ReviewSeems yours truly has been handed the gig of magazine reviewer for the site since no other bugger can be bothered. Which is just as well as two Aussie horror orientated magazines appeared on my radar in pretty quick fashion. Seems they had been lying in wait as I took a step off the straight and narrow path of mainstream movie review and into the dark woods of the horror genre in print.
This week I got my hands on Black magazine issue three, which proved to be less about indigenous rights and more about "Australian Dark Culture",
whatever that means. For our discerning readership all you need to know is the magazine is horror orientated and is available in Australia, North
America, and one assumes New Zealand. If anyone outside those countries is keen on picking up a copy after reading this review let me know and I'll see
if I can't find out where to score one. To the technical details Batman. Holy smacking bank balances you are in for a bargain with Black, the magazine has a retail price of $7.95, at least in Australia. For the equivalent of the price of a couple of beers you get a full colour glossy magazine running 64 odd pages. Yes I know, they might as well have just printed "It's a steal" on the cover of the magazine. About every Brit or North American horror mag runs at least twice that price Down Under and without beating the local drum too hard has a hell of a lot less worthy content information than Black Black makes the U.S publication Fangoria look like the teen light horror rag it actually is.. Since this is our first look at Black, I'm going to act as a sort of tour guide cover to cover and simply toss onto the table what you get for your $7.95 outlay. Yes I've checked the price three times, that's all it costs. There's got to be a catch, this is like the newstand equivalent of a certain house in Amityville. Starting with the cover we get a full colour stylised picture of legendary horror showman Alice Cooper and a dodgy William Castle style skeleton. That works for me as I always thought Cooper went with the "B" grade look for his stage shows at the best of times. We are also breathlessly told we are going to get a special report on "Satanism + Black Magic", ouch pinch of salt there I thought. A few names and I guess a couple of article titles round out a pretty impressive, and more importantly professional looking, front cover. The magazine is already screaming out "high quality", but hey lets dig under the cover and disinter the contents.
As expected immediately inside the cover is a graphically pleasing table of contents and the usual credits and contact details. I don't have a whole
bunch of room to review every single article in the magazine, there's a wealth of material here, so hold onto your bums as we do a magical mystery
tour. By the way Scaryminds should think about advertising in this magazine under the byline "we sparkle during the day". This is probably going to get pretty boring so advance to here to bypass. A mail page, cool they want reader opinion. Famed Aussie horror and crime writer Robert Hood holds forth on ghostly images on film. Rob's one of those "contemporary" Aussie writers, whatever the hell that means, and we'll be getting down and funky with the Author's collection of stories "Immaterial: Ghost Stories" in due course. Okay so where was I, flicking further into the mag we get an article titled "Along came a psychotic spider: Alice Cooper" by Shane Jiraiya Cummings. We're not worthy comes to mind immediately. Interesting stuff where Cummings gets the skinny on Alice's current situation, longevity, and the awesome sounding new album "Along Came a Spider". This is must read stuff for Alice Cooper fans. I actually went and scored an import copy of the CD based on this article and the new Cooper album rocks, Psycho killer stuff, well okay enough of my listening options. Flicking through to page ten we get an interview with John Birmingham covering his new novel Without Warning. Sounds cool for the Sci-Fi fan base but we're after darker musings. Oh there we go a short review of the new Stephen King collection. I'm running out of room here so am shooting ahead. Good article on "Tokyo Gore Police", that movie already has cult status and is another genre hit out of the land of the rising sun. We finally get to Gary Kemble uncovering the satanic side with an article on Satanism "In the Devil's Name", anyone else think everyone there comes off as just a variant of the fundamental Christians? Maybe I'm one of the herd then, sorry great article by Gary Kemble but those Satanist guys just come off as another pseudo intellectual pack of arseholes that seem to think they are better than us. Hey I'm not carrying any baggage, can't you just tell! We're approaching the half way point folks. Short story by Liam Rands "Transcendence", been done before but Rands adds enough to dial up needed pathos. A section entitled "Horrorscope" covering new books, movies, games, comics, and music. Short and concise reviews ranging over a huge area. An article on comic dude Ben Templesmith, not my thang so jumped ahead. A photo shot of a Blue Mountain's festival. Kyla Ward covers "Coffin Culture", you'll be coffin up the dough to get into that particular fetish. Sorry couldn't be helped. Phew not long to go. A couple of pages dedicated to prizes you can win. Andrew Mckiernan gives the low down on outback killers, loved the referencing of Aussie cult flicks there. Oh and here's a find, Shane Jiraiya Cummings gives us the good oil on what happen to Lothian Books "Dark Suspense" line in "The End of the Line". I wondered what happen there as we got a lot of coverage back in 2006 and then the bool line simply disappeared. Cummings is on the mark with giving us the full gruesome details, the dude doesn't hold back either folks. Flicked through a few more pages and we get a couple of pages of "Artificial Demand: Five Kick Arsed Prosthetics". You are either going to like that or not to be honest, I was remotely interested but didn't spend a whole bunch of time in country. A short story by Kathryn Gossow "Soul Mates", Gossow nails this one. Ah okay we round out with "Readers Rant" a page dedicated to readers apparently talking about whatever they want to. Here Those who bothered to wade through the lightening tour above will be aware of the scope that Black has within it's pages, for anyone else I can tell you there's a lot under the covers of Black magazine. Some content is going to be of more interest to individual readers than other content, par for the course in any magazine. There's something for everyone to get down and dirty with, so I would have no hesitation in stating you will get something out of issue three, and quite possibly enough to have you checking shelves for the fourth issue. I'm just happy that I'm finally reading an Aussie magazine that doesn't prominently feature which tampon Nicole Kidman is currently using, or why Baz's folly Australia is vital to the Aussie film industry. Bravo to Angela Challis and team for putting out an excellent addition to the dark genre in Australia, and for bypassing stuff best left to bin liners such as the "Daily Telegraph". Wonder if you can find binders to keep issues of "Black" pristine? Editor's Note |
