Hello again.

As you’ll notice, we’ve had a reboot of the site. It’s because we start the proper cheery hype machine for Phonogram 2 at San Diego Comic Con next week and we need to improve our web real-estate and… well, whatever. The pair of us will be there on the Image booth for the full time. Do come buy and buy our stuff and biff us on the kisser.

We’ll actually have the Postcards for the second series, assuming they don’t get eaten by Mr Printer. In colour, which is terribly fancy. The first panel is our new opening page.

We’re also going to have T-shirts, in both both ladies and gentlemen cuts in all sizes up to XXL. This is the design…

hough the grey-lettering is actually black. Yes, we’re doing a black-on-black T-shirt, because we’re that pretentious. We fear chroma.

(We’re lying slightly - Jamie’s done some lovely T-shirts for Suburban Glamour, which are a cheery red.)

You’re wondering what it looks like on a T-shirt? Well, something like this.

Except with black lettering instead of grey. And if you’re wondering, the DJ is Silent Girl from the new series, who you can see alongside comrade-in-arms Seth Bingo on the Media page. They also star on the postcard.

Anyway. Phonogram: The Singles Club is go. Or at least approaching the launchpad for Go.

See you at San Diego. Come and tug Gillen’s beard while you still can.

(As it’ll be shaved by Sunday night)

Oh yes - if you’re desperate for mini-phono-news, you can subscribe to our twitter channel. Expect everything from minor news on issues, reviews linkage and posts where we’re both clearly a bit DUNK!

And finally - as we’ve just realised we’ve forgot to say this - while we’re not able to save people shirts, we’ll be selling the remainder when we get back from San Diego. And if we sell out, we’ll take it as a good sign that we should do some more.

Quick mention that we’re at the Dublin City Comic Con tomorrow and Sunday. It is here.

And McKelvie is over there, while I’m still running around packing. PANIC.

“Phonogram really, really works. It analyses the music and the movement with a passion only available to those who really loved it. It also takes the whole thing apart with the venom of those who’ve come out the other side. It’s a cheap shot perhaps, but it is true that Ocean Colour Scene were shit and Kulashaker should never have been allowed a single note in music’s history. But that is something we learn in time. The whole point of Phonogram is to celebrate the insanity of music, of the way it can make you feel and the glorious magic it can bring into your life. It envelops you, takes you deeper than any lover could and blinds you to its faults.”

Haven’t done a review link for a while, so here’s Richard Bruton’s review of Phonogram over at Forbidden Planet. Also, Richard wrote a 30 years retrospective about Nostalgia & Comics, Birmingham’s Comic Mecca. Which links neatly to the next thing.

Basically, we haven’t mentioned we’re going to be at the International Comics Show in Birmingham this weekend. We’ll be there Saturday and Sunday, with our usual little stall. Come, admire our beard and buy whatever we have to sell (Including a few issue 1 of Kitten’s Suburban Glamour!). We’ll also be on the Kryptonite Factor panel on 4:30 on Sunday. Which will be (er) something or another, I’m sure.

(Awesome, that is.)

More Phonotravel news.

We’ll be at the Thought Bubble arts festival in Leeds, which is between the 9th and the 11th of November. We’ll mainly be there on the Saturday - which is the main day for events - but will be around on Friday night and some of Sunday too. We’ll be (er) doing something, I’m sure. More details as we decide what it is.

Other guests include Duncan Fegredo, Adi Granov, Antony Johnston, Peter Doherty, Staz Johnson, Sean Phillips, Leah Moore, John Reppion and Bryan Talbot. It looks like it’ll be pretty cool, actually. Everyone will have a lovely time.

It’s Peter Doherty 2000AD artist, by the way, not famous druggie. Just have to say these things, because - well - I know what Phonogram readers are like (i.e. You’re like me).

Bonus marks for anyone who recognises the lyric which starts this one.

We haven’t updated for a while, I know. Some interesting stuff to talk about, but important things first.

We’re doing a signing at Forbidden Planet London next week, on Thursday 20th. It is here. We’ll be signing between 6 and 7. PM, as is you were in any doubt, and had some deluded faith in our ability to move beyond our beds before noon.

See you there? They’ll be some kind of awesome party afterwards, somewhere or another, probably.

McKelvie has been busy working on Suburban Glamour, and an interview has just appeared on Newsarama. Go see, if only to watch Kitten and I fight in the thread. I’ve been busy doing… oh, is that the time!

If you want more regular nonsense for us, I highly recommend hanging around our forum over at Image where we will be excellent to each other.

Firstly, a reminder that Kieron is doing a signing for Phonogram tomorrow at Bristol Travelling Man, starting at about 1 or so. He’ll be there for (oooh) a couple of hours? Maybe more. He needs to buy a shirt so I don’t look like a tramp at San Diego Comic Con. A comic tramp, sitting behind the desk, looking jealously at people with action figures. Why isn’t there a Kid-With-Knife action figure, eh?

It’s a solo gig, as McKitten is off to San Diego earlier. Because he is very lazy. In terms of other good news, it seems we’ll have some more T-shirts to sell. S, M, L, XL and (for the very first time) XXL. This isn’t because we presume American reads may be chubbier. We presume they may be taller. We’ll also have the trade, McKelvie’s art and if you come anywhere near us, I’m sure Frazer will try and sell you something related to Gutsville.

A couple more reviews of the trade…
Humphrey Lee, Aint it Cool News: “Reason one why you should buy this? Well, because it’s good AND unique. More than half the time you’ll be hard pressed to find a comic on the stands that is either one of those, let alone both.”
Greg Oleksiuk, Popmatters: “Whether you are a fan of Britpop, stories’ involving magic, or a tale of re-living one’s youth, Phonogram: Rue Britannia is for you.”

Finally, for fans of discount comics online retailers, we notice that Khepri are now stocking the Phonogram trade. They ship to outside the US too, but only if you order more than twenty dollars worth of stuff.

“Inevitably, comparisons will be made to McKelvie’s and Gillen’s successful urban fantasy “Phonogram,” given the magic element of “Suburban Glamour” as well as its distinctly contemporary characters and graphic design-heavy sensibilities. However, McKelvie is prepared to defend his newest project as something markedly different from that previous success.

“For one, I think ‘Suburban Glamour’ is a lighter story,” McKelvie explained. “‘Phonogram’ is rich with reference and philosophy, which is great but for some people it didn’t make it an easy read. Which isn’t to say I’d want ‘Phonogram’ to be an easier read, it needs to be what it is. ‘SG’ on the other hand contains a lot of metaphor for the troubles of teenage life, but you can take it on a much more straightforward level.

“Also, there are fewer caption boxes.”

McKitten gets interviewed over at CBR about Suburban Glamour. Which you’ve pre-ordered, we’d hope, as otherwise McKelvie doesn’t get to eat. He doesn’t need to eat much, admittedly.

Some quick links? IGN reviewed the trade, and here’s one from Captain Blue Hen I don’t think I’ve linked to before. And I’d link to this really touching one from Livejournal, just to balance this other semen-obsessed one from Undress Me Robot (Though the comments does include one of the better descriptions of Kohl’s arc I’ve read). Anything else? Oh yeah - Herr Ellis links to our continuing Gillen and McKelvie show.

Finally, a quick reminder that McKelvie and I will be signing at Travelling man Leeds and York tomorrow at 1 and 3:30pm repspectively. Which means I have to get a train at stupid-o-clock to get up there. Which means that I probably shouldn’t go out for drinks tonight. Which means I’m going to be ignoring that probably shouldn’t. Oh man!

While obviously we want as much attention as possible drawn over to Jamie’s Suburban Glamour Workblog which, since he linked last night, has new content in the form of Issue 2’s cover there’s been some lovely coverage.

Firstly:
“Once upon a time, in a comic shop in London, somebody yelled, “What’s this? Why have they got this on the cover?” “Oh, it’s this new comic,” the clerk answered, holding up some promotional postcards for Image Comics’ then-new miniseries “Phonogram.”

“These are arcane symbols!” declared the other person, referring to the magiky-looking glyphs depicted on the cover of “Phonogram” #1. They cried out, “They are messing with forces they don’t understand!” before storming out of the comic store, never to be seen again.”

Andy Khouri of Comic Book Resources Prints The Myth and interviews the pair of us about Phonogram, its development, our experiences and - basically - everything. It’s probably the most revealing Phonogram interview we’ve ever done, which you can tell by how we come across as arrogant tossers at least a couple of times throughout. Recommended.If you want to actually hear us burble though, there’s been a couple of Podcasts in the last month. McKelvie did a solo one for Around Comics, talking everything to do with Phonogram, Suburban Glamour and annoying every artist in the world by talking about he just kind of magically learnt to draw. Meanwhile, Gillen did one with Indie Comics News about his pre-teen God versus Eddie the Head comics, Phonogram and what he’s up to now. Who has the most incomprehensible accent? U DECIDE.
In terms of reviews, here’s one from Guttergeek and another from Eye on Comics. There’s also been lots of well written responses on Livejournal which are so personal that we’d feel brutish just linking to them, so we’ll offer a general “thankyou” to anyone who’s done so. Comics International have finally got around to reviewing something by us and if we knew it was going to be so exciting, we’d have kept the trade waiting so we could have a “Possibly the most pretentious mini-series ever” quote on the back or something. And we’ll also like to stick stick our lawyers at Kevin Church. Except we don’t have any lawyers.

Oh - the launch party went well too, if anyone’s interested. We certainly were.

I’ll also do a proper post on this later, but we’re going to be doing some signings in July.

14th July 1pm: Travelling Man Leeds (Gillen & McKelvie)
14th July 3:30pm: Travelling Man York (Gillen & McKelvie)
21st July 1pm: Travelling Man Bristol (Just Gillen)
26th-29th July: San Diego Comic Con, Image Booth (McKelvie, Gillen & Hangovers)

Do come and say hello and make out with us, with tongues and everything.

Hello everyone. Jamie here. Just to let you know that I’ve got a blog set up to promote my solo series Suburban Glamour over here, where I post previews, art and information about the book. I’m very excited to have the chance to put this book out, and I hope some of you follow me across to it before i return to Phonogram 2 next year.

In Wednesday in the US and Thursday in the UK, the collected edition of Phonogram: Rue Britannia is available. If you’re buying from the US, Midtown are splendid. If you’re buying from the UK, Page 45 are one of our favourite retailers and do full mail order (Though if you don’t like writing e-mails or phoning people, Forbidden Planet do it in a one click thing, here). If you’re terribly shy around comics retailers, Amazon will be having stock in fairly soon and can be ordered at either their US or UK site. But you’ll be quicker to go to a fine comics retailer, you understand.
As well as the story, it includes an especially written glossary and an introduction by Luke Haines of acerbic british-guitar-pop sensations the Auteurs and Black Box Recorder.

Comic of the year! The year in question being one of the ones between 1994 and 1996.

The entire first issue can be read on Image’s site.
And some quotes from the back of the book:

“One of the few truly essential comics of 2006. Read this or lose” - Warren Ellis

“Phonogram reads like old-school journalism, redolent of the time when there were only four music papers, and the only lists were on the back pages and were called The Charts” - Luke Haines

“It’s not often you read a comic that kisses you passionately on the frontal lobe, then gets you drunk and rolls you for your stash. Gillen and McKelvie have produced such a comic, but they’ve vowed only to use it for good…” - Mike Carey

“This is awesome!” - Spin.com

“Phonogram is pure pop art” - Plan B Magazine

McKelvie and I remain very proud of it and want your money. Do not deny us. Do not deny us anything.

EDIT: At the moment the Amazon.uk entry is only listing it to be bought second hand for - gasp! - eighty four quid. Hopefully it’ll sort out soon. Will try and find out what’s going on, etc.