“We’d arranged over a couple of quick e-mails to grab a quick ten minutes or so with them at some point in the evening, but hadn’t managed to then catch them before the awards dinner began. Mercifully, despite losing out in the ceremony to Robert Kirkman’s overrated The Walking Dead, when we caught up with Jamie afterwards in the bar he was still happy to talk to us - provided we could actually find Kieron. A couple of calls to his mobile and a trek around the outside of the building later, we found him on a bench in the car park, and he and Jamie proceeded to very politely give up a valuable forty-five minutes of potential drinking time to give lengthy, informative and entertaining answers to the half-baked questions that myself and James came up with. We’d have edited it down, but frankly, Kieron - a videogames journalist of some ten years or so - is just too damned good a talker. So, barring a couple of cuts of the odd drunken (and potentially libellous) statement, and a lengthy dissection of bad fast food outlet-related puns, here’s that conversation in full…”

Noise To Signal ruin their ears, transcribing far too much nonsense by McKelvie and I. A rare picture of Team Phonogram in their natural habitat. That is, drunk, somewhere. They’ve actually transcribed our verbal-ticks too, so you get the bits where I use a load of valley-girl esque random words as interjections, and where I change subject mid-sentence. It’s very us. Includes plans for Phonogram 2, slagging off of each others, swearing and scary confessions. And blurble. Mostly, blurble.

Back from Bristol - enormously fun, great to meet everyone - just in time for a round-up of some of the reviews of issue 6 we’ve missed while we’ve been away. As always, if there’s any not here, mail or post them here, and we’ll sort it out.

People mostly liked this one. Which is lucky, as we’d be buggered if they didn’t.

Chris’ Invicible Super Blog: “You heard it here first, folks: Phonogram is the best mini-series of the year.”
Greg Burgas, Comics Should Be Good@CBR: “If there was any justice in the world, Gillen and McKelvie would be well on their way to being comics stars.”
Paul O’Brien, The X-Axis: “…an ambitious series that succeeds admirably in its exploration of what music can mean. A”
Chris Murman, Silver Bullet Comisc: “That is this book to me. Kohl in the end learns that he’s not as old as he thinks, but not the kid he used to be. As it turns out, I’m David Kohl…minus the black eye makeup, of course.”
Paul Steven Brown, Comic Addiction: If you are a lover of music, especially Britpop, then you will really enjoy this series.”
B. Schatz, ComiXtreme: “This has been one of the best reads of 2006-2007″
Andrea Speed, ComiXtreme: “And for everyone that missed the series, there will be a trade out soon. Pick it up.”
Scott Cederlund, Pop Syndicate: “The unsung hero of Phonogram has to be Jamie McKelvie, who’s black and white artwork defines the world of Phonogram. He moves easily between reality and unreality, adding a disturbing realism even to the most fantastical images. The zombie Britpop is alluring and creepy at the same time and Beth remains such a sad creature that you can’t help but fall in love with whenever she appears.”
13 minutes: “The creators clearly have a passion for their material, and it’s downright infectious”
Adrian f. Zettlemoyer, Broken Frontier: “This is a truly amazing series, and you owe it to yourself to seek out the trade if you haven’t been reading. If there is a goddess somewhere, let’s hope she brings about a sequel.”

We’ve also been discussed in the comics podcast community with both AroundComics and iFanboy having a jolly good chin-wag about our merits and failings. But mostly merits. Thankfully.

On a similar auditory note, we’ve noticed that some people in the last.fm community have started using the Phonogram tag enough to make the tag radio station operational. Worth listening, especially for those with no knowledge of the scene Rue Britannia covered and are interested hearing a selection.

EDIT: updated.

Well, Phonogram’s out in the USA. We have proper observers and stuff. It’ll be out in the UK on Friday, due to the delay with the bank holiday.

What do you make of it?

First review prize goes to Andrea Speed of Comixtreme, who you may remember from her reviews of many of the earlier issues. However, first online commentary goes to this Livejournal post from last week. Both are really positive, but I’m not posting quotes because I want to avoid spoilers. Oh - and anyone in Bristol, will see in the local culture/arts/listing magazine Venue an interview with yours truly in its Bristol Comics special.
Been fun, people. Let’s do this again sometime, yeah?

So, no, Phonogram didn’t come out last week. But it honestly will come out this week, unless it doesn’t, in which case - er - we will accept responsibility. I’ve just read a book about the Punic wars, so I’m happy to end up being ritually decapitated like a load of Hannibul’s rubbishy fellow generals.

Where was I?

Yes, issue out Wednesday/Thursday. No, really.

It’s also nicely timed as next weekend is the Bristol Comics Convention. I’ve mentioned this before, but we will be attending and selling the entire run, until we run out of issue 1s, at which point we’ll be selling the entire run minus the first one. Clearly, if you’ll like anything (er) signed, bring it along and we will. Embarrassedly, while shuffling our feet. McKelvie will be happy to sketch too, or as happy as McKelvie is to do anything. He’s also on a couple of panels. Firstly, at Noon on the Saturday, he’s on the “THE BIG 2 Vs THE REST OF THE WORLD” where he’ll be discussing how Tokyopop and Viz are… oh, sorry, it’s DC and Marvel and stuff. Secondly, at 3pm on Sunday he’ll be a panelist alongside luminaries such as Kurt Busiek and Jock on the ever-entertaining Hypotheticals.
There’s also going to be EXCLUSIVE PHONOGRAM MERCHANDISE. While the new set of badges have yet to be completely confirmed, we’ve got an order for the first Phonogram T-shirt. It’ll look a bit like this…

Except with a more flattering cut. Not a big fan of T-shirts as tents, us. S, M, L and XL sizes. And if you want a closer look at the logo, here it is.

Highly exclusive! Unless we get some more done, when it becomes merely very exclusive. But that’s still pretty damn good, yeah?

Actually, there’s another exciting thing happening at the Bristol Con. We’ve been nominated for…

Best American B&W comic, alongside fellow Image books The Walking Dead and Casanova and not-Image-book -but-advertised-in-our-Image-book Wastelandand and living legend USAGI YOJIMBO.
Now, we’ve been mulling over asking people to actually vote for us. We’re not big fans of trying to influence such things artificially but… well, when I mentioned to my girlfriend’s dad that we were nominated for an Eagle award he came back with “Wh… wh… The Eagle comic?” and was genuinely impressed. Which made it suddenly clear that actually, all cool posture apart, it’d be a neat thing to win. The Eagle is a central pillar of British comics, after all. And that’s one hell of a logo up the page.

We decided to link to it.

Except we check the page, and voting closed three weeks or so ago.

Team Phonogram is rubbish.

“Kohl’s decision isn’t so much of Britpop going away – he’s actually fine with it going away – but it’s warping into something which simply isn’t true. The myth the retromancers are weaving simply didn’t happen – it’s grotesquely simplified. It wasn’t like that. What he’s ended up fighting for is his own – and everyone else’s – subjectivity of personal events.

In terms of me… well, the only answer is a bit Meta. My personal stand against the re-branding of Britpop is writing Kohl’s battle against the re-branding of Britpop.”

Interview at SBC with Chris Murman, looking back over the six issues of Phonogram and sighing. Touches on quite a lot of the mechanics of how I go about putting a comic script together and our plans for the second series of Phonogram.
Er… not sure if PG6 will be out wednesday/thursday (US/UK respectively). One shipping list has it and the other doesn’t. As soon as we know if it’s arrived or not, we’ll say.

I have issues though. Everyone feel free to pop around and read mine. I’ll get a brew on.