Kieron Gillen writes on his blog that the full script to the first issue of Phonogram: The Singles Club Issue 1 is available online. He also writes a few interesting words about the complex and often harsh economics behind even something as critically successful as Phonogram:

“In short, The Single Club’s trade has long since come out. Is there a chance of more Phonogram? Probably not. If you want the full story, I’d direct you at the interview I did with Comics Alliance. Things have changed since then, of course. The trade’s sold pretty damn well, which is gratifying. We’ve reached the point where Jamie has got all the money he was hoping to get for the single issue, and we’ve been able to pay all the B-side artists money for their contribution too. And I’m finally getting money from it, which I’m earmarking specifically for paying artists for future indie comics work. Thanks to everyone who’s bought it.”

And if you should wish to, you can enjoy that whilst going through the comic itself, also available for free and online. It was a glorious introduction to a fantastic series (I said as much here) and although we’ve done this before and put up the pages before, it’s so much fun to see them again, so here they are…..

Now, if you’ve enjoyed that, click here to go and buy the lot. A brilliant series.

by Kieron Gillen and Steven Saunders (with Jamie McKelvie)

Marvel Comics

“My Spacegirl Friday. Fury Nick and Green-haired Nora. Joss Whedon writes Deep Space 9. West Wing in orbit (plus zap-guns). 24 with the neo-con-agenda swapped for gags. The fastest-paced comic Marvel puts out, I think. We move at escape-velocity. IN SPACE NO-ONE HAS TIME TO BREATHE.”
(Kieron Gillen on S.W.O.R.D. in this Newsarama interview neatly summing up why it’s such a fun read)

Sadly this collected volume of the space-faring adventures of Agent Abigail Brand and her blue, furry boyfriend – Hank McCoy of the X-Men is all you’re going to get. This fun and funny space opera X-Men spin-off was just a little too unusual to succeed. My review of issue 1, with a few words changed to apply to the collection is still absolutely apposite. From which…..

“S.W.O.R.D. begins very well indeed – fast, witty, silly, big sci-fi stuff with the characteristic scattershot dialogue of the Ellis, Whedon school of superhero sci-fi writing. If that’s your sort of thing, you’ll be along for the ride. I certainly shall.”

Gillen writes a near perfect little comedy sci-fi romp here, throwing in lots of action but backing it up with some clever ideas and a sort of Warren Ellis lite dialogue – essentially all the funny, clever bits but with less of the swearing, technobabble and bizarre sexual situations.

The plot is simple: Agent Brand is head of S.W.O.R.D., the agency set up to protect Earth from the alien invasions that seem to crop up with frightening regularity. Beast is her boyfriend. Her orbiting space station is a mass of barely controlled diplomacy, often with weaponry. We’re in the middle of the complex storylines involving Norman Osbourne’s takeover of SHIELD, but you don’t really have to know about that (or in my case – care), as Gillen only uses it as an excuse to get Agent Peter Gyrich on board as joint commander of S.W.O.R.D to put into place his plan to rid Earth of all aliens.

Gyrich’s sledgehammer diplomacy fails miserably and it’s down to Brand & McCoy to save the day, ably assisted by Lockheed the dragon (still much loved by those of us of a certain age for his adoption of/by Kitty Pryde in the X-Men) and the much missed Marvel UK bounty hunter Death’s Head.

And if you’re after one moment that shows how much fun it is, try this: There’s a wonderful setup where Gillen invents a new race of sentient rock like aliens to invade Earth on false pretenses because they think that Mount Rushmore is actually a noble species like themselves cruelly decapitated by us humans. Personally I think he sets the whole thing up just to get Brand to deliver the punch line:

(The “they’re enormously incredibly dense” punchline, the giant rock alien doing the silent hits forehead in stupidity move – put them together and you get funny.)

That’s why S.W.O.R.D. is a very good book. Gillen’s writing here screams out “writer having a great time”. And when the writer is as good as Gillen is, and  full of potential, that means the whole book is one of the most enjoyable superhero romps I’ve read in many years. Incredibly light stuff, a fast read, but great fun.

And that it never had chance to get past it’s first 5 issue storyline is a real shame. Still, at least we have that first storyline in a collected volume. That will just have to do.

The latest, next Saturday – June 5th sees the Phonogram boys Jamie McKelvie & Kieron Gillen together with Becky Cloonan (she of Demo, American Virgin and PIXU) will be signing for the day at Gosh Comics London. As a special bonus the first 100 folks through the doors get this lovely McKelvie/Cloonan jam:

Gillen’s verdict? “Frankly, I’d make you all pay, but Becky and Jamie are soft in the noggin.”

Details at the Gosh blog.

(Penny welcomes us to Phonogram Volume 2, the Singles Club, (c)  the pop duet of Gillen and  McKelvie, published Image)

On the racks today from the Messrs Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie is the second collection of Phonogram: the Singles Club. Regular readers will know Phonogram is a series we’ve had a whole lot of love for and, as Richard noted just recently here, the guys have seriously struggled to get it finished. From Kieron on the Phonogram blog:

“As almost certainly the whole comic universe will know by now, it’s been a battle getting to this, but it’s something Jamie and I are ridiculously proud of. To be momentarily melodramatic, it’s the single best thing I’ve ever been involved with and if I died tomorrow, I’d be fine with it. I got the chance to do this.

Thanks to everyone. It’s been fun. And hell. But also fun.”

In an ideal world this would be in the bestsellers lists – it’s enjoyable, it’s clever and it’s something not all comics are, it’s just damned cool. To paraphrase Uncle Zaphod, it’s so hip it has difficulty seeing over its own pelvis. You like comics, you like music -  you should be reading this. And just to help you along the boys have posted up the whole first chapter of the Singles Club on the Phonogram blog to read, absolutely free. Those of you who are already reading it, come and get volume 2; those who are new to it, enjoy the free opening chapter then dive into the second volume, turn up the volume and share the love.

“I’ve never read anything in comics that manages to thoroughly express that sheer joy of being young and beautiful as this comic does, nor anything that captures the ecstatic moment when the music becomes too much and you just can’t help but give yourself over to it and get up and dance. That’s something that should be nigh on impossible to put to words. But Gillen does it so very well,” Richard on picking the Phonogram series as one of his Best of the Year choices.

(The first and last issues of S.W.O.R.D. by Gillen and Saunders)

This week saw the final issue of Kieron Gillen’s Marvel series S.W.O.R.D. ship to comic stores. I’ve only read issue one since every time I popped into a comic shop I couldn’t find any issues available. But issue 1 was a blast.

That it’s finished isn’t too much of a surprise; a space based minor X-Men spin-off was always going to be a hard sell. But the difficulty of generating enough sales for series like S.W.O.R.D. is something that, at least to my mind, highlights the problems of the modern superhero comic industry.

Innovation is difficult and different needs time to develop, but it appears that there’s just no time available – sales have to be there from the start and we’re stuck in a cycle of big event series, superhero comics just chasing their own tail, repeating formulas, recycling ideas and failing to innovate or develop. Sure, there are exceptions but there appears to be a complacency in modern superhero comics that worries me.

(The two collected volumes of Phonogram – and that may be all you get)

Another Kieron Gillen comic at an end was highlighted this week in a very frank and illuminating interview over at Comics Alliance in which Gillen talks about the economic factors that essentially mean that the only way we’re going to see a third series of Phonogram illustrated by Jamie McKelvie is posthumously:

“Best plan I have is just writing series 3 and then writing into my will that assuming I die young and Jamie’s still around, lob him whatever’s in my bank account to draw it. Which is assuming he’d even be willing to do it then. It’s not that we’re bitter about it — well, not just because we’re bitter about it — but that it’s been emotionally exhausting.”

“There’s a difference between making only a little money and starving. We’re very much in the latter. Jamie’s lucky to get a couple of hundred dollars from an issue. While he didn’t tell me about this until after it was all done, there were three occasions when Jamie was seriously considering throwing in the towel. The problem is that Image’s deal is a back-end one. Will we make some money off the trade? Maybe. And that’s a big maybe. But that means Jamie not earning any money for the six months it would take to draw it, which is the main reason why we took over a year to do 7 issues. As in, every time Jamie ran out of money, he had to stop and do something else. A couple of hundred dollars doesn’t cover rent or pay for his fashionable haircuts. And doing this bitty work f–ks up the production anyway, because you can’t concentrate or plan. You just spend your entire life in low-level money panic.”

That something as universally acclaimed as Phonogram couldn’t generate enough sales to keep it’s creators in food and hair products is a terrible admission and evidence, if any were really needed, that this comic industry of ours is still resolutely set up to sell stories of super people to an ever diminishing and ageing audience.

Seems to me that we’re seeing the medium increasingly polarised between the high profile literary graphic novels receiving great acclaim and sales and the insular, repetitious world of straight superheroes continuing their perennial recycling of concepts and ideas into huge event driven series that dominate the comic shop shelves.

And somewhere in-between critically acclaimed books like Phonogram, books that potentially have a huge appeal to a real mainstream audience of general book readers seem to be suffering from this polarisation and being lost in the middle.

Phonogram is available in two collections: Rue Brittania and the soon to be published Singles Club. S.W.O.R.D. will no doubt be collected sometime later in the year.

by Kieron Gillen, art by Steven Sanders (backup strip by Jamie McKelvie)

Marvel Comics

It’s not that I dislike superheroes, more the fact that I really haven’t got the time to decipher the vast, inter-connected-ness of the modern Marvel or DC Universes. So these days I tend to only dip into the Marvel Universe when I’m confident that I don’t need a Marvel encyclopedia at my side just to figure out the first 4 pages. Hence, this is one of the first Marvel books since Captain Britain and MI-13 and the first Ellis Astonishing X-Men I’ve picked up, purely because the whole Civil War, Secret Invasion thing just turned me off – life really is too short.

But having Kieron Gillen write a space opera featuring characters and situations following on from Whedon’s Astonishing X-Men run seemed a nice idea to me. After all, this is the same Kieron Gillen who writes the oh-so lovely Phonogram. All the pre-release press worked for me as well, with Gillen saying all the right things about S.W.O.R.D. – memorably describing it as:

“My Spacegirl Friday. Fury Nick and Green-haired Nora. Joss Whedon writes Deep Space 9. West Wing in orbit (plus zap-guns). 24 with the neo-con-agenda swapped for gags. The fastest-paced comic Marvel puts out, I think. We move at escape-velocity. IN SPACE NO-ONE HAS TIME TO BREATHE.”
(Kieron Gillen on S.W.O.R.D. in this Newsarama interview)

(Two people who really don’t want to work together; Agent Brand and Agent Gyrich, co-commanders of S.W.O.R.D. From issue 1, by Kieron Gillen, art by Steven Sanders. Marvel Comics.)

In this first issue we get a fastpaced intro to everyone, a lot of character stuff, crackling dialogue and a host of subplots all juggled nicely. The green haired lady on the cover is Agent Abigail Brand; half human, half alien head of Sentient World Observation and Response Department (S.W.O.R.D.) that protects Earth from alien threats. She’s currently dating The Beast; supersmart, blue, furry mutant X-Man (who, for reasons unknown is drawn on John Cassady’s cover as the cat headed version from Astonishing X-Men and inside as some equine/goat faced thingy. That really needs sorting out).

Brand, following the events of Secret Invasion, has to share chairmanship of S.W.O.R.D. with Henry Peter Gyrich, the old Avengers National Security Advisor who seemingly exists in the Marvel Universe to annoy people and be an asshole. Gyrich is up to his usual tricks and is manipulating S.W.O.R.D. against Brand with the aim of ridding Earth of every alien he can, including Brand. So while Brand micro-manages every little problem and jets off into space chasing the old Marvel UK bounty hunter Death’s Head who’s nicked off with her half-brother, Gyrich puts his grand plan into action.

(Beast and Brand’s relationship at work – all based around muffins. Maybe the rejection explains the long face? From S.W.O.R.D. issue 1, by Kieron Gillen, art by Steven Sanders. Marvel Comics.)

We also get reacquainted with Lockheed the dragon, who is far smarter and dangerous than people give him credit for, but is currently pining (and drinking) for his companion of many years – Kitty Pryde, last seen phasing her way out of the solar system inside a moon sized bullet. The whole Kitty/Lockheed thing features more in the Jamie McKelvie illustrated backup story, with Brand filling Lockheed in on the things they’re doing to rescue Kitty and Lockheed secretly visiting UNIT, the super smart, alien robot thing kept locked up in the max security brig and used by Brand as an intelligence source. UNIT is obviously very bad news and will feature again somewhere down the line.

As hopefully will Jamie McKelvie, since his artwork is just lovely. Not that Steven Sanders’ art isn’t good, but, just like his work in Five Fists Of Science (review) it comes across as overly simplistic in places and a bit rushed in others. He’s very good with the sci-fi stuff, but his character art lets him down more often than not. Thankfully there’s enough good in the art to make the comic readable, and with a fun, fast-paced script like this, that’s enough to make it work.

S.W.O.R.D. begins very well indeed – fast, witty, silly, big sci-fi stuff with the characteristic scattershot dialogue of the Ellis, Whedon school of superhero sci-fi writing. If that’s your sort of thing, you’ll be along for the ride. I certainly shall.

S.W.O.R.D. issue 1 is out right now, issue 2 is due mid December.

Richard Bruton.