The second issue of THE SINGLES CLUB is out today in the US and tomorrow in the UK. Here’s the aforementioned five page preview. We pointed out the first review already, but there’s a second one from Sarah Jaffe of Newsarama:

“Just when I think I can’t love this comic any more, Gillen and McKelvie set out to prove me wrong. Rue Britannia was fun to pick apart, and 2.1 was just a cotton-candy bite of pure bliss. but this one made me feel.”

Will compile more as they appear. And… oh, it’s Phonogram 2.2. Sorry about the delay. I think it’s worth it, and it should be less time until the next one. It could hardly be more.

And while we’re talking Phonogram stuff, Kieron did an interview with the London Student Culture Magazine Play wherein they ask him what his first comic was and he says…
“The first comic I wrote was called The New Dinobots at primary school. It consisted of a single copy which I rented to people for 20p a read. I’d managed to amass £1.82 before the Catholic school teachers noticed that the robots had enormous pentagrams drawn on their chests. They confiscated the book and made me give the money to charity. Controversial from the off, me.”

And continue in a similar vein.

Excuse us. We’re feeling giddy.

SINGLES CLUB #2 hits stores next week, how about a nice little 5 page preview? Click the image below to find it.

In addition, Seb Patrick has reviewed the issue over at Comics Daily:
“It’s actually kind of terrifying to see just how good Phonogram has become. It was previously an excellent comic with something of a niche appeal, but I honestly think it’s hauled itself up to a point where it deserves to be talked about in the same breath as the likes of Scott Pilgrim as one of the best things the industry currently has to offer. While I find it hard to believe that anyone could fail to engage with the series’ exploration of the meaning of music, it can at least be admitted that there are people in the world who simply have no emotional connection to music of any kind. That’s no longer any excuse for not reading Phonogram, though - you can only get away with it now if you have no emotional connection to anything“.

We should have quoted Seven-days’ Too Long at the top, shouldn’t we? Man!

While we wait for PG2.2 - out 28th in the US and 29th in the UK, as far as we can work out - here’s a fun project you may want to get involved with. Comrade Matt Sheret wants to do a Phonogram Fanzine. So, yes, a fanzine of a fanzine, essentially. IT’S ALL GOING META. Let’s quote the relevant bit from his post.

Phonogram wears a lot of influences on its sleeve. As much a product of C90’s and glitter as Kill Your Boyfriend and xerox paper, it’s an open love letter to a culture that continues to inspire it.

That’s precisely why the series alienates and embraces by equal measure: Phonogram fans *love* pop culture, even when they hate it. Life just wouldn’t be the same if we couldn’t break hearts with the strut that Love Is All puts in our footsteps or if Wanda Jackson’s fractured vocals didn’t cut through love’s bullshit for the two and half minutes of ‘Tongue Tied’. Choosing to believe that music could be magical wasn’t an issue, because Music IS Magic.

And, like the best kids wearing glitter, listening to mix-tapes and reading early Grant Morrisson, it seems like making a fanzine is the only sane response.

So this is an open call for submissions: Essays, pin-ups, poems, short stories, one-page-comics… anything that can be photocopied in black and white and answers the question “When did you know music was magic?”

The ‘zine, as yet untitled, will be produced in a short run for San Diego Comic Con, and will be sold at cost through the weekend until they run out. It’ll be around 40pages long, and will include sketches and fragments from the early stages of Phonogram’s inception.

Submission details and similar on Matt’s site. Go read more.

Oh - while we’re talking, go see Matt Wilson’s explanation of how he does comic colouring.

Yeah, we’re back. All thanks go out to Ryan Closs, who’s henceforth canonized in the church of the divine Phonogram for fixing the blog. What was wrong with it? It had ran out of magic. Ryan has filled it up with the fermented ichor of pixes, and now it’s working again. Hurrah!

So: update.

Issue 2.2 is trickling through the mighty world of comic production. It should be out before the end of the month, unless something goes catastrophically wrong. In terms of an exact date… well, there’s a couple of places reporting different dates. We don’t want to jinx it until we know for sure - but as soon as we do, we’ll post both here and on the PG twitter feed. And then there will be street parties, at least in our street.

What then? Well, we’re going to try and keep it monthly from now on in. Things could still go wrong, of course, but that’s the plan. And as a sort of tease for that, here’s the first page of inks from Issue 3. Say hello to Emily Aster again. It’s been a while.

Since it’s been such a wait, I don’t want to say “the issues will totally be worth the wait”. But we think they’re pretty special. Let’s just hope someone else agrees, eh?