As in, all of it. Spoilers and much ranting about everything beneath the cut.
I didn’t want to give myself
another task to do by doing these monthly. As much as I like doing
them, they are still very much the “work” part of my brain rather
than the recreation one. As such, it’s workload, and when avoiding
burnout was such a big thing last year, I knew I had to be careful. I
thought about one every second issue. And then one for every half.
And then I realise it’d be fine just to do it on the whole thing.
(I keep on meaning to get to
doing SIEGE too.)
It’s for the best, as the
problem with Phonogram is that if I start doing really detailed
notes, it becomes infinitely long. It’s a case of “This panel is
inspired by an e-mail exchange between CTCL writers in 2002, mashed
with something that Jim Rossignol said to me on a dancefloor in Moles
circa 2000, with a few notes of Gaga circa 2009. And on the next
panel…”
Phonogram is dense, and
personal and strange and frankly you don’t need to know ten percent
of it. So a big sweeping approach is probably for the best. Ask me in
the pub. I’ll lie to you, but they’ll be good lies.
Even so, this has ended up
about 14k. Shorter than a close reading on WicDiv, admittedly, but
still monstrous.
The core idea of Immaterial
Girl was there from before Rue Britannia girl was written. As you can
see, the possibility of the story is foreshadowed in Emily’s
appearance in issue 3 of the original series, where we talk about
selling half her personality for power. As in, the second you talk
about half your personality going, it creates a question of where it
went. If Phonogram went a different way, and became more like a trad
Vertigo-model ongoing, I have no idea where we’d have used the story.
I suspect it wouldn’t have been the climax of the whole run. We’ll
never know.
In reality, when we realised
it’d be a few minis at most, it quickly solidified as the third
volume. I chewed over whether Immaterial Girl or The Singles Club
should be the next story idea I developed. I chose Single Club, as
Immaterial Girl in conception is most similar to Rue Britannia. I
wanted to do something, and open up the Metaphor. Of course, I
thought we’d have got to it in 2010, not 2016. I digress. Doing it
straight after RUE BRITANNIA would have reduced the universe.
Immaterial Girl’s core questions are similar to Rue Britannia’s, but
coming from a different angle. Yes, it had image and particularly the
concept of femininity in there, but it was really about the loss of
identity, much like Rue Britannia. If it was a cocktail, it shared an
ingredient. They were both bourbon cockails. Singles Club was
something else. I knew it had to be Singles Club.
When we realised it was the
third, I started looking for ways to tell the story. Phonogram is, by
far, the most autobiographical thing I write. I went about my life,
looking for places to actually start it. This was starting from
around 2008. There was a time I was thinking of starting it at an
Amanda Palmer gig, and then Neil Gaiman walked on stage (before the
world knew about the Palmer/Gaiman of it all). I was deeply annoyed.
Clearly, this would look like I was being meta, much like the night I
went to the place Singles Club was based on looking for details to
use, and the whole place was full as people dressed up as Superheros
as they were on a stag do. Yes, it really happened, but everyone
would read into it.
And then 2009 happened, and
Plan B magazine closed and Michael Jackson died and I realised doing
something which danced between the two could be really interesting,
in the micro/macro of pop – especially because, at that point, it
was clear this would would be the final Phonogram, at least in terms
of how far forward in time we’d be travelling.
(At the time, there was
various PG stories I was playing with, set in far earlier periods. If
I ever do them, they won’t be Phonogram stories now.)
Anyway! Issue by issue, broad
strokes…
Issue 1
The cover is obviously a
Nagel homage, specifically Duran Duran and Rio. Interestingly, rather
than being a video homage, this is primarily a cover homage, so
breaks the format of the cover.
The covers of the third
volume were more Jamie’s conception than any of the previous
Phonograms. The first ones were very tight critique/homages and
involved a lot of “writing” the image. Singles Club’s were design
lead covers, and as they were club flyer homages, occasionally had
more words on that some comics have inside. With these, bar the core
“we should homage this video” Jamie and Matt went off and did the
visually striking thing, which suits the book’s themes.
Opening sequence: These
two pages and the third one were the bits that got drawn before we
got derailed with Young Avengers. The fourth page was also drawn, but
Jamie wanted to re-do that, as on the main character intro, his
figurework had changed enough to make him not want to use it.
“The 1980-something” is
deliberately vague. Working out when someone like Claire/Emily could
have music television, if only briefly, was harder than you’d think.
The close-captions are a
Ceefax homage, which is the Brit version of close captions (basically
– it’s a little more complicated than that). Obviously Clayton has
never seen them in real life, but did an impressive job based of the
videos we forwarded to him.
Jamie did this whole sequence
back before Young Avengers. In fact, we had the first four pages done
before basically getting derailed.
I smile that we see Claire’s
natural hair colour here.
I find the whole thing’s
Phonogram-does-Poltergeist vibe incredibly creepy.
The other element here is
that we’re re-introducing the whole Phonogram concept. This was in
the intro text we put on the first page, which cuts Phonogram to the
core – Music is Magic. People use it to change their lives.
Normally, for the worst – but Emily’s narration also says a lot
about our tone.
My usual line is that WicDiv
is actually genre fiction which occasionally splits at the seams due
to use trying to pack too much inside it. Phonogram is literary
fiction, trying to pass as genre fiction. That seems relevant when
I’m looking at these pages now.
Oh – and Six Panel grid.
Phonogram especially likes the eight panel grid, but the six is used
to evoke the shape of an old fashioned television set. Not quite
but close.
The
Coven Scene:
Long
scene this, and jumps around a bunch trying to keep its momentum.
As
said, the first page of Emily approaching the venue was drawn before
Young Avengers. The reveal on Emily’s look on page 4 was as well…
but that had to be redrawn. Jamie’s style changes over space, and
it’s much more noticeable in the big images rather than the small
ones.
The
venue is the Free Butt. Jamie went down to Brighton to get some
reference shots, only to discover it had closed. This happens to
basically all the venues we show in Phonogram. I find myself thinking
about Seb writing about Phonogram, and how that we can’t really do
any more of it for many reasons – but including the fact Phonogram,
by design, is about the losers. That we’ve done WicDiv now changes
all of that. I suspect this accidental immortalisation of dead places
is very much our aesthetic.
I
smile at some of these captions, as it’s an apex of the “referencing
old e-mails I wrote 15 years ago” part of Phonogram. You really
don’t want or need to know. There’s a life on these pages, or rather,
a lack of life. Sigh. Phonogram.
I
love what Jamie did with the puddle here.
Probably
worth stressing the time period here. In Singles Club, it’s set at
Christmas, and never mentions. These people live in a world outside
of the normal calendar of everyone else (i.e. their own shared
solipsism.) This scene would have happened in the shadow of 9/11 and
it doesn’t impact on any of this.
Reveal
on Emily, and I see Jamie working on his style. There’s some lovely
comparison images across time and space of the Phonograms, showing
how each one is clearly Jamie… but also very much a development.
From the innocence of Rue Britannia, we end up with something that is
definitely more realistic than before. And, for these characters,
often unflattering. Jamie’s known as drawing pretty people, and
there’s relatively little of that in Immaterial Girl, even when
they’re as young as they are.
My
relatively slight involvement with the covers is one show of how
we’ve changed since earlier Phonogram. The other was that not all the
scripts actually had titles, which was the 100% thing every PG script
has. As such, this one came late. For the majority of my career, I’ve
actually had a rule that no comic I write uses a music reference as a
title – it feels parasitic. Phonogram, of course, being the
exception. I break it occasionally for WicDiv too.
Anyway
– Plan B struck me as appropriate. The Coven is inspired by
Careless Talk Costs Lives magazine, which reincarnated as Plan B
magazine named after the (astounding) Dexys Midnight Runners record.
And it’s Emily’s Plan B, obv.
This
page structure is something else I feel very Phonogram – one larger
¾ image of a page panel and one (or two in this case) small images
in the ¼. There’s rarely room for splashes in Phonogram, but this
gives you something similar in effect… plus that I’ve always liked
how it works as a single narrative unit. In this case, the set up and
the punchline. In other cases, a big reveal, followed by an immediate
response. Normally, in the case of Phonogram, undercutting it (or
mocking it).
Christ.
Four pages in and I’ve written this much. This better cut down.
Getting
past security is basically the default Phonogram trick. First act of
actual magic we saw Rue Britannia too. Rue and Immaterial Girl are
sister books in many ways – the structure of the first half of the
book are extremely close, before Immaterial Girl just shatters and
goes a different way entirely.
(I
guess this is the advantage of writing the notes last – I can talk
about these larger scale structural things.)
Anyway
– I love the magical eye crackle Emily has as she marches past
security.
Oh
– eyes. My single favourite part of Jamie’s research for Phonogram
was him asking everyone he knew how people did their eyebrows circa
2001. That’s the sort of comic Phonogram is, y'know? It’s always
period fiction, even when writing about the present.
I
quite like the penultimate panel where Kohl checks out Emily’s ass.
Show not tell. Also, next panel undercuts the (limited) male gaze of
it all.
The
Myth’s speech is inspired by Everett’s True editorial in the first
CTCL, which basically lays out what the magazine hoped to achieve.
The
hologram guy is the idea that while there may have been a real event
like this, many people were only present via the net. Nicely done. I
gave Jamie very broad instructions for the crowd, in terms of
demographics. Obviously some of them turn up in issue 5.
The
Myth starts the run of arguments – pretty good positions are
forwarded, then kicked, which are then under-mined. This is really
about showing what a running argument looks like. As always in
Phonogram, I hope people really can’t make out where I stand in all
these.
I
smile at Kohl’s utter grammatical incompetence. Kohl always is far
less cool when he isn’t the lead, which is very much the point.
I’ve
realised I haven’t mentioned the origins of actually writing this
comic – as in, I put it off for as long as possible, and then I had
a series of disasters. I was at a Marvel summit, and I lost my
wedding ring. I was distraught. I got on a flight back home, when C
was away… and immediately locked myself out the house, without my
phone and a credit card. Jetlagged, I find some friends who are doing
a party that night, and join them, almost get hit by a bus, and crash
on their floor. I wake up the next day, and feel reduced to… well,
some proto-Gillen who is a lot less the human being he usually was in
2011. As such, I feel able to write Phonogram again. I start writing
it at the Worlds End near Finsbury Park station (not the Camden one)
longhand, and spend the rest of the afternoon in a crappy net cafe in
central London hammering it out, before meeting C at the airport.
You
know what I said about Phonogram being about being the losers? That.
I
got the ring back, btw, which still amazes me.
Anyway
– LADY VOX!
I
smile at this. There are basically 2 pages in CTCL issue 2 which are
the rosetta stone for about 50% of Phonogram, and that’s all
amazingly in the mix here. The inspirations for Indie Dave, Emily,
Kohl, Seth Bingo and Vox all in these two pages. Sigh.
Lady
Vox is the longest awaited Phonogram character – she was referenced
in the first issue of Rue Britannia, which is foreshadowed here, on
the quiet. She needed to enter big, which she certainly does.
Love
what Jamie did with the lettering. We don’t do this often, but it’s
fun. There’s also the standard Phonogram trope of all singing is
actually hand lettered rather than computer lettered.
Seth’s
T-shirt and shades are what he wore in the very first concept art for
him, as seen in the back of the Singles Club trade. Glad to finally
get it into the book.
Seth’s
routine on the next page basically shows that, if anything, he had
mellowed by 2006. I
suspect this is some of my favourite cartooning in all of Immaterial
Girl. Perhaps unsurprisingly, writing Seth Bingo is a giggle.
A
(er) quiet intro to Indie Dave – if you remember in Rue, Emily
didn’t know that Kohl knows Indie. She clearly wasn’t paying
attention to what happened after Seth thumped him.
The
“What a co-incidence” is very much me underlining that while the
characters were inspired by various writers’ voices, in the final
analysis, they’re actually talking about me and my own bullshit.
There
was odd error in the issue version of this where an URL was printed
out of the page. You may have missed it. We have no idea how it got
there. The URL was from my series notes, and not in my script in Open
Office (or, at least, visible in it). However, it must have been in
there somewhere, as clearly Clayton saw it and stuck it in. The link
actually points towards the Michael Jackson connection of the story,
which basically gives away the whole structure, which makes it an
amazingly bad thing to include in the first issue.
Phonogram
is strange.
I
admit, I smile at all of this stuff. The characters are monsters, but
they’re (mostly) young. One of my many personality weaknesses back in
the day (and, to be honest, still there now) is that I’d make excuses
for complete monsters if they were entertaining, and doubly so if
they were brilliant and entertaining. Clearly, I’m seeing this and
recalling the dozens of inspirations into it – the Seth line
especially is a weird ass flashback for me.
(There’s
also a sadness under this: Seth and Emily have fallen out hard by the
time of the Singles Club.)
The
sort of higher purpose is showing what the Coven was when it started.
Due to Phonogram never being the rambling longform Vertigo-style
comic we hoped it would be, we never got to explore the coven. We
just show it when all is shiny and new… and then…
May
2009 Scene:
We
show where it ended up. Immediately clean, and somewhat sterile in
this office set up.
Plus
enter Shambles, who has appeared in a few B-sides, and turned up at
the end of Rue Britannia (though no-one will realise that until we
mention it in the end of the first).
Of
all the things in Immaterial Girl, Shambles is the one I feel worst
about. As everyone, it’s inspired by someone, but in this case, the
visual resemblance ended up waayyyyy close to him, which makes it
feel especially sharp when what happens. When writing the end of the
story, I had to very much lean into the SHAMBLES IS IN CHARGE NOW to
try and balance it out.
Sorry
Shambles. I totally wasn’t trying to say anything y this.
The
argument is actually me paraphrasing a conversation Matt Fraction and
I had once - “radio with pictures” was his feeling about MTV.
Hmm.
Let’s move on quickly.
Behind
The Screen:
We
actually changed the first caption in the trade. A typo for me, or at
least me not thinking what the phrase should be properly.
First
look at Claire – one of the odd things about Immaterial Girl is
that we’re reintroducing a bunch of stuff. Claire first was saw in
Singles Club, in the mirror, so we have to reintro all of that.
Phonogram
has always had the problem with antagonists. It’s a book that’s about
how you appreciate art. There’s very few things which I’d say are
openly evil – or, at least, unforgivable. As such, when “sins”
are low on the ground, it’s hard to make villains. It’s the problem
with Rue Britannia, in that the retromancers are basically ciphers –
the idea is bad, but I didn’t want to nail it to one person –
because Phonogram is autobiographical, it’ll mean that the book was a
weapon aimed at one person.
(I
suspect if I ever converted Rue Britannia into a single film, I’d
make Emily secretly leading the retromancer coven. It’d work better
as a dramatic arc, at the expense of the filtered-autobio aspect to
the book. I suspect if you’re on the big screen, you must sacrifice
that stuff. Once more, the “PG is literary fiction trying to pass
as genre fiction” comes to the fore – I make decisions on PG I
wouldn’t make with any other book, because its goals are different.)
Anyway!
Point being, I managed to find other ways to make villains. In
Singles Club, I made everyone everyone else’s villain. Everyone was a
hero of their own story. Conversely, in Immaterial Girl I go inwards.
Emily’s enemy is herself.
THAT
EVENING:
Kohl
in his underpants. Phonogram remains a horror book.
(Also
– Kohl in 2009, visibly older. Absolutely one of my fave things in
the book, in terms of what Jamie does with age and ageing.)
Girl
in the bed in the background, which obviously takes on a different
meaning when we get to the final issue. Also setting up Kohl’s
estrangement from this world. He’s on the way out anyway, which is
obviously one of the themes of the book.
Jamie
works the six panel here beautifully. Matt’s colours, from the blues
to the darkness of the room is great. I look at this can think that
this is such a Phonogram way to do the horror sequence – the
austereness of the grids.
(Plus
the six panel, I think, evokes the opening scene.)
Also
– Emily’s panic!
Tiny
flicker of glow in Emily (now Claire)’s eyes is a joy.
Hmm.
I read this with a gap, and see why people get lost with Phonogram.
We really don’t make it easy. There’s a lot of books that would have
had Claire actually say something explicitly akin to “NOW I,
CLAIRE, HAVE A BODY IN THE REAL WORLD I CAN CAUSE MUCH TROUBLE!” I
mean, all the information you need to know is here in the issue –
but you really have to pay attention.
Behind
The Screen:
I’d
been sort of smirking at doing a horror sequence based on Take On Me
forever. It’s one of those things I can’t quite believe that hadn’t
been done in comics – when it’s one of comics (as a genre) biggest
pop cultural things in the last 40 years, that it hadn’t been homaged
and deconstructed extensively is a massive surprise.
Jamie
and Matt do an amazing homage, of course. The strange thing about
Take On Me’s video is that it’s a comic that basically looks like no
comic that’s ever existed. It’s unfinished drawings, little more than
roughs. Doing something that evokes that without just looking shit
(as it’s still rather than animation) is not easy in anyw ay.
As
a minor Gillen/McKelvie history note, this is the first sequence I
ever wrote Marvel Method for Jamie. It’s something we’ve used
extensively since – Young Avengers was based on a situation where
the action set pieces were written in a Marvel Method (Or rather,
what I do for Marvel Method) and everything else was written in my
usual full script. It’s continued into WicDiv, where we do a lot of
our setpiece work in Marvel Method too. Here, the divide was more
formalist. Any scene that was set behind the screen was written
Marvel Method. Any script in the real world was written full script.
The only exception to that I can think of is the one where Claire is
sitting by herself earlier in this issue, but that’s a very different
sort of creature to the scenes that follow.
Ugh.
Inksplot eyes. Very us.
B-Sides:
Probably
worth talking about the high level concept of the B-sides in PG3. We
used one page adverts in RUE BRITANNIA, released online, as part of a
low level hype for the book. Doing that, we realised that we could
take it further. Accepted wisdom was that colour would stick a couple
of thousand on top of PG’s numbers – Suburban Glamour came out like
that. So maybe we could do something to really make the singles be
things. So, B-sides, the essays, everything else. Sales didn’t change
at all. Our launch for Singles Club was identical to Rue Britannia.
Fucking comics.
Still,
on an artistic level, the project worked great.
Would
we do them for PG3? I ended up deciding that basically we would, but
not mention that we were doing them. It would no longer be a hyped
object. They’d just be there, casually, thrown off. And as we weren’t
hyping them, we could just drop them. And I’ll admit, there was
something of a glare beneath that choice.
Why
don’t they go in the trade? There’s a singles/album model, which
obviously we’re channeling, but the big reason is that a single issue
is a different object to a trade. In singles club, you read the story
as an issue, and it’s more about the story. If you read them in a
row, it’s more about how they interlink directly – which is
entirely intended. As such, anything which distracts from the
Interplay is to be shunned. It is a statement which is made, and then
stepped away from, allowig the reader to digest. Going straight into
other stories undermines that.
Immaterial
Girl is a bit like that, basically.
EVERYTHING
AND NOTHING: One of the latter stories in the Phonogram Timeline.
This is a chance for me to finally work with the divine Sarah Gordon,
who I met on the Thought Bubble dancefloor around 2008 (I think).
She’s one of the people who have a worryingly large range of styles,
but this one leaned into the blacks of it. Her forthcoming DEEDS NOT
WORDS with Howard Hardiman uses a similar style to this, and it’s
what was on my mind when scripting it. She did wonderfully, and the
mixture of longing and creepiness was very much what I was looking
for.
This
stars Lloyd and is one of the latest stories in Phonogram timeline.
Doing something with Lloyd – now, it should be noted, being called
Logos without anyone questioning it – appealed. I wrote about Curse
songs back in Singles Club, but flipping that around and doing a
short about the masochistic use of Curse Songs was an area I wanted
to play with.
His
flatmate is Shambles, btw.
The
most disturbing thing about writing this one was writing “Logos is
28” in the script, realising that Logos is basically the age just
before he’d be going through his own Rue Britannia/Singles Club. They
grow up so fast.
I
smile at the Lumberjanes cameo here. Also, Saint Vincent on the wall.
Working out what Logos would dig in 2014 is fun. That he likes Taylor
Swift does show how he’s grown, though how he uses it does show he’s
a big ol’ emo still.
BLURRED:
And our own Lettering King Clayton Cowles is joined by Kelly
Fitzpatrick to do a page. I didn’t realise Clayton actually drew
until he did a fantastic image of Loki/Leah and a dragon half way
through Journey Into Mystery. Clearly, I then earmarked him mentally
for doing a B-side. As a blur fan, this one was perfect.
Shall
we say some of the filtered metaphorical autobio stories in Phonogram
involve somewhat less filtering and autobio?
You
know Oscar Wilde said that he wrote his novels to get his one-liners
in print, as everyone kept on stealing it? Stuff like the “everyone
under 30 is interchangable” is like that to me, except no-one wants
to steal my crap material.
This
B-side is actually, chronologically speaking, the end of Phonogram.
ISSUE
2
Cover: Released in advance of
the issue. I suspect people weren’t thinking we were going to commit
to the A-ha thing half as hard as we did.
No, I have no idea why Emily
is wearing a triforce necklace.
2007 Brighton: This arc of
Phonogram is folded across time. In retrospect, each of the first
three issues have a moment of Emily’s ascension. The first was her
debut. This is her being asked to take over the coven.
I can’t actually remember how
many times we’ve set scenes on Brighton beach. Kohl meets the Myth in
Rue Britannia. There’s a B-side with Indie Dave. There was an advert
for the first Rue Britannia. Obviously there’s the mods/rockers of it
all, but I’m mainly getting my From Hell homage on. From Hell opens
on two people walking down Brighton Beach.
Lots to love here from Jamie
in terms of his choices – the feet, Emily’s dress, the casual swing
of the heels, all juxtaposed with the black shadow of The Myth.
May 2009, In The Office: Most
important thing in the sequence is the set up of the Grimoire for the
end of the issue.
This is the first appearance
of explicit Theban writing. The Theban alphabet is our go-to
translation for Magical Text in all the Phonograms. I’ve used it in a
few Marvel books for a little interconnectivity. Suggested by our old
friend Ali Pulling back in the day. Was an amusing rumour that was
planted (I swear, not by me) that ran in Lying In The Gutters about
an occultist running out of a comic shop outraged we were using real
magical writing.
Probably no need to talk
about the music nods when we did it in the back yeah?
Second page is a 1:1 repeat
of the opening of Singles Club with Penny getting ready to go out.
Repeating panel structures are very Phonogram.
Eye-colour changes are also
PG’s recurring motif. Choice of colour and level of effect is very
much meant to be read as metaphor, or at least mood. What are they
like? What does being them feel like?
Choosing Claire’s look was
basically a “what would have that half of her personality have
liked to be” moment. Seth Bingo mocked Emily in Singles Club,
suggesting she’d love The Dresden Dolls, so the GIRL ANACHRONISM is
loaded. And, to state the obvious, a girl out of time is very much
the theme.
Hmm. Scanning through this,
and I’m trying to remember how I worked Claire’s voice. As
pretentious and postured as Emily, but completely different was the
effect I was looking for, obviously.
I love what Matt is doing
with all the dead Purples here.
Heh. Magical vodka bottle
amuses me.
(Strong face expression on
the fifth panel on the last page here.)
BEHIND THE SCREEN: And we do
the whole Take On Me. Odd video, that. The more you think of it, the
scarier it can get. Also, losing yourself in art and the romance of
it all. There’s essays there, and basically Immaterial Girl is one.
The captions for internal
dialogue appeared last time, but worth noting that as this all was
written Marvel Method, there was a lot of room to play with here.
Generally speaking, I do actually include at least a draft of the
writing on a page in my Marvel Method. Traditional Marvel Method
doesn’t do this.
I don’t think I had them as
Ceefax captions in the original script – it was only when seeing
the opening page of issue 1 id I realise.
“It’s rarely Subtle” is
perhaps one of the least subtle panels ever in Phonogram.
And obvious set up for end of
issue 5.
Back In The Office:
Was originally a longer
scene, but I strimmed it down to a single one to let some of the
later stuff work.
“Melodramatic” is very
much a word to chase through the script. It always makes me remember
when I first met Tom Betts, the programmer and artist presently
working at Big Robot, and we bummed around Melbourne while being
guests at a Games Conference in 2004 or so. A fan of digital
minimalism, we were talking Scott Walker and he said that he couldn’t
stand him. “He’s just so melodramatic.” I’m unsure if I actually
verbalised it, but I felt like shouting “BUT I LIKE MELODRAMATIC!”
Behind the Screen:
This was Marvel Method, but
probably doesn’t look like it. This is very much Marvel Method for
intellectual coherence (i.e. ALL VIDEO SEQUENCES ARE WRITTEN MARVEL
METHOD) than looking for an effect.
I suspect the King Behind The
Screen merging with the static borders is my favourite visual effect
in the book. Lovely static – Matt does great stuff with the moods.
When PG is as odd as it is,
making sure the rules for the magic are clear is perhaps the hardest
part. I have a pretty high tolerance for this kind of esoteric talk,
shall we say. PG’s usual way is to bury the exposition in pop theory.
There may be a reason why we were never big.
Islington, London:
This is the Buffalo Bar,
which is where Persephone’s big is happening. A fun venue, now closed
down. Obviously the meta connectivity between the two appeals, but
they were actually picked for completely different reasons. This
sequence mashes together at least three or four different experiences
here.
Third panel makes sure
everyone knows they’ve met Shambles Before.
The penultimate panel is
perhaps one of the most Kieron-Gillen-esque Kohl poses of all time.
Only just noticed now how
creepy shambles’ eyes are in the final panel.
Oh god. Only re-reading this
do I remember where the Nu-Rave Vagrant running joke came from.
Emily’s roast of her peers is
one part a gig I was at mixed with internal autocritique. Phonogram
is pretty brutal, especially to me. Joe Matt was very much in our
formative influences when thinking this up.
Behind The Screen:
Man, finding the horror in
homage is such a thing to do this arc. Matt and Jamie did a wonderful
back and forth between the cutsie-ness of it, and the dread. Look at
all that Valentine Box red, turning Valentines Day Massacre.
Oh – I didn’t mention it
with the last parody, but in this issue Jamie started trying to do
Eisner-esque titles behind the screen. In the original script I
suggested we do it on all LOC CAPs, but it was too packed… and we
realised that having something else which divides the real word from
the MTVerse would be useful.
(MTVerse is how I described
it in my original documents for the series, but I abandoned it. Just
not evocative enough.)
Kinda wish I included the
whole “And Now They’re After Me” of the original song, but we try
to avoid quoting lyrics wholesale in Phonogram. I suspect those who
know the song would make the leap anyway.
Outside the Buffalo Bar:
Jamie’s really the best he is
at what he does at times like this.
This issue was in a terrible
rush, so there were some errors with clothing changing between two
scenes, which were fixed in the trade. Comics, eh?
B-side: The Ice Storm.
I actually have no idea how I
first became aware of Jamaica Dyer. It was circa Phonogram coming
out, as I remember having her work open in a tab on my computer for
ages when I lived there. We only met in a sex shop in San Francisco
in 2015, introduced by a mutual friend, and the idea of doing a story
was floated. We were there for Chip Zdarsky reading. No, really. And
so… The Ice Storm.
This was a story I wrote for
the B-sides of the singles club, which I reworked slightly her. It’s
a romantic ghost story, and me attempting to almost write a micro
pop-video for the shape of the song by the Go Team. The chimes
rushing, swelling up, almost touching and falling away. It was
originally written for Andi Watson, but he wasn’t able to fit it in
his schedule at the time. (In passing: Andi Watson. Now there’s
someone whose work you should investigate.) My old friend Shimelle
Laine actually did a version of it in scrap-book too.
Anyway! Jamaica just gets the
winters of this all – the washes of blue and white, the coldness
and most importantly, the swirls. This is a story which runs off
feeling. I suspect it’s one of the ones where very few people will
really get it, in terms of understanding what’s happened 100%, but
that’s fine. The B-sides approach the idea of what Phonogram is from
as many angles as possible.
She’s just released a new
comic – Lake Imago - which I’ve yet to actually read, but looks
excellent. I Plan to devour it when I get back after ECCC.
In passing, this is the first
appearance in the actual story of the un-named Girl who Marc was in
love with from Singles Club.
ISSUE 3
October 2001:
Only Phonogram could start a
book with “Is That Fischerspooner?”
Interesting mood stuff Jamie
and Matt are working here. It’s a very normal bedroom, but it all
looks sickly. Worth stressing, this is a big room. It’s possible
Claire is still with her parents here. Kohl turned 30 in 2005, and
was one of the older of the coven when it kicked off.
Actually, no, she isn’t. This
is clearly a different room, as we see her childhood bedroom later.
Unless her parents moved.
Man, I totally should go back
to my scripts. I’d have mentioned it.
I like how Indie Dave is
still surrounded by boxes, even back in 2001.
Obviously, structurally
speaking, we have to re-intro Indie at the start of the issue to
remind people why the end of the issue is meaningful. I think
delineating Kohl/Indie here is also pretty telling.
And… here comes Emily.
Magic is… tricky. There’s
many ways to approach it in comics, in various genres. Generally
speaking, it’s about being clean with the rules and playing fair.
Even if you don’t see it coming, it should make sense in retrospect.
That jolt and thrill of a joyous idea is what carries people through.
Anyway – I say that, as I
suspect that Emily becoming a video, going to the Platonic-video of
Immaterial Girl so she can appear in the frame which her younger self
screenshots, so giving her access to the grimoire to use as a time
machine to travel back to her younger self is the single most
complicated magical trick that Phonogram has ever done. No-one’s
complained about it, so (er) maybe we got away with it?
Emily’s “Existence as a
cheap second generation, etc” line is very much a classical
Phonogram beat, of lampshading our ludicrousness. I suspect the best
we ever did was still Kohl’s “That’s one… big… metaphor” in
the fourth issue of Rue Britannia.
Love what Clayton did with
the lettering. We’ve moved from video to fanzine photocopies, so we
have typeface, obv.
The Grimoire Scene:
Remember Billy travelling
between panels in issue 2 of YA? This is the scene that was homaging.
Clearly, it’s a much simpler than what we do here.
Falling “into” the page
was a tricky thing to get to work, and the whole sequence was
basically us passing back and forth. I was clearly trying to avoid to
have to actually apply my brain 100% when creating it, as I basically
suggested Jamie uses stuff he likes (with a few suggestions). He
threw back the outline of the page, with the size of the pictures to
use in Emily’s obstacle course. I then just went and did it,
overthinking it all, and working out the symbolism for each image.
(I think of this basically as
a side-on platform game. It is very original Prince Of Persia.)
This is obviously a
nightmarishly tricky sequence to guide the eye on. It’s basically
Emily’s route, and the captions follow that. Jamie and Clayton pulled
off something special here.
Obviously all the Theban
translates, though isn’t necessary. The long piece was the product of
asking the journalist Sarah Jaffe what video I should write about,
and her suggesting That Thing. I wrote it quickly, trying to get the
sense of run on over-self-possession of a certain mode of music
writing. Of course, no fuck will read it, as it’s in Theban.
Phonogram’s an odd book.
I do like that Emily couldn’t
bear to sacrifice the mAKE-UP.
Hmm. Which do I like best?
The half-burned photo-strip of herself is fun. The Frankenstein
Debbie Harry?
Second spread then takes it
first person, which makes it even stranger, swapping the 2D plane for
real space.
The Young Marble Giants were
my choice for a necessary riposte to the rest of the book. What
aren’t we talking about here.
Phonogram stories are mainly arguments, and that’s important.
Emily
hanging-on to You Keep Me Hanging On by Kim Wilde still makes me
smile. Very much Jamie fan service, as he loves Kim Wilde.
Ooh.
A panel from the comic on the front of Kenickie’s Punka CD? That’s
pretty wanky. We should be shot.
APRIL
1992.
We
very much do “all adults are off panel” during the children’s
scenes. I do like that.
Heh.
Planning Claire’s proto-teenage bedroom was a joy. Clearly she’d have
liked East 17, which is another connection to Singles Club, shall we
say. Plus Horses, as they are the best of all the animals.
That
last panel on the first panel, with the paper flying in all direction
is also a joy. Just implicitly delightful.
The
Morning After, 2009.
Hmm.
I wonder if we should have checked in with Claire before in this
issue… but I see why I didn’t.
“Black
Coffee and complete and utter self-destruction” seems to be one of
the more popular lines in the series.
Claire
hasn’t changed since last night. Stinky, alcoholic self-destructive
Claire!
Okay,
I’m smiling at how we set up the Polaroid last issue. Writing is fun
sometimes.
BACK
IN THE ROOM:
Okay,
I just snickered at the “Not Quite 30.” Oh, Emily.
Yes,
Young-Claire is 13. She’s just turned 13. She’s become a teenager.
If
I had to choose a handful of pages to show what Immaterial Girl was
about, I suspect the one with Emily/Claire having a shouting match is
one I’d pick.
The
double-tailed YOU HAVE TO LISTEN TO ME is a cute lettering trick.
You
know, I can’t really say much about this sequence. It’s obviously
important, and core to the book’s concept of time, ageing , deciding
who you’re going to be, what control you have over that, etc, etc. It
feels too dense to do anything other than an essay about.
Anyway!
Claire/Emily bonding and then Emily thrown to her Waterloo. No, not
Waterloo…
Total
Eclipse Homage:
Seriously,
some of you will be young enough to never have seen the video. Go
watch the video.
Ste
Curran, the primary influence on Seth Bingo, basically argues that
all Karaoke Sessions are about plotting the best path to the closing
TOTAL ECLIPSE OF THE HEART. It’s a wisdom I tend to take when Djing.
You have a dumb room of happy people, and it’s about as human as it
gets.
But
fuck me, is it strange.
That segue out of the scene
with the Marlowe quote is odd foreshadowing of WicDiv, isn’t it? Was
in the original draft. Clearly, something was on my mind.
BRIGHTON/REAL WORLD
A half page transition is
unusual in Phonogram, but with the space I wanted earlier in the
issue, it was about the only way to do it satisfactorily.
And a last page title drop.
The title is primarily a nod towards Total Eclipses’ EVERY NOW AND
THEN I FALL APART.
B-Sides:
Black Parade.
I think this was the first
B-side I wrote after the end of the Singles Club. It was certainly an
idea in the year then, and existed as a few scribbles in a word
document. I think I only wrote it after it was looking likely we’d be
doing another Phonogram. I did it on a plane back from… San
Francisco, maybe? Or it could have been back from New York from one
of my first Marvel summits. I digress.
Christian Wildgoose on art,
who is someone who I’ve wanted to work with from the first time he
showed me his portfolio at Demoncon (He was actually my first
suggestion to draw SIEGE for Marvel, but he had too many commitments
with his Indie work. You really should investigate it – look
through Improper books’ material.) He really leaned into the somewhat
OTP nature of the script, which was a joy – some of the stories
were experimental, and some are fragments, but this was a
middle-beginning-end 5-page comedy story. Proper comics!
I felt that I had to put a
nod at the end that I actually quite like MCR.
ISSUE 4
The cover is a homage to the
first Scott Pilgrim Trade, hopefully setting people up to run with
the homage. There’s something fundamentally silly about homaging
O'Malley’s style in Jamie’s.
Why Scott Pilgrim?
A hugely different (and much
more commercially successful) book than Phonogram, dealing with a not
dissimilar emotional terrain in a different mode. I suspect it’s the
only comic that all the younger cast of the Singles Club would have
definitely read. There was a moment around volume 2 or 3 of Scott
Pilgrim, when I turned up in a club and saw the person I based Silent
Girl on reading it. It was at that moment I realised “Yeah, I think
this book has found its audience.”
Short answer being: Scott
Pilgrim was probably how Lloyd thought his life felt, so doing in
that mode (so we can shatter that mode at the end) created some
fairly interesting interplay. Rue Britannia was a Hellblazer/Vertigo
homage, as that’s basically the comics of the world where Kohl came
from. This is Lloyd and Laura’s world, and a homage of where they
were.
Why the big break anyway?
Up until this point, the
story structure is most akin to Rue Britannia. It’s a horror
adventure story. Rue was a detective story. Here, Emily knows what
the problem is… she just is trying to solve it. As a horror
adventure story, there’s an expectation of where it’s going to go, in
terms of building towards the climax.
Doesn’t happen like that. We
move away from Emily, at least seemingly. The second half of
Immaterial Girl is a different creature to the first half.
First page is the 1:1
re-creation, though the difference between the humanity of SCOTT
PILGRIM IS DATING A HIGH SCHOOLER and WHAT DO YOU MEAN THE NEW LONG
BLONDES HAS LEAKED? is probably telling. The “And seemingly
irrelevantly” was added after urging from Editor Chrissy, who felt
this extreme diversion from the plot would confuse people to the
level they weren’t even sure that they’d picked up the the right
comic. Stressing at the start the irrelevancy is the point was trying
to minimise that.
First scene (including the
homage page) is 4-5 pages. Going through the issue you hit a lot of
short scenes. 2-4 pages, spread across time. That core structure is
no mistake. When originally conceiving the Immaterial Girl I had the
idea that all the Lloyd and Laura stories would be the B-sides. As
in, Lloyd and Laura aren’t in the main Jamie/Matt story at all…
until the moment they turn up on the last page, and it becomes clear
what we’re doing with it. I didn’t for a few reasons, the main of
which was that it’d be extremely difficult to make it work in the
trade. As such, the issue is really 5 or 6 B-sides tied together.
Oddly, I think it holds together pretty well.
The 50:50 page split introing
our two leads pleases me. Also, Laura with her glasses is delightful.
The page furniture with the ratings is straight Pilgrim homage, and
the rating’s being bottom-of-the-scale probably says everything about
how I see Phonogram characters (or more likely, where Phonogram
characters see themselves). I also had a face-palm moment when
Laura’s pseudonym isn’t the same as she used in Singles Club – her
story in Singles Club was about really stepping on the road to
changing her expressed identity, but she never actually did the name
change formally. We have to assume it happened off panel between
series. Also, I had a “Wait – is her real
name actually Laura Black?” moment, and had to run back to check
what I’d written in Singles Club. No, her real name is Laura Evans.
This
is what happens when you take a decade to do three mini-series.
By the third page it’s clear
the homage isn’t going to stick – a nine panel grid is not a Scott
Pilgrim mood. Which was fine – at least part of the point is that
these guys are not Scott Pilgrim characters, and trying to act like
they are is harmful to them.
I do like Nine Panel grids. I
rarely write them, but I do like them.
Probably worth stressing that
I actually really liked the second Long Blondes album. But the
experience of getting an album you were expecting to love and turns
out shit is something I hadn’t written about, and figured this was
fun.
Second sequence is set in the
same club that Kohl turns 30 in, during one of the Single Club’s
B-sides. It’s also one which, bar a couple of stylistic notes, is
really Phonogram. Laura was always the character in Phonogram who was
closest emotionally to Kohl and Aster – in that she also gets
narrative captions.
Penny and Marc are dating
now, if you were wondering.
Man, Lloyd is really
punchable in the first panel he appears here.
Page turn, and we get the
colouring trick. Honestly, this took so long to get together I can’t
remember whether black and white then colour-as-magic was in the
original homage. Part of me would be surprised if it’s not, as it
seems so core to the book… but I actually think it came much later,
when we were actually executing the book. Clearly, it was a useful
way to save Matt some work. I mean, create a startling and memorable
effect.
(Joking aside: if you’re
doing comics, I highly recommend thinking of what is both easy and
effective. Doing work you don’t need to do is not a good use of your
time.)
This is… well, this is deep
phonogram in terms of what’s actually going on. The question of what
the rest of the world sees is always open – frankly, Laura dancing
by herself on the dancefloor would be enough to get the jaws
dropping. That’s Penny’s trick, and this is Laura finding her own
way, doing it for own reason. This would be the apotheosis of Laura
from her first solo issue. The “I want her, and I want to be her
and I don’t know where one starts and the other ends.” In Singles
Club, we left Laura deciding to break the quotations that were
driving her with the symbolic crossing out of captions… and then
she ran down a motorway, just like in the Long Blondes song.
If you were generous, you’d say that Laura was now living in a Long
Blondes record. If you were less generous, you’d say she was still
trapped in the quotations she couldn’t see.
Anyway
– either way, this is Laura saying goodbye to her old metaphorical
lover and god and loving it.
(It’s
a better goodbye than Kohl gave Britannia, at least.)
And…
Black Laura reveal. Looking good.
And
inappropriate kisses and an appropriate punch, nicely done by Jamie.
This
whole scene is one of the bits which would have dovetailed
interestingly with Young Avengers, had they came out when we
originally planned. Laura doing her own (even more problematic)
coming out scene at the same time Prodigy was doing his in Young
Avengers would have probably been noted as a thing. Which is true, as
it is a thing. Here’s what I currently tell friends when they ask me
about my own identity…
“I’ve spent my life
uncomfortable with all the relevant labels. To describe myself as
bisexual feels either appropriative or pretentious, and both are
things which horrify me. Conversely, to describe myself as straight
feels deceptive. Frankly, either option isn’t a good way to live.
It’s probably most appropriate to say that I’m somewhere on the
bisexual spectrum.“
The only reason I’m saying it
to you, is that it basically feels like an elephant in the room. I
talk so much about what goes into the work, not including “Oh yeah
– I mean, there’s certainly stuff drawn from my own somewhat
ambivalent and fluid relationship with sexuality, gender and desire”
seems like a pretty big omission.
Heh. Doing that as an aside
in a 14,000 word essay is pretty much peak Gillen, I fear.
Next section makes me smile
in lots of ways – I used a little bit of the beat (The in a band
bit) in another Phonogram-related comic, namely in the Spearmint
anthology. Yes, as you can imagine, it’s one of those direct auto-bio
bits. As is the “every 3pm the same song plays in the bar” bit of
“magic.”
(For my own bar-work period
it was M-People’s third album.)
The whole re-use of Laura’s
face from Singles Club is very much the sort of sampling of panels
we’ve explored a lot in WicDiv – it also picks up the theme of
Lloyd’s “internal monologue” being a little more formally playful
than Laura’s. In Singles Club, he uses Zines to do it. Here, he uses
his mental memory of Laura as a puppet.
(Running conversations with
people in your head that never happened is very much one of my
weaknesses. I think of them as golems. You make the thing which
torture you. That’s obviously also picked up in the second issue of
Singles Club, theme-watchers.)
The oddest thing is that my
memory of Singles Club had both sides of Laura’s actual line have
Laura’s face in it. In fact, only one of the two panels has her
speaking in the original book – the other one is “on” Lloyd.
That strikes me as an example of the magic of comics. I could see the
panel where she said the line, even if it didn’t exist.
In the end, we just used the
same panel twice.
Re: No Exit. You know, it’s
been so long since I’ve written this, I genuinely can’t remember if I
was working the word “HELL” as a deliberate theme in the book. I
have to presume so. It sounds like the sort of thing I’d do.
Yet
more formalism on the final page, seguing into a pure Scott Pilgrim
riff.
The
fourth section is our sole appearance of Silent Girl, who – as is
revealed in the last panel – has been busy. I don’t believe she had
a bio in the original script – as we realised we were introing her
for this volume, we knew she really required one.
I
do love the visual symmetry of the two of Lloyd and Laura across the
bar. There’s so much I love about the pair of them here anyway –
the pacing around each other, the shared excitement, etc. Jamie
really is one hell of an artist.
Their
magical ornamentation of the club was originally written to be in
black and white… but in practice, it was impossible to tell that
they’d done any decoration. Having it coloured, in a form of
primed-proto-magic seems to work.
Summoning
a dancefloor is probably the magical ritual in Phonogram that makes
me most smile in the whole series. Well… maybe one more next issue.
The
fifth section… and we turn the knife in a different direction. The
reason why I think the story works despite its fragmentary state, is
that it does work a pretty good high/low axis. The two characters’
portraits push and pull against one another, in terms of their
desires and weaknesses.
But
yes, this is some Emily-level cruelty. Well done, Laura. You graduate
from a school not worth going to.
Also,
of course, the moment when we link this issue to the main plot. See,
there had to be a reason we did this…
AND
THEN WE HAVE A FIGHT SEQUENCE!
Clealry,
this is the most 100% Scott Pilgirm parody. I suspect that even with
all the priming, this punch would still be a surprise, in terms of
how it works on the page. Which is exactly how O'Malley used it in
Scott Pilgrim – when the fight appears, it’s absolutely unexpected.
It
was written Marvel Method, with me diving into the OTP metaphors of
it all. Dialogue came after – my original line for the WAR panel
was something like “THAT METAPHOR HURT” but I decided it too
early in the sequence to be that overt about what was happening. By
the time they blow up the planet, it’s probably worth showing that
this is all a metaphor. I mean, all of Phonogram is, but the I HURT
YOU/YOU HURT ME cycle Lloyd and Laura have trapped themselves in is a
particualrly apocalyptic version of that.
Er…
I hope the whole magic sequence is interesting enough that even
people who aren’t Dexys obsessives will get something from it. Though
answering Kevin Rowland’s cry with a sky-full of New Soul Rebel
angels does make me laugh a little. This is Phonogram at its most
dumb and pretentious,
and I love it so.
Lloyd
left with his heart burned out. Laura left with half of herself left.
I explicitly said that laura should recall Hela in the script – as
in, half of her not there. Laura is one of those characters who is a
little close to Leah, another one of my signature characters.
And
one final scene, cutting back to reality. God knows what they
actually did to each other in the weeks of the fight, but it’s
certainly exhausted them.
The
“Mushroom hair” joke is probably a nod to the “Those are Mr
Happy’s Shoes” jokes. At least I didn’t do a BREAD MAKES YOU FAT!
In
terms of changes from the script to the page, the final line was
certainly in there. Early on the final line also featured a line from
Lloyd being “I’m fed up of copying someone else”. That, I think,
would have made the point of the Scott Pilgrim homage more clear –
another quotation they’re trapped in, and need to escpae. In the end,
one line in the final panel seemed a stronger choice, and the theme
of escaping from being a copy was touched on in the “I don’t want
to join my betters” line, in a less meta way. I suspect it may have
been a note too subtle. As always, deciding what is too subtle and
what is too crasss is my big weakness.
B-Sides:
Julia
is astounding. I love this. It’s like an alt-dimension vesion of
Phonogram, where we actually went proper alt comic. Go see her stuff.
I
talked about a theoretical 4th
volume of Phonogram being set before Kohl met Britannia, and be about
Kohl when he was a teenage metalhead in a dead-end town. Working
title was NOWHERE, after the Therapy? record.This story is one of the
things which would have worked its way in there, and pretty much
captures the vibe of the whole thing.
Second
B-side is one of the short-stories of Lloyd and Laura that would have
been B-sides. I ended up realising it didn’t really fit inside the
main structure of the story in terms of the emotional journey of
Lloyd/Laura… but worked as a grace note. There was also a draft of
the main story which had an inserted calendar, with the dates of the
scenes scribled on, which would have placed this story inside the
continuity.
Luis
is strong as hell, obviously. I was thinking of making it 3 pages,
but realised it only needed 2. The only loss was that there was no
room for the review quotes on the poster on the first page. I include
them here…
CYRILLIC
MEGA-BIFF!
“Hot Chainsaw
Reggae” - Logo Grimoire XII
BUBB’S DARKEST SECRET
“Bitcore avant-jazz extremists,
straight from hell, coming to drag you there” - Logos Grimoire XIII
“Bristol’s answer to the Pop Group”
- Logos Grimoire IX
THE SILENCE OF THE J.A.M.S.
“The
best Jesus And Mary Chain tribute band currently working the Devon
and Somerset circuit” - The Exeter Evening Standard
Generally
speaking, SILENCE OF THE J.A.M.S. Makes me smile still. Also, The
Bristol’s answer to the pop group. There’s also a lot of running
jokes here, shall we say. CYRILLIC MEGA-BIFF is an old-school PC
Gamer joke. Hot Chainsaw Reggae is a genre you could generate on my
“Genre Generator” article in one of my old fanzines.
We
were particularly happy with the issue. Good work everyone.
PAGE
5
Cover
Jamie
really did excel himself with the Money For Nothing homage. I suspect
it sort of nails Kwk/Kohl pretty well here too, in terms of their
relationship.
The
Week After The Morning After, 2009.
We
play very fast and loose with the timeline in this episode. You know
I said that the second half is evoking a different sort of feeling?
Becoming unconnected with time is part of it. Time is wrong. The
clock is slowing down.
If
I had to sum up what I was trying to evoke in the last two issues, it
would be a record that’s turning slower and slower. I suspect the
opening page foreshadows that pretty heavily. Grease is oddly totemic
for me, with some unusual family connections. Grease is a film about
high school, of course. But it’s about the last year of high school.
It’s about ending, and the “we’ll always be together” rings
hollow. “Bad habit. I should give up.”
Hmm.
Compared to most of these commentary tracks, there’s a lot of the
word “I” here, which is annoying, as it undercuts everyone else’s
contributions. It’s partially a product of the fact I’m writing in
broad strokes. We work together, but Jamie and Matt are primarily
about execution. Jamie has a veto and advice, but it’s normally me
taking what I’ve come up with to them, with a bunch of ideas of how
to do it, and then working out how we do it. If I’m doing a tighter
reading, I talk about execution more. As I’m doing a higher level
thing, I’m talking more about the ideas, and that leans heavily to
the “I.” Ugh. Forgive me.
(Yet
more first-reading Kohl seeming quite similar in the level of
debauchery on first reading, but with a different implication in the
second. At least, I hope.)
I
quite like that Kohl hasn’t charged his phone over night, as he is
useless. I think that may have been a Jamie choice.
Worth
noting the small time jump. Emily didn’t go straight from the day
after to Indie. Not particularly important, but worth stressing a lot
of things have happened off panel.
BRIGHTON
And
back on the beach, shoes off.
Dislike
the use of the word “bitch” as much in this issue, but I don’t
think the characters would have used anything else. I hope as part of
the larger structure it works, as it’s a word that’s loaded in terms
of how it’s read.
Really
like what Jamie did with the walk off panel.
LOSING
MY EDGE as a title probably gives the game away, doesn’t it?
God,
that page with Indie and Kohl is one of the sadder beats in the
series. But anyway – a whole bunch of set-up here for what’s
happening in the issue. Or rather, reminder. We introduced Kohl’s
power from Britannia way back in issue 1.
Lovely
last panel there – isolation on the beach, and the watching. The
pastel colours not soothing, etc.
And
enter fan favourite Kid-with-knife! Odd to think he’s the last major
Phonogram character to re-enter the story. I occasionally think about
other stories I considered with KwK, and this one is the close as I
get to it. There’s certainly an alternate ending of PG where we
reprise the AMERICA: WHAT TIME IS LOVE VIDEO and Kwk crashes a viking
longship into Canada and drives off into the Wilderness.
New
readers won’t know him, so I wonder how they’ll take to him? His
voice is obviously here.
At
this point it’s clear that this issue is basically turned into Rue
Britannia, running off its same engine – namely, Kwk drives Kohl to
see people.
Assorted
Phonomancers:
Written
and left open for Jamie to choose people to use. They’re the people
in the crowd in issue 1, but brought forward 8 years. The only one I
called was that one had to be bald. I also didn’t choose the settings
– I listed a bunch of different places where they could be taking
place, and Jamie arranged as it amused him.
Hmm.
Quite pleased with the efficiency in this sequence, in that it’s
serving multiple masters. I’m not sure if the universe of the
Phononmancers have ever come across so clearly.
Minehead:
As
said in the notes, this is almost certainly a ATP festival in a
chalet. And Kohl finally meets Vox!
This
is one of the sequences I endedup doing due diligence on with the
person I based Vox off. Using her having a child as a beat, and the
feelings it provoked in me, felt like something I wanted to make sure
was okay.
This
may be character growth. Circa Rue Britannia I would never have done
that. There’s stuff I used directly in Rue Britannia directly which I
would have hid behind a lot more obfuscation. I was better at it in
Singles Club, but that was deliberately much more filtered. As we
move back towards the autobio pole, I had to be careful.
What
can you use as a writer? Good question. I’ll come back to you when
I’ve got a real answer rather than my working guidelines.
In
the original script, Kohl’s lines were on both final panels. I ended
up moving them onto one, as it undercut the single liner in the last.
I was worried about the transition to the next scene (this issue runs
off multiple overlapping dialogues to bridge scenes) but I think it
just about holds together.
Generally
speaking, having a string of captions in separate panels that are
meant to be read in one go rather than as individual statements or
commentary on the moment while ALSO having dialogue in those panels
is a tricky thing to pull off. It’s a very common choice made by
inexperienced writers. I do it a few times in Rue Britannia. It tends
to break readers’ minds, as we’re not really made to think like that.
Hampstead
Heath:
Yes,
this scene was inspired by a friend who tried to throw a party in a
bush on Hamstead Heath. I’m really not joking about the autobio.
You
can just about make out that Seth’s T-shirt has more sugababes
crossed out in this scene.
This
is definitely a beat which, I suspect only really lands completely
for people who read Singles Club. We’ve met Silent Girl, sure, but
we’ve never seen that solipsism of two relationship they have. The
real point being, “Silent Girl hasn’t told me stuff!” As in,
they’re changing as much as everyone else in this slowing-down-record
of a comic. That said, I’m pretty fond of these two pages. That
shared smile between Kohl and Seth on the second page is some
glorious cartooning.
I’ll
save my favourite fan theory about Immaterial Girl for the next
issue. But it involves this page.
Of
all the characters to write in Immaterial Girl, Seth Bingo is the
most fun. I joked that Emily Aster was my audition tape for Emma
Frost. If that’s true, Seth Bingo was my audition tape for Doctor
Nemesis.
KWK/KOHL
in the Jeep:
We
knew the The Rhetorical joke wasn’t exactly top quality material, but
that is very much the point in context. I mention, as it’s an example
of one of those counter-intuitive things in writing. All the writing
serves the material’s purpose. I’ve cut plenty of jokes from my
comics because they’re too funny for the context. This is an example
of keeping some weaker material in because it is weaker.
(Er…
not saying t