Recently we announced that we’ll be co-presenting a screening of Scott Pilgrim vs The World along with Graphic Content at The Metro Cinema at the Garneau Cinema. Every month, Graphic Content curates a book list that thematically ties into and builds on the chosen film – and this month, we’ve been graciously invited to choose a couple of books ourselves with the Graphic Content curators.  The next item on the book list was selected by James: 

PHONOGRAM (Image Comics)
Written by Kieron Gillen, Art by Jamie McKelvie

The central conceit of Phonogram is a brilliant one, summarized perfectly by the tagline on the back of the second trade paperback volume, The Singles Club:

Has a song ever changed your life? Did you ever wonder how?

How glorious is that?  It’s a deceptively simple elaboration on that feeling you get inside you when a song speaks to you.  That feeling that the reverberations in your chest are actually magic?  That’s Phonogram, a world where that’s true.

The first volume, Rue Brittania, is the story of David Kohl, a snarky, womanizing phonomancer - how cool is that? - being tasked by his Goddess to save one of her aspects, Brittania of Britpop, who’s disappeared.  Kohl grew up with Brittania and his identity is still rooted in it.  With Brittania apparently stricken from the world, Kohl can feel himself changing, and his task becomes one of survival.

Phonogram: Rue Brittania is a meditation on our identities and how we build them around the things we love.  Kohl’s youthful identity was rooted in Britpop, and his task forces him to look back at who he was, who he is and the swirling memory of it all.  He’s literally haunted by a ghost of that era.  Without Britpop, who is David Kohl?  That’s the defining question of the first volume.  Other people are willing to give up Britpop.  Other people have moved on and advise Kohl to do the same, but through it all, his answer is clear:

“It’s nothing but it’s my nothing.”

Even as adults, we’re often still rooted in the things we loved when we were young.  I still remember the magic of putting on Sloan’s album One Chord to Another and the feeling that it gave me.  I can understand what Kohl is fighting for, and I think that’s something we can all identify with.  Even if you never listened to a Kenickie album, Kohl’s struggles are universal for anyone who’s been moved by a song on the radio.  Toward the end of the arc’s last issue, Kohl gives a speech about goddesses, rebirth and legacy that summarizes it all perfectly.

After Rue Brittania, Gillen and McKelvie told a different kind of story in the series’ second volume, The Singles Club.  Seven issues.  Seven different points of view told through different characters and seven different songs during one night.  If Brittania was about coming to terms with your past and how it’s shaped your identity, The Singles Club is about the different ways we interact with music and make our own magic from it.  Maybe we dive into one band that speaks to our struggles, angst and identity.  Maybe we make our spells through giving ourselves up to a song and dancing our hearts out.  Music can serve our introversion or extroversion and our love or our hate.  In The Singles Club, all of these variations are explored.  Whereas the first arc was rooted in just one man and his viewpoint, the second is about how these different versions of reality coexist and intermingle.

It also might be easier to get into Phonogram if you read The Singles Club first.  Don’t get me wrong, I love Rue Brittania and it was a great introduction to the series for me, as someone who loved Britpop.  However, The Singles Club not only presents some slightly more recent music that you young folks might have heard while you were on my lawn, but each issue is its own story.  Reading them all will definitely give a slightly more nuanced and complete view of the whole night, but each one works as its own self-contained tale.  It’s a series of bite-sized chunks and it’s great.  The entire series is made wonderful by Gillen‘s writing – if you like Kid Loki’s cheekiness in Journey into Mystery or the group dynamic of Generation Hope, you’ll enjoy seeing their roots in Phonogram - and McKelvie‘s stunning art, and The Singles Club adds vibrant, eye-popping colour to it all.

Whichever you decide to read first, Phonogram is a series for anyone who’s been raised up by music.  It reminds me of my own days as an indie kid who went to theme nights and shows at pubs and clubs, which is outrageously cool.  If you like the love for different media present in Scott Pilgrim, you’ll love the musical focus here, and both series share a magical realism that presents a world just slightly different than ours but still familiar and absolutely engrossing.  It’s as British as Scott Pilgrim is Canadian, and who doesn’t love that?