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Review- Phonogram: The Singles Club #7

The best pop albums always have a killer last song, the perfect track to end an album while leaving you wanting more.  That's what Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie do with Phonogram: The Singles Club #7; they deliver the perfect single to their series.

In Phonogram: The Singles Club, Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie have shown us a number of characters during a night of music and magic, each with their own issues and personal hangups.  Almost no one who has highlighted during the series is who they want to be.  From the club DJ Seth who wants to be in more control than he really is to queen bitch Emily Aster, who sees her true self every time she looks in the mirror, they all want to be someone or with someone different than they are.  That's why David Kohl, the "hero" of the first Phonogram series Rue Brittania, is only a supporting character here; we know Kohl and he's perfectly happy with who he is.  In the seventh and final issue of The Singles Club, Gillen and McKelvie make Kid With Knife, who at best is Kohl's sidekick and at worst his flunky, the main character.  Like Kohl, KWK knows who and what he is.  He isn't a phonomancer (a music-based magician) but he doesn't need to be.  After Kohl tries to explain to KWK how to listen to a song to harness it's power, how to focus on the song and to let it possess you, KWK laughs off the instruction.  "That's magic?" he wonders.  "Hell, everybody does that."  And just like that, KWK puts every other pretender and wannabe character in this series in their place, showing that they're hardly as special as they wished they were.

For the rest of KWK's story, Gillen and McKelvie wordlessly follow him as he does what everyone does when driven by the music; he tries to pick up a couple of girls, gets into a fight and gets chased through the streets, goes to the club, dances and finally does get to take a girl home at the end of the night.  Maybe for a phonomancer, it's a night of magic but for KWK, you get the feeling it's just a night like any other, magic or not.  In the other issues of this series, Gillen has tried to show the characters using their "magic" to make a better night or even a better life for themselves.  But, in the end, all of their effort usually produced nothing other than the realization that maybe their magic wasn't strong enough.  For KWK, the night is not about the magic but it is about the night and what kind of trouble a boy could get into with just enough power and self awareness.  The magic that Kohl teaches KWK means nothing.  It's just the same thing that he does every night.  It may be magic or it may not be.  It not nearly as important as who you are and what you do. 

McKelvie and colorist Matthew Wilson create the rhythm this issue as they bring Gillen's mostly wordless script to life.  McKelvie tells the story through his characters faces and body language.  It's been a strength he's shown often during this miniseries but it's crucial here as he's creating for us Gillen's story.  McKelvie has to show us what the characters are doing and even what they're saying to one another in this story, occasionally relying on hilarious pictograms to substitute as actual dialogue.  As well as delivering the story, McKelvie and Wilson create a buzz in this book.  KWK is buzzing throughout the issue and it's contagious to the reader as the storytelling in this issue creates a sound all its own.  It's not a sound of words and voices but a sound of color and of an unheard music.  This issue is that perfect instrumental piece that closes out a great pop album.  The singer (or maybe the writer in this instance) takes a break and the musicians (or in this case, the artist and colorist) take center stage and just create a whole new experience solely with their instruments.  As Gillen tells us in the backmatter of this issue, "sometimes actions do speak louder than words."  If that's true, this is one loud comic.


Gillen gets his shot as well with four short stories in the end, illustrated by Nikki Cook, Becky Cloonan, Andy Bloor and Sean Azzopardi.  All of these short stories during this series have been nice little character pieces, such as when David Kohl tries to explain The Talking Head's "Once in a Lifetime" lyrics to some unsuspecting party goer.  Built around music or dancing, these stories show how so much of our lives are either explicitly or tangentially tied to music.  They're fun b-sides to Gillen and McKelvie's singles. 


Phonogram: The Singles Club #7

"Wolf Like Me"

Written by: Keiron Gillen

Drawn & Lettered by: Jamie McKelvie (art assistance by: Julia Scheele)

Colored by: Matthew Wilson


"The Queen is Dead"

Drawn by: Nikki Cook


"Blood Mountain"

Drawn by: Becky Cloonan


"30"

Drawn by: Andy Bloor


"Once In A Lifetime"

Drawn by: Sean Azzopardi