We caught up with the always entertaining Matt Garvey at the recent Small Press Signing in Swindon last month, and while there he gave us an early look at the new issue of his signature series – Chunks. Alongside regular collaborator Cris Canfailla will this third issue continue offering the sweet music the series has so far, or will this ‘chunk’ be too tough to swallow?

Publisher: Lab Rat Comics
Writer: Matt Garvey
Artist: Cris Canfailla
Price: £3.00 from Matt’s Big Cartel Store

Chunks #3 continues to follow the titular Pineapple Chunks as they make their journey towards the musical big time. Next on their musical rise is their first radio interview, set up by the record producer of the last issue and involving a rather slimy DJ. But with the Pineapple Chunks involved, you know that this interview won’t go well as elderly receptionists, abused bagels and competition between the bandmates for the DJ’s glamourous assistant make it a usual day for them. However, things take a dramatic turn when the station is taken over by some very cliched, and suspicious, terrorists. Will the Chunks survive the ordeal and, more importantly, can they become famous while doing it?

Matt Garvey returns to his original comic, injecting more of the laughs and very British humour into this latest installment of his enjoyable series. Much like the prior two issues, Garvey has stuck with a tried and tested formula of keeping the plot simple and very much in keeping with the characters wheelhouse to begin with, before ramping things up with a surprise revelation which just gives the whole thing a very ‘jump the shark’ mentality, like the tin throwing debacle. That said, it still works incredibly well as the absurd humour, such as the thing with the bagel, is given believability thanks to some great writing and terrific characters, most of whom get focus, especially Dave and Bo who felt like more background characters in past issues.

Meanwhile, Cris Canfailla’s artwork looks absolutely fantastic with it’s very Beano-like style really suiting the comic’s very English sensibilities and off the wall hilarity perfectly. Little else can really be said about the art as Canfailla pulls off yet another solid success as with the previous issues, with the only difference being that the lines look subtly cleaner than before. Of course, this difference is so small that it causes little differences with the predecessors in terms of the actual art, but it does seem to do something help it stand out on the page, a fact helped by the intermittent colour which appear throughout this predominantly monochrome series. This, in particular, is given no better example than on the final page when one of the Chunks gets the girl in full colour as the rest of the world remains in grey.

In short, Garvey and Canfailla have shown that a break has done nothing to lose them their edge as they another installment of shut off your brain, enjoyable fun that is the Chunks series. With great humour and terrific art, if there’s one fruit based band you should be picking up every track of, it’s this one.