it. This is immediately dispelled of course by Mr Slime's (James Andre himself) editorial, or what passes for an editorial on planet Yuck!. The reader is given a series of questions to answer that dial the gross factor up effectively. Welcome to the magazine, there be dragons here, get the flock out if you mistakenly thought you had picked up New Idea.

To the stories themselves, you are getting a bumper crop here ranging from single panels to full story length. Christoffer Saar hits the post apocalyptic trail with Nature Strikes Back, a sort of shaggy dog story with some venom on the social satire front. Tom Motley keeps the existential nature of Yuck! alive with the drug induced A Story About Dating. While Dextor Cockburn, sorry dude but that name sounds like a porn star, simply spits in the eye of anything approaching morality with the insanely wonderful Bus Ride Of The Damned.

Ryan Vella hits back with the overly gross Nature's Owned, James Andre and Luke Pickett hit out with a whimsical tale about all those late night talk feasts that never amount to much action the next day, before Scarlette Baccini rounds out with Zombolette, offering some advice on the whole dating game.

There's a bunch more stories in the magazine but I was just giving you the highlights from my end of the sofa here. Dial in for full enjoyment.

Way back in a review of Issue one of the magazine I wondered if Yuck! had this social satire thing going down, or whether it sort of happened just by blind luck. With Issue three we can confirm that satire is very much on James Andre's agenda, and the targets of said satire are many and various including the dark genre in the Wangs' The Hitcher, and new age mysticism in T K Maxx's Roachwell. The dark genre at it's best is very subversive as genres go, nice to see James Andre's cadre of writers and artists being given full scope to scrap away at the mortar of our society.

In terms of bangs for your buck, using one of the more venal computer terms, you are on a pretty good winner with Yuck! #3. Besides the obvious reliance on poo and toilet humour, never to be underestimated in terms of entertainment in my opinion, you get some content that may make you think. Yuck! isn't simply a reprint of something out of North America, it aims for a lot higher plain of existence than that, and does so in a quintessentially Aussie way. The magazine is well written and superbly drawn, holding out the lure of a good time for any potential reader.

Almost forgot, the magazine is recommended for Adult Readers as content could contaminate the minds of anyone younger, leading to outbreaks of thinking beyond twitter length. Be warned if you are a Twitard then Yuck! just might send you down a far deadly path than that load of puerile bollocks has a tendency to do. Vampires rip open throats people, and so too does Yuck!.

Right bringing this one in on the word limit. Yuck #3 is available via the Milk Shadows site and will set you back $5, that's value for money in anyone's language.

ScaryMinds Rates this read as ...

  Another excellent edition of mayhem and sleaze.