Review

"These halls sure are dusty, lotsa cobwebs too." - Mr Olsen

Without any debate the team quickly dubbed Decay #8 the "die-ner" edition, cause we rock and the cover pretty much screamed it out like someone caught under an overturned tractor. Just when I was getting comfortable with the content of Decay Editor Koziol, clearly managing to avoid the religious mob with the tar and pitchforks at his front door, turned everything on its head and changed things up. It's always something of risk taking a tried and true concept and tinkering with it, just ask the Bathurst 1000 dudes, as you are either going to improve on things and win more converts to your cause or you run the risk of alienating your existing support base. This review while covering the groundwork will be pretty much trying to analysis the changes, queue Bowie, and making some sort of judgement call on whether they work or not. Let's go grab the special of the day at the die-ner y'all.

Darren Koziol, being the crafty old fox he is, commissioned Frantz Kantor to produce one of the best covers yet to grace Decay. Even after weeks of rocking out to it I'm still noticing new details. Naturally Koziol is trying to cover up the changes going down inside the magazine, but I was immediately onto them, especially since Koziol highlighted the situation in his once again excellent editorial that gets things underway. The bad news is the expected retro SciFi story from SCAR is missing, fingers crossed that's a temporary situation, the good news is you are going to be reading a bumper crop of cool new features.

Leading off the story line-up is a rocking twelve page episode of Oz Zombie Tales entitled Sanctuary. For those who haven't got their Oz Zombie on yet, the apocalypse is upon us with festivities having kicked off in Australia and quickly spreading to all parts of the globe. We're all about caring and sharing down here. Darren Koziol supply's a ripping script that has something to say about organised religion, while Cristian Navarro demonstrates Argentina can throw on the dark genre artwork with the best of them. If you are going to buy Decay for no other reason than this story, then its money well spent. Navarro's artwork is simply superb kids.

Local dude John Stewart goes silent running with the excellent The Hunt, a sort of gothic fantasy tale that's more about mood I guess than telling a tale. While Cristian Navarro returns to provide the artwork for GOO's somewhat undeveloped cobweb man.

Debuting in Decay #8 is a cool new feature, Tales 2 Tremble By, a collection of two page shorts showcasing the talents of a number of Writers and Artists. Darren Koziol provides the script for The Rise of the Mummies with newcomer Tamati James nailing the artwork. I'm crossing my fingers this short continues in serial form as it looks to be a very solid outing. Jason Paulos returns to the Decay team with excellent illustrations for a Koziol penned Oz Zombie Tales, Death Tram, that see's the zombie apocalypse disrupting Melbourne commuters. Proving he's either a glutton for punishment or simply has too many ideas Darren Koziol hits out with Wish Upon a Star with the talented Tanya Nicholls drawing a tale of alien contact with a difference. Speaking of Aliens, and of course Koziol scripting, Rifles, Revolvers, and Ray-Guns sees alien cattle mutilation in the old west as the battle of the OK corral erupts between ET's big brother and the local ranchers. Tiring of aliens Koziol turns his hand to gastronomy and psychopaths with Stuart Rumbel managing to capture the romance of a candlelit supper for the damned in Crawlspace. And finally Cristian Navarro once again displays his skills in Darren Koziol's kick off piece, The Tryst, for the forthcoming one shot vampire epic Sisters.

Well you can't say Decay doesn't represent value for money with the amount of content, but as they say in the adverts, wait there's more. Aaron Stoquert's zombie orientated folk music is reviewed in full, as it happens Aaron's album Remaining Days is next cab off the rank in our music review queue. Taking time out from writing great scripts Darren Koziol ventured into the mayhem of Supernova in Melbourne and Brisbane, lived to tell the tale, and supplies comprehensive photo coverage of the events. Dazza in the valley of the hotties came to mind while checking out the happy shots. A new section "Expose", introduces us to the world of Batrisha, an ill-tempered vampire exchange student from Bloodisvostok. Also kicking off in Issue 8 is Gallery, which offers an in-depth view of the work of Dave Heinrich, with the promise of more exposure to other Artists in future Issues. And finally Stuart Rumbel gives an insight into how he turns a Koziol script into a finished comic strip.

Clearly you are going to have to set aside a huge chunk of time to get through all the excellent reading Decay #8 has on offer as Darren Koziol delivers up the best Issue to date. I was rocking out to the contents, enjoying the stories, and getting some solid information on various subjects. While there's a little something for everyone in the Issue, it should also be pointed out that horror fans are going to have a real good time with some of the darker elements featured. When Darren Koziol does gorenography the meek should run for the hills, it ain't going to be anything like a Twilight outing.

Guess I've pretty much covered the Issue, full recommendation clearly, grab yourself a copy today and rock on out.