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P H O N O G R A M THE
SINGLES
CLUB
written by
KIERON GILLEN art & lettering by
JAMIE McKELVIE colors by
MATTHEW WILSON
“She Who Bleeds For Your Entertainment”
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written by KIERON GILLEN art by LAURENN McCUBBIN
“The Power Of Love” written by KIERON GILLEN art by MARC ELLERBY
*NO MAGIC
IMAGE COMICS, INC. Robert Kirkman — Chief Operating Officer Erik Larsen — Chief Financial Officer Todd McFarlane — President Marc Silvestri — Chief Executive Officer Jim Valentino — Vice-President ericstephenson — Publisher Joe Keatinge — PR & Marketing Coordinator Branwyn Bigglestone — Accounts Manager Tyler Shainline — Administrative Assistant Traci Hui — Traffic Manager Allen Hui — Production Manager Drew Gill — Production Artist Jonathan Chan — Production Artist Monica Howard — Production Artist
www.imagecomics.com International Rights Representative: Christine Jensen (christine@gfloystudio.com)
Thankyous
TO EVERYONE
PHONOGRAM: THE SINGLES CLUB #1 (of 7). December 2008. Published by Image Comics, Inc. Office of publication: 1942 University Avenue, Suite 305, Berkeley, California 94704. Copyright © 2008 Kieron Gillen & Jamie McKelvie. All rights reserved. PHONOGRAM™ (including all prominent characters featured herein), its logo and all character likenesses are trademarks of Kieron Gillen & Jamie McKelvie, unless otherwise noted. Image Comics® and its logos are registered trademarks of Image Comics, Inc. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any means (except for short excerpts for review purposes) without the express written permission of Image Comics, Inc. All names, characters, events and locales in this publication are entirely fictional. Any resemblance to actual persons (living or dead), events or places, without satiric intent, is coincidental. PRINTED IN CANADA.
the hope that house built Jamie’s sitting on the far side of London, wrestling with his radiograph pens which are randomly ejaculating ink. I sit in North London working out which parts of my dirty grey matter I’m going to smear on these pages for your entertainment. So, with the Future of the Left’s spoone ristic and gloriously pessimistic “The Hope That House Built” playing, here we go.
Couple of points of order before we start the inevitable discussion of Kenickie B-Sides or whatever. Firstly, while we’ve based Never On A Sunday on a real club, I stress that Seth Bingo and the Silent Girl aren’t a version of its DJs. Yeah, they’re inspired by a real pairing – but it’s not a pairing that you’ll see upstairs at the Hatchet in Bristol, one week a month. So don’t mug them. Not even Gareth, who probably deserves it thanks to some of the particularly kitsch obscuria he likes to play. Secondly, if you don’t want to read this, don’t. Which you may think obvious, but you’d be surprised. While the vast majority seem to like the current trend in single-issue comics including creator essays crammed in the back of a single, there’s a minority who are actually offended by their existence. What gets the biggest rise is the sense that the essays explained the comics, leaving no room for personal interpretation. Which is wrong, but doesn’t matter – if it aggravates someone, it aggravates. I’m going to try to keep as far away as I can from that sort of thing, concentrating on less provocative areas (unless I change my mind or get confused). I’ll go as far as what inspired something – as I know there’s some fun vignettes there – but generally speaking I’ll concentrate on the music or riffing madly on the general themes. If it still bothers you, I urge you to stop. Extra material is extra material. All anyone else would have stuck there is a house ad, so if it taints your pleasure, you’re not losing anything by closing the book after you look at the sequential prettiness. Enough of the downbeat. We’re doing a second series! Of the Phonogramic Children’s Picture Narrative! You’d have thought someone would had the good sense to stop us by now, but seemingly not. We are the Bonnie and Clyde of demi-mainstream comics and they’ll never take us alive. Where was I? While I’ve things to say about Penny, I’m going to keep that for next time. What I mainly want to talk about is this series. As you’ll have ascertained by flicking through, things have changed. Where’s David Kohl? Why is it in colour? I haven’t seen an Echobelly reference yet? Who are these other artists? Why was there such a long gap between series? Why has McKelvie got such an annoying face? The last may just be me. While last series’ comics-plus-10-pages-of-rant format provoked a little debate, the masses-of-text was actually the product of a series of hilarious accidents. When I pitched the comic, I thought we’d only have two extra pages. As it was, I had ten. I wasn’t going to fill them with adverts, because adverts in a comic from a pair of nobodies struck me as somewhat obscene – and the idea of all this magical white space to play with filled me with lust. So I started writing. That every issue shows a reduction in font size suggests I kinda got increasingly into it. Last time it was improvised. This time we’ve had time to plan, and ended up with probably the most stupidly ornate take on a monthly comic in the industry right now. Well – at least until Matt brings Casanova back, which if his whispers are true, promises to be a whole different kind of barking. Our third series will retaliate with posters, cross-words and collectable ironon-patches that you have to arrange to tell a story. This is how it works. Every issue’s tentpole feature is the main Phonogram story by Jamie and I. Its concept is that it’s all set in a single night, in a single nightclub. Each issue is a stand-alone story which follows a character and illustrates a different aspect of phonomancery (and by doing so, pop music). Most of the characters are new, but Kohl, Emily Aster and Kid-with-Knife turn up again. However, Kohl isn’t actually a lead. All the stories tie together, and illuminate previous ones. Being Phonogram, this isn’t in a “They realise that their actions inadvertently raised THE DARK GOD CTHULHU. Oh noes!” but something more intimate, more subtle, more human (hopefully). That aspect of the series will make a whole lot more sense when you’ve read the second
issue. And hopefully you will, as I think it’s the best single Phonogram story I’ve ever written. Except maybe issue five. But experimentally structured folded narrative isn’t the whole story. You’ll notice there’s two other stories in the issue. These are the B-sides, short stand-alone tales written by yours truly and drawn by our friends and peers, many of which required only minimal emotional blackmail to be talked into it. This time we’ve been joined by Laurenn McCubbin and Marc Ellerby, two people who I love to death (Except for Marc, who’s a despicable human being). My relationship with Marc’s an odd one. Within a half second of meeting at Birmingham Comics Con in 2007 we were laying into each other in drunken good humour (Which, at a distance, sounded as if we were about to pull knives). Took us half an hour to realise that – y’know – this level of immediate cheery vehemence wasn’t normal. Still, I do love his cartooning. And, yes, I only say that because I know he’s not reading, because he can’t read. Script information is supplied to him via handgestures. Mainly “you wanker” ones. His most prominent work is Love The Way You Love with Jamie Rich for Oni Press, and seeing how he grew across its six volumes was as inspiring as seeing McKelvie change across Rue Britannia. His own smallpress indie work is delicate, funny and full of the most unlikely fringes this side of a Final Fantasy VII cosplay contest. His story here was the result of McKelvie and I bullshitting wildly at San Diego Comic Con 2007. Phonogram isn’t often so openly goofy, and Marc’s cartooning sells a slight gag far better than it deserves. I especially love his Silent Girl. Laurenn’s story is from the opposite pole of Phonogram’s creative engine. I’ve known her for years, and known her work for longer – I was a latecomer to comics, and her XXXlivenudegirls (with Nikki Coffman) was one of my original indie crushes. Since then, she’s probably best known for her illustrating Michelle Tee’s brilliant Rent Girl. Strongly photoreferenced but with an eye for the human downbeat end of experience, I think her illustrative-edge captures the horror I was trying to evoke. Laurenn was also the inspiration, providing She Who Bleed’s observation about that troika of records. Emosogynist, is hers too, proving that I’m not the only one in this operation who’s a bit trigger happy with the neologism-cannon. She is – on the quiet side – a little bit awesome, and I feel kind of bad putting her in the company as someone as despicable as Ellerby. She’ll be married by the time this is published, which is odd to think, but also wondrous. To her, I dedicate this issue. Jamie and I are about as happy as we can be for her. And her beau, for that matter, though that’s tainted with bitter jealousy. Okay – so we’re having the main story. We’re also having six pages of back-up story every issue. In addition, we’re having as much essay and annotation material I can cram into this space. I’m also hoping, assuming the font stays readable at tiny-sizes, to squeeze in some interviews with the bands who inspired the series as we progress. Oh – and maybe a letters page. Two things to note about that: 1) While there’s a lot in the issue, it’s worth noting that it all stands alone. Every issue of this series can be picked up and read. 2) The back-up material is for the single issues only. When (or, really, if) we reach THE SINGLES CLUB trade, we’ll just be collecting the main feature, plus some trade-exclusive Making Of style notes and sketches. As most things in comics, this decision is partially business and partially art. The business side is simple – we need to sell slightly more of this series than we did the last one, because the colour costs more. To do that, we’re trying to encourage as many people to buy the singles by giving lots of extra special spangliness. On the art side, the way the seven stories have been written is... well, when published month by month they can seem more like seven stories. When collected, they’re a foldednarrative novel. Having all the B-sides in the trade will undermine that effect. In an ideal world, we’ll like to do a trade of the Phonogram supplementary material after series four – by which point we should have amassed enough shorts to make it feasible (Our Hatful of Hollow, if you will). So we’re not saying the B-sides will never be collected – but if they are, it will be a long time. If it’s within four years, I’d be highly surprised. In other words: there’s nothing up our sleeves. You now know what we’re up to, so you can make an informed buying decision. Though we’ll happily make out with you if you buy the singles. Like, with tongues and everything. Like, totally. Space is getting a short, so the Whys of the multinarrative more-contemporary approach will have to wait. If you’re interested, there’s interviews online where I gibber about that kind of stuff. If you want a two-liner: After Rue Britannia, Phonogram was a book about a specific event. If all goes well, after The Singles Club it’ll be a book about a world. It needs to be. We’ve got a lot we’d like to show you and widening perceptions is the only way we’ll be able to do it. Join us. It’ll be fun. We’re the best club in town. Kieron Gillen On a Autumnal night in Archway, Londinium, Having swapped Future for the Left for Amanda Palmer. So no cheerier, eh?
annotations
time. While the It was totally true last time. Against all laws of logic, it’s even more totally true this t and your own Contex . actual references are carefully chosen, they’re not essential to understanding quoting a band, experience with love and hate is all you need. For example, even when someone’s actively mainly colour, the fact that they’re actively quoting a band is the primary point. The following is local saying how they designed for people who want to dig further. One of the joys of Rue Britannia was people this time around. discovered a band through this section. Hopefully people will have similar experiences Arctic Monkeys: Enormously successful garagerock-with-sociological-lyrics Sheffield quartet. Their debut Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not defined 2006 for a good chunk of the mainstream indie nation. None of them are at Never On A Sunday. Thems the breaks. Atlantis To Interzone: Klaxons single. Kieron still prefers “Gravity’s Rainbow”, as it sounds as if it’s falling over itself, and that’s always charming. Jamie likes “Golden Skans” for some godforsaken reason. The Crystal Castles remix of Atlantis To Interzone is so awesome that it actually gets a story of its own later in the series. No, really. Bath Moles: The Moles club of Bath, which I can’t believe hasn’t actually turned up in Phonogram yet. Poor old Moles Club of Bath. Jamie did the maths on what Long Blondes gig Penny may have attended, and came up with this. Which spooked Kieron as an old band mate of his used to manage the support band, Special Needs. Spooks! Blondie: Seventies new-wave New York favourites of anyone who believes pop music should be sharp, blonde and glamourous. Parallel Lines would be the place to start if you’re at home. Otherwise, head to that dancefloor. Cave, Nick: Australian goth bloke or something. Cave, Nick: Okay, more seriously: One of the towering figures in leftfield popular music of the last thirty years. From the Birthday Party, through the sinful Southern Gothic of his early work with the Bad Seeds, to the spiritual versus romantic transcendence of albums like The Boatman’s Call, that’s a hell of a body of work. And there’s still another fifteen or so years after that. Still – he does have a tendency to off a lot of ladies. She Who Bleeds... references, in order, “She’s Hit” by the Birthday Party, “From Her To Eternity”, “The Mercy Seat” and the whole of Murder Ballads. Her “revenge” comment is referencing things like his PJ Harvey duet “Henry Lee”, when PJ gets to do the slaying. With the mass of work he’s
done, those looking for a starting place may actually consider a Best Of... “Dancing Queen”: Abba’s greatest single. Death Cab For Cutie: More American Indie Rock. To be honest, I have trouble listening to more than the first line of “What Sarah Said” without wanting to put on something more macho. Like Belle & Sebastian. East 17: Early nineties boyband. In the periodshorthand, the Stones to Take That’s Beatles. The name’s from the post-code, and their proto-chav charm led to genuine – NO REALLY – classics like “House of Love”. That was later covered by punkyglam-atonal godheads Shampoo, so would be fine by us even if it wasn’t a genuine – NO REALLY – classic. Enemy, The: NME-standard Indie band who I can’t remember a single note of, despite trying. Their namechecking actually positions this story after the end of The Singles Club, if you’re the sort to examine release dates that closely. Gossip: More period-appropriate indie-disco that squeezed the last few drops out of that “House Of Jealous Lovers” cymbal and recontextualised Beth Ditto’s impressive femme-punk holler in a way which actually moved units. The album would be Standing In the Way of Control, the title track of which Penny would almost certainly be jumping around to when played. Seth’s got her number. “I Like A Boy In Uniform”: SCHOOL UNIFORM! Also not the first Pipettes single. Strictly speaking, that honour goes to the free-at-gigs thing the Pipettes Christmas Single. No one’s perfect. Seth certainly isn’t. “Ice Cream”: Defining single by the Londonoriginated electro/indie New Young Pony Club. Provocative, robotic and slutty in all the right ways. “Kisses... are... wasted...”: “Your Kisses Are Wasted On Me”. Not the first Pipettes single. Penny!
“Groove Is In The Heart”: Dee-lite’s greatest single. “Hot Topic”: Le Tigre’s greatest single. “Oh, It hurts to see you Dance...”: A direct nod at the Pipettes album track “It Hurts To See You Dance So Well”. “Last Kiss”: J. Frank Wilson and the Cavaliers 50s pop about tragic girlfriend death. The earliest example of the girl-dies-boy-feels-bad that came to mind. Or rather, came to Matt Fraction’s mind. Hi Matt Fraction! “Let’s Make Love And Listen To Death From Above”: Sao Paulo’s Cansei De Ser Sexy’s theremin-infused gibberish-spouting pop anthem. Kieron still loves this too much. Jamie still loves Lovesexxxy too much. Much more on both next issue. Long Blondes, The: Sheffield auto-described “Glamourous Punk” band. In short: Pulp times Elastica. In less short: wait for issue five. Until then, Someone To Drive You Home is where to start and for his sins - Kieron’s defining 2006 album. Just split up. “Miss Trivial-Pursuit-Wedge-face”: Singer Sophie Ellis Bextor has a triangular face. Oh, Seth. Tres Witty. Mountain Goats: John Darnielle’s vehicle for his hyper-articulate singer-songwriting. The relevant one is his The Sunset Tree album, if you want to try it. Generally speaking, his work’s well worth exploring. Alternatively, just get “No Children” and play it forty times a day. Eighty if you’re in the terminal point of a relationship. Motown: If you need a definition for this, I suspect you’re an alien visiting Earth and decoding this comic to try and work out what Earth Culture was like before humanity’s untimely demise. I’d stop and move onto something else, mate. “Murder On the Dancefloor”: While her vocal on “Groovejet (If This Ain’t Love)” is the most iconic, Sophie Ellis Bextor’s solo career only really seemed to solidify with this. As a slice of what I’d term Wedding Disco, it’s passably bitchy. Just. The Pipettes: Brighton-originated pop-experiment: sixties-girl-band aesthetics plus modern lyrical concerns times polkadots equals splendidosity. They’re terribly pretentious on the quiet (Manifestos!) but isn’t relevant to Penny’s love. Start with This Is The Pipettes.
“Pull Shapes”: The definitive Pipettes single. While in the context of the album it seems a little darker, standing by itself, it’s pop-music-as-white-light, with dancing being the alpha and omega of all worthwhile experience. Catch it in the right time and the right mood, and it can be. Also: Handclaps. Posters: God, Penny’s got a lot of posters in her room. I’ll only gives notes on the ones which SCREAM OUT and demand further commentary. You can play semiotic tag yourself, if that’s your thing, daddy-o. Stevens, Sufjan: More hyperarticulate singersongwriting. The referenced track is “Casmir Pulaski’s Day” from 2005’s Illinois, the second from his attempt to write an album for each of the US states. Which he clearly wasn’t going to, but was cute to pretend he was for a while. It’s also a good place to start. Hmm. For an issue about dancing, there’s a lot of sitting at home music being given the thumbs up. Take That: Ah, better. Early nineties boyband, now mainly known as the thing that begat Robby Williams and a West End musical. “Back For Good” is the one that got all the Proper Songwriter Cred circa Britpop, but frankly the gay disco stuff was about forty times as fun. As is gay disco’s wont. “You’re only nineteen...”: Nod to the Long Blondes’ “Once And Never Again”. Yeah, it does sound like the Housemartins, but it’s the Housemartins with predatory saphism, which makes it okay. “The Power Of Love”: Eighties-bar-rock Huey Lewis and the News’ big Back To the Future-powered hit. It’s a curious thing – it makes one man weep, and another man sing. Also, turns your heart to a little white dove. “Wants and Needs, Penny...”: Nod to the Long Blondes’ salacious and particularly Pulp-esque “Weekend Without Makeup”. Man, that Laura speaks in a lot of quotes, doesn’t she? This is going to be one of Team Phonogram’s pretentious bits, innit? MAN! Those Team Phonogram guys suck. “You’re all dressed up! You have a vodka in hand!”: Nod towards the punky-disco of the Long Blondes’ “Separated by Motorways”. Will this Laura ever stop referencing Long Blondes records? “You’ve already spent months at the back of the line...”: No, she won’t. Nod to “The Only Lovers Left alive”, which you’ll find on the aforementioned Someone To Drive You Home.
lost notes
at There are many ways to communicate with TEAM PHONOGRAM. You can go to our forum can You ic. ramcom www.imagecomics.com/messageboard/. You can follow our twitter at phonog page, go to our website at www.phonogramcomic.com. But if you want to appear in the letters you’ll want to drop a line to lostnotes@phonogramcomic.com. Just like these guys...
NIGHTS KISSING Ah, memories! It was the winter of 2006, the days when music was music and dancing was sexy, and between hazy days weeping openly through violent hangovers and hazier nights kissing with the lights out, I had a glorious time. And there was a comic, back then, that made sense of the space between The Pipettes handclaps and Tunde Adebimpe’s howling, between Baader Meinhoff’s funk and New Wave’s bitterness. And lo, it was good. And now it’s back, flashing clubs and colours and memories and magic and music at me, an old man of 22, barely able to clap my hands, let alone want some more. You bastards. You sadistic bastards. You will ruin me! Matt Sheret, London Matt wrote this after reading the preview. We will, indeed, ruin him. RUBDOWN TO ME Phonogram is a comic for people who don’t like comics. Well, people who don’t like comics nearly as much as they like music anyway. It’s for a girl from Kettering who, at present, owns eight different versions of the Thursday album Full Collapse. It’s for a guy I used to work with whose girlfriend asked him who he loved more, her or Morrissey, and dumped him when he gave her an honest answer. It’s for a girl in Leicester who will punch you in the face should you express anything close to a negative opinion about Tom Delonge’s voice. It’s for a girl from Norfolk, Virginia who dances like a flame and sang Sunset Rubdown to me as if I was the only person on earth. It’s for every one of us who doesn’t wonder when someone will invent a time machine, because we already have thousands, on LP, mp3, and compact disc. We will scowl at people who tell us they like ‘a bit of everything’ or ‘whatever’s on the radio’ because they don’t understand, and they never will. We believe in pop music, and it’s magic, and we are absolutely certain that every moron in a Ramones/Blondie/Clash t-shirt who doesn’t own any Ramones/Blondie/Clash records is a thief in our temple, and they will be damned for it. It’s highly unlikely that Jamie and Kieron meant Phonogram to be ours, but it is, because pop music is ours, every one of us, and Phonogram is pop music, committed to paper, and has disseminated, in large part by word of mouth, by believers whose throats are always raw, because they can’t NOT sing along. It’s even in colour now, and like Dylan going electric, it’s gonna blow your fucking head off. When you’ve recovered, play it again. Andy Waterfield, Leicester Alternatively, we’re Judas. You really never can tell.
...and finally
Here’s what I was listening to while writing the issue...
Jan 9th: Daft Punk’s “One More Time”, Pipettes . Jan 10th: Alive, Daft Punk. Jan 11th: Pipettes, New Young Pony Club, A Mix Tape. Some Hard-fi for some reason. “Once and Never Again”. Then even more New Young Pony Club. Jan 12th: Further New York Pony Club, Eagles of Death Metal, Arcade Fire, Pipettes. Jan 13th: New Young Pony Club, I think. Pipettes’ “Pull shapes”. Jan 14th: The Greatest, Cat Power. “Girlfriend”, Avril Lavigne. Jan 15th: Annie, Blondie, Pipettes, NYPC. Jan 16th: The Ting Tings, Pipettes, CSS’ Let’s Make Love..., Associates, At The Drive In, finish to... well, you guess. And we’re out. See you next month.
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