Phonogram: Rue Britannia

When creating a compelling protagonist, whether he is to be a hero or an anti-hero, an author always needs to make sure his creation is balanced, likable, but flawed; characteristics that make him human and relatable. Even in the most anti of anti-heroes, no matter how flawed they may be, is a humanity that we are drawn to (even American Psycho’s Patrick Bateman is likeable in an extremely disturbing sort of way)—if there weren’t, they wouldn’t be anti-heroes but simply villains. It is this theory that puts the first of many nails into the coffin of Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie’s new six-issue series, Phonogram, out in trade paperback this month.

Phonogram’s main character, David Kohl, is a self-righteous, self-absorbed chauvinistic cock of an elitist music snob that not only knows what he is but embraces it wholeheartedly. This would all be well and fine (like I said: even Patrick Bateman), since characters like that can be quite entertaining to watch (trust me, I work with some of them), but David has one major weakness: he’s just not fucking interesting. Sure, he says something funny every once in awhile, but it’s not even close to enough to make up for his utter blandness (which, by the way, could almost be excusable if he didn’t think so damn highly of himself to begin with). I mean, seriously, I wasn’t cheering for him or against him, I just wanted him to get hit by a car so I could be done with the book and go read something else. If I’m supposed to make it further than twenty pages, my relationship with the main character needs to be a little deeper than a death wish. And that’s just the first nail.

Coffin nail number two comes in the form of the convoluted, nonsensical storyline. The entire time, it feels like we’re just sorta-kinda being let in on the fringes of some elaborate inside joke, a sort of a secret between the writer and characters, just enough for us to still have no idea what the hell is going on. So David isn’t just a prick, but a magician? And he gets his magic from music? That he hears at a hippie-feminist rally where he’s gone to pick up chicks? But there is this feminine Goddess who can manifest itself in different bodies that now suddenly wants revenge on him for his doing her wrong at some point in his vague past? And I assure you, what I just wrote is far too coherent to do the story that spans the books justice.

I don’t mind being in the dark about what’s going on in books or movies. In fact, more often than not, I love it. However, nothing here is made clear until it is far too late and I’m already irrevocably uninterested. It’s just like David’s habit of making quippy little obscure music references. There is actually a glossary in the back of the book for them, preceded by writer Kieron Gillen’s admission that no one will actually understand half the jokes. They’re just for him, I suppose, and everything in this book seems to be exactly that: about him. It’s like watching Gillen masturbate over and over again, thirty pages at a time. In fact, in regard to the final nail in Phonogram’s coffin, I think I might have actually rather looked at his dried spunk than flipped through the book’s pages.

That final nail is the artwork. Usually I am a sucker for comic book art—it is so varied from one illustrator to another, and each has its own definite good points—but in Phonogram, the only thing less inspired than Gillen’s storyline might well be Jamie McKelvie’s artwork. Simplicity is good—Edward Gorey proved that to the ends of the earth—but the depth-less black and white illustrations here are just downright boring. At their better times they remind me slightly of Daniel Clowes (only without any soul or feeling whatsoever). At their worse times they remind me of cheap cereal box art, as though the all the characters in the book are suddenly going to stop what they are doing and go chasing down dancing leprechauns and bouncing white rabbits for their tasty breakfast treats.

Apparently, Gillen and McKelvie’s first project was the strip Save Point, a video game-steeped comic for Playstation Magazine UK, and looking at the art in Phonogram, it isn’t hard to tell. This is what I would expect from a magazine or web comic, not a major release by a major company like Image. It honestly blows my mind that something as painfully sub-par as this could get published, and even more so that Warren Ellis could call it “one of the few truly essential comics of 2006.” I suppose to each his own. Give Gillen and McKelvie a few more years to mature and they may well grow into a tag team to be reckoned with, but for now, I just can’t get behind them. Phonogram may be for Warren Ellis, but it’s definitely not for me.

by Zerbe

by Super @ 09 Jul 2007 10:13 pm

Hi. I read Phonogram too and though I enjoyed it much more than you did, I can totally get where you are coming from. If you haven't studied Britpop, and you don't know anything about the characters and places central to that scene, then the storyline becomes completely inscrutable. The author claims you don't need to know anything about music to understand his story, but that's just not true. After all, the turning point of the story is the dream/time-travel sequence midway through, and not a single line of it would make a damned bit of sense without some historical context. At the very least, you have to have a strong emotional attachment to music culture... like always thinking of a certain ex every time a song comes on the radio... or remembering precisely the first time you heard your favourite song. David Kohl embodies the jaded music fan and that's why he's portrayed as such a complete dick. At one time, music helped define and shape who he was, but now it seems he's grown tired and disinterested in something he formerly loved. He's become a soulless shell, now routinely using his knowledge of music (here presented metaphorically as magic) to lure impressionable girls into his bed. He no longer seeks enlightenment. Just quick gratification. Britannia, the goddess of britpop, is the embodiment of a faded and whithered zeitgeist. She's also symbolic of the myriad girls Kohl (or the author?) had relationships with throughout that period. And ultimately, the comic is about laying those old flames to rest and coming to terms with the mistakes and poor judgements of youth. At the same time realized that nostalgia isn't a horrible thing, so long as it's not nostalgia for nostalgia's sake. There has to be some substance worth revisiting. At least, that's was I think they were trying to do. I don't know if the author was successful. I think he would have been better serviced with a traditional novel rather than a graphic one.

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