Review - Yellow

Earlier this year a horror comic was released called The Abortion. The "horror" part was the concept of an aborted fetus making its way from the clinic to the home of the parents to kill them for killing it. Creators Jamie McMorrow and Garry McLaughlin weren't content to sit on their horror laurels and decided it was time to follow up The Abortion with the next in their macabre portfolio with Yellow.

The book is set through the eyes of the main protagonist on a murderous rampage. The story isn't read chronologically, but pages are timestamped so that the reader can keep up with the murderer. The rampage includes a wide smattering of individuals and seems to just be people that have pissed off the murderer for whatever reason. The real horror lies at the end, where the murderer's identity is revealed to the reader and will probably surprise and/or shock you.

Like The Abortion before it, Yellow seems to rely more heavily on the illustrations to drive the story instead of dialogue. Sure, there's dialogue here, but certain panels focus on various parts of the conversations that seem to beg for emphasis. Some of these parts are emphasized for the sheer brutality of the acts while others are emphasized to add a touch of emotion to the book. By the end of the book the motives of the killer are very apparent and you almost sympathize with the protagonist, despite their antagonistic tendencies.

The book won't strike nearly the chord with readers that The Abortion did mainly because abortion is a much touchier topic than homicidal rampage, which may not make much sense but it is what is. We live in a culture supposedly desensitized to violence and I worry that some of the impact of the "horror" of a murderous rampage will be dulled somewhat. I'm fairly certain that McMorrow and McLaughlin aren't counting on the actual murders to be the horror though; rather, the reveal at the end where you learn who the killer is and their motives is meant to be true horror.

The book is currently available at the Laser Age Comics online store for £1.00 (as of writing that's $1.50 for us Yanks) in a digital format. A print format will be available October 2 as part of a release party that will include a 10-minute soundtrack called "Theme from Yellow" for the first 100 copies.