Phonogram: The Singles Club (2008) #7

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Gillen mildly redeems himself–not really, he avoided the most interesting characters in Singles Club and filled three issues with malarky, but somewhat–with an almost wordless issue featuring Kid-With-Knife, another supporting cast member from the first series. He ends up with the girl from the first issue, the one we’re not supposed to like.

Otherwise, the story is mostly just a silent street adventure. Kid-With-Knife is a superhero too, in addition to being Gillen’s only likable character. He saves these people from being mugged and leads the muggers on a chase.

It’s got a lot of nice art from McKelvie.

There are four backups this issue and they sort of ruin the high Gillen was on. All of them are pointless, none of them make a real impression of any kind.

Except maybe the Cloonan one… only because it’s a completely idiotic waste of time.

Phonogram: The Singles Club (2008) #6

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Wow.

Gillen wants the reader to through pages and pages of poorly written text with bad punctuation. The writing eventually gets so bad I had to give it up.

Here, instead of a bad person in Phonogram, Gillen wants the reader to enjoy making fun of the loser. I’m not sure why he included this character in the story, since he brings nothing to it except some laughs–and this issue clearly shows Gillen can’t stretch it out.

It’s a strange thing to be asked to dislike a character; Gillen has done it twice now. I’m not sure why he thinks it makes Phonogram worthwhile. I do like how the last page (seemingly unintentionally) implies the character is gay.

The backups, with art by PJ Holden and Adam Cadwell, are nice.

The Holden one is actually a good story, even with Gillen’s bad narration. The Cadwell one has good art.

Phonogram: The Singles Club (2008) #5

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Here we get the story of another depressed girl–she opens the issue cutting herself–and she tells most of her story in quotes from songs. While it’s admirable how much work Gillen put into finding those quotes and making them work in the narration, it’s not good writing. His first person narrator is talking directly to the reader, which makes absolutely no sense but he also can’t pull it off.

It doesn’t help the story is generally bad too. She’s a boring caricature. At least his other caricatures so far in Singles Club have been sensational.

It feels a little like Gillen’s running out of enthusiasm for the series overall. This issue has only one backup story, illustrated by Boultwood. Gillen concentrates on funny lines, which is fine for a backup, but Boultwood’s style doesn’t lend itself to sight gags.

The main story doesn’t even have a satisfying conclusion.

Phonogram: The Singles Club (2008) #4

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Whether Gillen intends it to be or not, this issue is more a concept issue than anything else. The protagonists are the two DJs at the club and we pretty much don’t see anyone but them for the entire issue. There’s a lot of affected dialogue, but Gillen can get away with it because of the concept.

Unfortunately, it leaves McKelvie with almost nothing to do. He’s drawing the same panel over and over, maybe some differences in expression, but most of the expressions get repeated eventually. Because of the design, it works fine… it’s just not particularly interesting once finished reading it.

As opposed to the previous issues, Gillen has no insight into the characters. He’s intentionally writing caricatures, not doing so because of limitations.

The backups–one by David Lafuente and one by Charity Larrison–are useless.

Lafuente’s art is good. The Larrison one is pointless, but pleasant.