Deconstructing Superheroes - Daredevil: Born Again & Kick Ass

Daredevil: Born Again was first published in 1986 and followed in the wake of Alan Moore’s Watchmen and Frank Miller’s own The Dark Knight Returns; both highly influential comics that fundamentally changed the landscape of modern superhero fiction. Although Born Again is perhaps far less well recognised than those comics, it’s certainly no less deserving of attention.

Born Again saw Frank Miller team up with David Mazzucchelli, a pairing that might raise a few eyebrows were it to happen today. Miller brought his trademark hard boiled crime stylings to the book and Mazzucchelli delivered art to match, with an unparalleled spatial awareness of what could be done on the page. By modern standards, it’s almost a given that Miller and crime noir go hand in hand, but it’s worth noting that his gritty detective fiction slant on the superhero genre started with his work on Daredevil.

By the time Born Again hit the shelves, Miller’s darker, Hell’s Kitchen inspired template was already firmly in place and ripe for exploitation. The addition of Mazzucchelli’s detailed, multi dimensional art, adds a visual clout to the book that goes far beyond simply rendering the urban backdrop of Hell's Kitchen believable. All this adds up to a pretty great book, but it’s not just the noir leanings and evocative art that make it such a standout piece. What makes Daredevil: Born Again truly special is its psychological deconstruction of Daredevil, aka the blind lawyer Matt Murdock.

The book opens with a down and out Karen Page selling Matt’s secret identity to a drug dealer. Of course, it isn’t long before this information drops into the lap of crime lord Wilson Fisk, who is only too pleased to discover that Matt Murdock and Daredevil are in fact one and the same. With this information in hand Fisk begins to systematically dismantle Matt’s life, methodically striping away his reputation, wealth, career, and friends. As things begins to unravel, his only means of escape is his alter ego Daredevil. Left homeless, friendless and deeply suspicious of everyone around him, he becomes increasingly violent, frenzied and animalistic as he plummets towards rock bottom with alarming speed.

Here Miller tackles the inherent paradox of superheroes; on the one hand Matt Murdock is a shining beacon of all that is good and just in the world, and on the other, he’s a violent vigilante whose secret double life borders on clinical schizophrenia. Miller acknowledges the death and destruction that surrounds Daredevil, and then follows those veins of poison as they seep into every corner of his personal life. There are some wonderful pre-echoes of Mazzuccehlli’s later work, especially his inventive use of colour and space. In issue 228 of Born Again, Matt confines himself to a cramped, seedy hotel room. Paralysed by fear and paranoia, the room becomes both a physical and mental prison. There’s a repeating motif of long thin vertical panels, lined up like prison bars, further adding to the calutrophobic nature of events. As everything closes in, fighting for space on the page, Matt struggles against seemingly insurmountable odds.

Ben Urich, the wayward Daily Bugle reporter receives a similar visual treatment when he finds himself under Wilson Fisk’s watchful eye. Following a series of unsuccessful attempts to ease Matt's plight, Ben finds himself under constant threat of physical violence from the Kingpin. As his situation turns from bad to worse, Mazzucchelli begins to visually morph Ben’s features, switching from his realist style to exaggerated elongated lines, stretching out Ben’s face so it radiates stress and nervous energy. Ben is painted a cowardly yellow, the panels themselves become narrow, boxing him in on the page as the omnipresent force of the Kingpin moves in for the kill.

In both cases mood is expressed in terms of colour and space, and it’s interesting to see Mazzucchelli experimenting with these stylistic techniques. As the attentive reader will know, these particular traits would eventually become an integral part of his artistic approach, most notably in his adaptation of Paul Auster’s City of Glass and his recent solo effort Asterios Polyp.

What fascinates most about Daredevil: Born Again is its inversion of classic comic book conventions. It takes a long hard look at the cold reality of being a superhero and doesn't shy away from the more unpleasant truths that emerge. Take ‘Nuke’ for example, the book's drug fueled nemesis; a blindly patriotic, failed military experiment who’s forever popping pills and spouting militaristic non-sequiturs. Nuke is post Cold War politics embodied. He's the anti- Captain America. Nuke is clearly cast as a villain, yet maintains the psychotic delusion that he's allied to the forces of good. He is the darker side of warfare and politics, blindly following orders, sworn to protect ‘our boys’ and his beloved USA. When a disillusioned Captain America finally lays his misguided fellow comrade to rest, it’s abundantly clear that superheroes aren’t what they used to be. All is not right in the world of the superhuman, and although the book reaches a typically ‘wrapped up’ resolution of its main plot points, it still asks some stark questions about what it would truly mean to be a superhero.

Just over two decades later, Nicholas Cage (Big Daddy) and Chloë Grace Moretz (Hit Girl) face off in a disused reservoir. Big Daddy calmly points a gun at his daughter and pulls the trigger. Thus begins their journey on the road to becoming masked vigilantes in the big screen adaptation of Mark Millar’s comic Kick Ass. Big Daddy and Hit Girl are a case in point, they’re the apex of modern superhero fiction; and as apt a parody as you’re ever likely to see. Morals are swept neatly under the carpet and bloody justice reigns down at the hands of an 11 year old girl, whose aptitude with firearms and knives is nothing short of frightening.

Kick Ass is an undeniably funny film, but the reason it elicits so many laughs is, I suspect, due to the sheer perversity of the whole setup. I need not explain to you the strange pleasure of watching an 11 year old girl brutally dispatch dozens of hardened criminals, and whilst I laughed as much as the next man, I couldn’t help but feel that Kick Ass makes some interesting points about the pysche of the superhero.

In much the same way that Miller and Mazzucchelli strip down Daredevil to his very core to reveal an unbalanced, yet highly driven individual, Kick Ass too, quite adeptly acknowledges the savage duality of the modern day superhero. There’s a dark and nihilistic streak lurking just under the film’s playful action flick sheen, and therein lies the all too knowing recognition that such heroes would be flawed and unbalanced individuals long before they even put on a mask and cape.

MD.

Lauren Barnett - Secret Weirdo

Lauren Barnett was kind enough to send me some of her mini comics. I hold in my hands three short form pamphlets, Secret wierdo, A story about a fish and I'd sure like some fucking pancakes. Snappy titles, I think you’ll agree.


What strikes you immediately about these mini comics is that Lauren’s cartooning is very off the cuff, all rendered in a primary school style scrawl, which has more to do with her overall narrative approach than it does with her artistic ability. It’s obvious that Barnett is capable of a much more considered style, but the messy simplicity on display here suits her subject matter perfectly. Barnett relates childhood memories and snippets of her adult life with a singular, almost childlike innocence, taking obvious pleasure in the simple joys of life. Her wonderfully honest, off kilter sense of humour is more than enough to balance out any reservations you may have about her purposefully regressive art.

Barnett’s comics aren’t about artistic finesse, in fact they’re quite the opposite; coming across like a scribbled postcard from her younger self, serving as a reminder of all those wonderful childish things we keep buried deep within our subconscious. It’s at once reassuring and comforting to see such uninhibited work, as Barnett dredges up memories of her past for all to see, whilst reflecting on the present with an uninhibited sense of optimism.

When doubts and worries do enter the picture, they’re warped and bent into curious forms for Barnett’s own amusement. The serious sharp stabs of the real world are rendered blunt and ridiculous, but somehow maintain an underlying air of solemnity that can take you by surprise. In one strip a chicken loses its feathers, and to add insult to injury the errant plumage refuses to return to its owner, “I’m moving on”, say the feathers. It’s a funny little gag, but it could just as easily be read as a poignant tale of betrayal. It all depends on what angle you come at it from.

Barnett gives us occasional flashes of her full artistic potential. In I'd sure like some fucking pancakes there’s a particularly striking dream sequence based around killing a unicorn. The sketchy, lifelike art is far more accomplished than anything that precedes it, and again it marks a more thoughtful, even melancholly moment amidst otherwise light hearted content. It’s also worth noting that the painted cover of Secret Weirdo displays a remarkably different artistic style to Barnett's interior pages. The exterior of her mini comic is impressionistic and detailed, whilst the interior harkens back to her rougher, more immediate line work. Interior and exterior here are presented as two very different things, and I imagine they’re just as wildly divergent as Barnett’s daily surface level experiences and her own personal inner world.

It would be easy to write Barnett's work off as 'cute' or 'amateurish', but personally, I think there’s a lot more to her strange world of goldfish, cats and featherless birds than first meet the eye.

You can check out more of Lauren’s comics here. Give her a look.

The eye of every storm - Von Allan's 'The Road to God Knows...'

Von Allan’s debut graphic novel The Road to God Knows deals with the author’s experiences of growing up with a mother suffering from schizophrenia. Instead of taking the tried and tested route of straight autobiography, Allan has chosen to create a work of fiction that's closely informed by his own experiences. Casting the 13 year old Marie as his lead allows him a certain distance from his subject matter, and whilst this is clearly a highly personal book, it benefits greatly from this approach. Never once did I find myself gritting my teeth because the book was overwrought or too self obsessed.

By using Marie as his main vehicle, Alan limits the amount of information the reader has access to, keeping the emphasis very much on Marie’s world as she perceives it. Events and experiences are all magnified though the lens of adolescence, making the emotional turmoil that Marie faces all the more immediate. As a result, The Road to God Knows is a focused yet strangely blinkered reading experience; we never learn the full extent of Marie’s mother’s illness, nor are we privy to any of the medical ins and outs of her schizophrenia. It might have been beneficial to gain some deeper insight into the mental disorder that sits at the heart of the book, but in many ways, this is very much in keeping with Marie’s perspective, focusing squarely on the social and emotional fallout that begins to spill over into her everyday life.


Setting out how a thirteen year girl deals with the ramifications of her mother's schizophrenia is a difficult task in itself, and Allan takes an even handed, almost observational approach, sketching out events but rarely delving beneath the surface to reveal the inner workings of his characters. The overriding impression is that even Marie doesn’t fully comprehend the extent of her mother’s condition, only that her life is very different to that of her peers.

Reading The Road to God Knows is a little like sitting in the eye of a storm, gazing out at the damage and debris that surrounds you, yet safe in the knowledge that you’re momentarily sheltered from the destructive forces responsible. We’re privy to the impact that Marie’s mother’s schizophrenia has on her life, but very rarely do we see the storm itself. In all but a few key scenes everything is internalised, and this has as much to do with her mother’s private battle with her own demons, as it does with Marie’s ability to fully process the events occurring around her. What's good is that Allan leaves more than enough space for you to draw your own conclusions, resisting the temptation to hammer home his message with the blunt implements of cheap melodrama and tragedy.

In Marie’s world simple joys become precious to the point of obsession. She seeks solace in wrestling magazines and televised matches. Her fascination with the wrestling duo The Northern Rockers serves as both an escapist fantasy and a symbol of her sexual awakening. When, early on in the book, she learns that her wrestling heroes are due to pass through town, getting the cash together to attend the event becomes a driving force in her life. Wrestling and her close friends are the grounding forces that tether Marie to something approaching a balanced existence.

It’s interesting to note that Allan chooses wrestling as a focal point for Marie. It's one which serves as both a cultural calling card for the 80s as well as a fitting metaphor for the book’s subject matter. Wrestling, after all, is a sport that deals in split personalities; the high theatre of the 'on stage' alter ego vs. the normal person who exists outside the ring. Wrestling here seems to function as a sanitised socially accepted form of conflict, providing a stark contrast to the domestic unrest that Marie has to face in her day to day life. In the end it’s wrestling that offers a salvation of sorts, an affirmation that Marie can lead a normal life, indulging in the same pastimes that regular teenagers do. Her future is left wide open, riddled with uncertainty, but not without the spectre of hope looming just over the horizon.


The Road to God Knows depicts the all too common battle of getting from A to B under difficult circumstances, clinging all the while to every remaining thread of normality. The book feels like a small piece of a far larger history, and much like being granted a fleeting glimpse into someone else’s life, it’s an all too brief examination of a series of incredibly complex social issues. Historically, mental illness has been a subject that’s frequently discussed in hushed tones, and despite its brevity The Road to God Knows gets its point across with clarity and conviction.

Although Allan’s work still has hints of the fledgling artist to it, this is solid stuff. His style of clear line art, coloured with soft watercolours is more than capable of carrying his story, and with the exception of some slightly ill considered page layouts and a few instances of exaggerated body language his art gets the job done. If anything, it's his characters facial expressions that let him down, veering from slightly wooden to too overstated. Admittedly, these are fairly minor quirks, quirks that will no doubt be ironed out as Allan continues to develop as a cartoonist.

Taken as a whole, this is a strong debut told with unflinching honesty and a genuine desire to educate.

You can download The Road to God Knows as a free PDF here, or alternately it can be purchased from Amazon should you wish to show your support. More information on Von Allan can be found on his website here.

Review by Matthew Dick.

Best of 2009 - Comics and Music

My end of year lists always end up being a bit skewed because I’ll invariably read a lot of the best stuff the year had to offer after the year is out. Sure, if I had more free time, then maybe my list would read a little different, who knows. In any case, here’s a run down of the comics I’ve enjoyed in 2009.

I’ve also included my top 10 albums, should you require some aural accompaniment to go with your comics. Plus, I’m sick to the teeth of reading piss weak ‘best of the decade’ album lists that suggest a further atrophy of the collective musical consciousness, culminating in a revisionist orgy whereby Joy Division and The Beach Boys are repeatedly gang raped by contemporary musicians.

Hold that image in your mind and have a great 2010!

COMICS









1. Asterios Polyp by David Mazzucchelli
2. Phonogram: The Singles Club (ongoing) by Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie
3. Grandville by Bryan Talbot
4. King City (reprints) by Brandon Graham
5. Self Indulgence by Tom Neely
6. Criminal (ongoing) by Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips
7. Uptight #3 by Jordan Crane
8. Parker: The Hunter by Darwyn Cooke / Richard Stark
9. Freakangels by Warren Ellis
10. Pluto by Umezawa x Tezuka

MUSIC









1. Six Organs of Admittance - Luminous night
2. Silver Bullets - Free radicals
3. Oneothrix Point Never - Rifts
4. Holy Sons - Criminal’s return
5. Eagle Twin - The unkindness of crows
6. James Blackshaw - The glass bead game
7. Emeralds - S/T
8. Eleh / Nana June - Observations and momentum
9. Current 93 – Aleph at hallucinatory mountain
10. Sunn O))) – Monoliths and Dimensions

Christmas Singles - The Kieron Gillen Interview

Kieron Gillen spent his formative years working as a video game and music journalist. Somewhere around the turn of the Millennium he began writing comics, earning his stripes churning out short strips for Warhammer Monthly as well as Playstation Magazine UK. He forged a partnership with British artist Jamie McKelvie and made what he terms his 'real comics' debut with Phonogram: Rue Britannia, a pop music urban fantasy centred around the decline of Britpop.

This was soon followed by a companion series 'Phonogram: The Singles Club' in 2009. The Singles Club ranks amongst the finest serialised comics to appear this year, presenting an inventive interconnected series of stories exploring personal experience as filtered through popular music. At its core lies a simple, near self explanatory tag line: 'music is magic', and if you're a music lover yourself, I shouldn't need to offer any further explanation. Most of you will have come to Phonogram with an intrinsic understanding that music is so much more than simply songs on a silver disc.

Music is a means of communication, a rite of passage, a companion, a spell to be worked.

Music is a powerful personal experience that's unique to you.

If this all rings in your ears like the hallucinatory ramblings of some misguided coked up oracle, preaching from the urine soaked stalls of an indie club, then perhaps it's time you experienced Phonogram for yourself.

See you on the other side dear reader...

The following interview was conducted at Though Bubble Comic Convention in Leeds on 21 November 2009.

---

Exquisite Things: I’m very fond of the episodic nature of The Singles Club. Each issue stands alone as a single self contained story. A friend recently pointed out that the issues could be read in practically any order, yet still hang together as a cohesive whole. They’re like little self contained universes, miniature personal histories; powerful experiences all bundled into a 32 page comic. How did you first come up with the idea for The Singles Club?

Kieron Gillen: Interesting question... I think we wanted to take a drastically different approach with The Singles Club. As much as I still love Rue Britannia, the first arc of Phonogram, I wanted to get away from the fact that it was essentially 'David Kohl's Britpop adventures'. We never really wanted to be a 'Britpop comic'. We wanted Phonogram to be a comic about music, not just Britpop. So, instead of having just one key character whose perception dominated the whole thing, we decided we'd have seven different characters, spread across seven issues.

Instead of doing a comic that was retro, or about the concept of retro, we decided to make it as narrow as we could. We wanted to give it a contemporary feel, and to explore all the different ways in which music can be magic. So we set the whole thing in the same location, on the same night, and decided to switch perspectives from character to character every issue.

I think I've wanted to do something like The Singles Club ever since I was nineteen. The seeds of the idea were planted when a girlfriend asked me to write her a story, and I think I only ever got about half of it done, but it was about five people in a pub. The central premise of the things was to tell five distinct stories, all happening in the same place at the same time. I think it was the potential for different perspectives that most appealed to me. You can set things up from different viewpoints, pose questions like 'why did that character run out of the pub?'

Of course it would later transpire that the character was hallucinating... completely convinced his cheese sandwich was about to eat him.

Exquisite Things: Hah, that's great...

Keiron Gillen: I think the opening line was, "he became increasingly convinced the cheese sandwich was about to eat him". Something along those lines...

So, we ended up using a similar approach for The Singles Club, and if you're talking in terms of the bigger picture, the comic's all about subjectivity. It's about each individual's own personal response to music. That's why every issue is a stand alone entity. When you read the first few issues you begin to realise that the story's all about subjectivity...

Exquisite Things: It's about giving people limited information and then filling in the gaps.

Kieron Gillen: Yes, exactly.

Exquisite Things: I was stuck by the way it's possible to completely misinterpret events in the first issue because you're only seeing things from one person's point of view.

Kieron Gillen: It's like asking someone 'what was the gig like?' The idea that any gig is either good or bad is just a bit ludicrous, because it's an individual experience. There's an example of this in Rue Britannia where Kohl is talking about the landmark Oasis gig at Knebworth, but there never was a 'crowd', it was just a collection of individuals. Although, that said, I'm kinda coming back around the concept of crowds but in a different way. I may even do a story about that eventually... but generally speaking, crowds are never really crowds. That's what I'm interested in.

There were also some very sensible and practical reasons that we structured The Singles Club the way we did. Not all comic shops order Phonogram and not all shops end up getting every issue. Half the time, you never really know if you're going to get another issue or not, so at least this way we ensure that readers can pick up any issue and still get a full experience. If you only get issues one, four and seven, you can still start reading at issue four because each issue is a stand alone story. But every subsequent issue you read after that will change your experience of that issue.

It's a unit of culture... It's sensible decisions and stupid decisions working together in harmony.

Exquisite Things: I’ve got to admit, when Phonogram first hit the shelves with Rue Britannia I was a little put off by how closely it was tied to Britpop. You see, I grew up with heavy metal, so I never really felt connected to that particular scene. To begin with, I just assumed that all the indie music references would go straight over my head, but soon realised it wasn't essential to enjoying the book.

Regardless of the bands you reference, I still found a universal red thread that appealed to the music lover in me. In The Singles Club I could relate to Penny in issue one, I could relate to her passion for music. Sure, 'Pull Shapes' by The Pippettes doesn't do an awful lot for me, but what was great was that it didn’t really matter. The experiences you draw on are universal to music lovers regardless of taste.

What I'm trying to say is that Phonogram seems to be all about the human experience as filtered through music, that rare transcendental state that only music can provide. Is that pretty much where you’re coming from?

Kieron Gillen: Music's only really interesting in terms of what goes on inside of your head, as in the internalisation of that art form. We're not really interested in bands very much at all. What goes on in the studio is infinitely less interesting than what happens when the sound comes out of a speaker and hits your ear drum. That's what's important to us, it's the core of the book really.

Some people quite literally turn off at the band references, and I don't think it's because they don't get the references, I think sometimes people literally can't read past that. They only see the band name, they're incapable of taking a step back and accepting a references for what it is. An example. The reason we chose to use real bands was to imply that Phonogram wasn't purely fantasy, we could have just made up bands but it wouldn't have had the same impact. Using real bands allowed us to join them to real people's responses to music. We're not just talking about some magical hypothetical bands, I'm talking about Blondie. It's about how music can change your life if you let it. The transformative nature of art and music is very much part of that landscape.

Exquisite Things: As I mentioned earlier, Rue Britannia is tied very strongly to the Britpop era and despite my ambivalence towards that period, you managed to make the music scene of the mid 90s live and breathe in a very convincing manner. Now that Britpop's tombstone finally has a death date, bestowed by the long overdue breakup of Oasis, what are your thoughts on the legacy of Britpop?

Kieron Gillen: I wrote a piece in Plan B magazine, a story called Rue Britannia, which was a very cynical take on Britpop. It described Britpop as a 'cultural Hiroshima'. Yes, it was important, but it left burnt ashes in its wake. Sure, we should remember it, but not in any way try to do it again. There's a lot of that sentiment in Rue Britannia.

Exquisite Things: That idea of not looking back?

Kieron Gillen: Yes, but the comic softens that notion a bit. As in, it's not important for me, it's important for you. I think Britpop really destroyed the music scene in a lot of interesting ways. Then it simply upped and left and fucked up music, especially indie music, in a way that I don't think it's ever really recovered from in the UK. It's become acceptable to reminisce, but it's also about not forcing it down people's throats and coming to terms with the fact that it's done with. To quote kohl's last line in Rue Britannia, Britpop was "nothing important". In some ways it's about me coming to terms with that period and being able to admit that I quite liked Shed 7. I'm not embarrassed, I'm okay with that. It's okay! (Laughs)

Fuck it, it was enough to base a six issue story around. But yes, Britpop's legacy is what I'd term a 'cultural Hiroshima'. I mean Britpop basically started as a new wave art school pop revival and ended as bad stadium rock. It moved from 70s pop music to 60s pop music with the advent of Oasis, the brains were removed entirely and you were left with bad stadium rock. That whole side of it was the end for me. I stopped reading the NME in early 2000 but actually started reading it again lately and it's amazing how little their ideas have shifted since 1999.

The Libertines I think were the closet the UK indie scene came to regenerating itself. I'm not a fan by any means but they're the only thing post Britpop that's shifted the NME's ideas towards the music world at all. Britpop's legacy is a mainstream demi-indie culture that has generated the notion that recycling the Beatles is somehow inherently radical. It will get you airplay on the radio and now there's a career path for these losers. (Both laugh)

Exquisite Things: Little bit of anger there?

Kieron Gillen: Yeah, I guess so.

Exquisite Things: Actually, something I just had to ask is about the date that The Singles Club takes place on. The 23rd of December 2006, cause, strangely enough, it turns out that one of my friends was at a Pipettes' show that very night, dancing to "Pull Shapes" with the best of them. Does that date hold any significance for you?

I was in that night. Never on a Sunday, the club in which The Singles Club takes place, is actually based on a real club in Bristol called Lipstick on your collar. I didn't go to the show, I should have gone. I sat at home and imagined it. I wanted to set the comic at the end of 2006. It's a subtle thing, we actually had an alternative title, which was 'The Christmas Singles' or 'Christmas Single', which fits it in a different light .The Singles Club is almost like the alternative to a Christmas single.

Exquisite Things: Why 2006?

Kieron Gillen: It was as contemporary as we could make it. I had to set it in a certain place, and much of the inspiration for those stories happened in 2006. It was a bit of a brutal year for me, with a lot of emotional energy.

Exquisite Things: There's something quite raw about issue 5, it leaves you feeling a little on edge.

Kieron Gillen: I listened to too many Long Blondes records that issue! I think there's a kind of gas that comes off them... great band.

Exquisite Things: Yep. Kate Jackson, total minx.

Kieron Gillen: Yeah. You know, I actually split up with my girlfriend that year. We had long blondes tickets and it was pretty much the week after we split up, so we decided we'd go to the gig and be civil. Although what I'd meant to say was "I can't go with you it'd be weird', so I tried to work out how I could say that without being a cunt. Basically there was no way round it, so that was the cost; I never saw the Long Blondes live ever. So one of the costs of the break up was the long blondes gig and all the emotional baggage that came with it.

So, to come back to the point. I liked the idea of setting it just before Christmas, but no one ever mentions Christmas in the book. That the point...

Exquisite Things: I'd never even really twigged that it was set just before Christmas...

Kieron Gillen: That's it. It's the idea that any other fiction set around Christmas play up to that... 'Oh my, maybe Santa Claus will appear'. It's the exact antithesis of every fucking Christmas episode of any given series. Whilst everyone else is out shopping, these people are going out clubbing and dancing to pop music and obsessing over it. They're creating their own subjective realities and Christmas has nothing to do with that, it doesn't even register. But broadly speaking it just had to be set in 2006.

Exquisite Things: That's interesting because I constantly find myself thinking ‘where next for Phonogram?’ It’s so open ended that you could veer off in any number of different directions, any number of different eras. Have you considered exploring other areas or particular styles of music?

Personally, I'm really fascinated by the early 80s 'Industrial' scene, pardon the term. For starters, it’s a quintessentially British musical movement, and it caused more than enough commotion at the time to be interesting. I guess the music being produced mirrored the social unrest of Thatcher’s Britain, which is fascinating in itself. There’s an almost mythical, maybe even mystical status surrounding bands like Coil and TG, which seems to fit well into the Phonogram ascetic. Jhonn Balance, Peter ‘Sleazy’ Christopherson, Genesis… all phonomancers if you ask me. Hell, when Coil released 'Time Machines' John Balance casually commented that the album was intended to ‘dissolve time’.

Would you be interested in exploring other scenes or eras of music in Phonogram?

Kieron Gillen: I'd love to do it. I mean, I'd really like to read that comic, but I'm not sure that I'm the one to write it. With Phonogram, I know every single detail, because I'm drawing from my own experience. For instance, I'd love to do something about Hip-Hop, but it would be a case of looking at it from the perspective of say someone growing up in a rural community in the UK and coming into contact with the music of the The Wu Tang clan, the kind of impact that would have. For me, I really have to have some experiences, or the experiences of close friends to draw from.

I think there's still a lot of territory we could explore with Phonogram but this it's unlikely we'll continue after The Singles Club. Sadly, I think this may be the last series of Phonogram you'll ever see.

Exquisite Things: Sorry to hear that. It would be a real shame to see it end with the current run.

Kieron Gillen: Yes, yes it would, but Jamie and I didn't exactly eat well when we were doing Phonogram and we only just managed to make ends meet. Our sales have remained steady but they haven't grown from the first book to the second. Ideally we'd love to do two more story arcs, but right now I just don't see it happening.

Hypothetically, I'd like to do something about feminine identity and 80s pop music, looking at reality from that perspective. Then, I'd also like to look at what kohl was up to between 1991-1994. After that I think I'd be getting a bit too old to be writing Phonogram. I think you need to be really bang on with the characterisation to make it work. Writing people in their late teens actually scares the living shit out of me. I'm fine with structure and plotting, that just requires a bit of thinking, but actually writing teenagers without being fucking offensive, that's a hard thing to do. No one's ever said anything about it being wrong so far, and that makes me very happy.

So, that was our initial plan. Four solid albums and then maybe a B-Sides and rarities collection, much like the Smiths. After the fourth volume we'd hand Phonogram over to other artists to writers and let them do their own Phonogram stores. You know New York Mech?

Exquisite Things: Yeah.

Kieron Gillen: Outside the regular comic they did two anthologies, and got a load of friends to do stories. We'd be looking to do the same, just spin it off and allow others to explore different aspects of the Phonogram universe. It's always been about individual experiences, so it would be great to see other people inject their own into a Phonogram story.

Exquisite Things: Moving away from your work on Phonogram for the moment, you recently landed a gig at Marvel writing Thor and Dark Avengers: Ares. Congratulation on that. How have you found adjusting from writing creator owned material to such a high profile superhero comic like Thor?

Kieron Gillen: Loving it. It's like using a different part of my brain. I tend to write Phonogram drunk and then edit it heavily. With the Marvel stuff I take a far more clinical approach. I think very carefully about the characters, what they're going to do and what emotions might result from that. I'm enjoying it a lot, it's the challenge of it that I really enjoy. It's not like I've gone to Marvel and said, can I pitch X or Y character. I try not to think about other people's character unless they ask me too, because thinking about characters you don't own is a waste of time. You may not be able to do anything with those stories.

Exqusite Things: I guess there's always the danger of the 'the big reset button', which will invariably be pushed at some point...

Kieron Gillen: The reset button doesn't actually bother me all that much, it's the fact that if I waste time thinking about a Superman story, firstly it's a story I may never get to tell and secondly, it's stopping me thinking about other stuff. So, I try and stay focused on those things I actually control or work on things that I'm given. For instance, with Marvel it's normally like "any ideas of Ares? We want to do an Ares mini, got any ideas?". Then my mind starts working. What would I do with Ares? What's the character about? What would interest the readers, and what would interest me? You have to think about both sides of the equation, if you don't do one there's no audience, if you don't do the other you'll end with a book that's no good. If you don't do both you end up with a book no one will give a toss about.

With Ares, the interesting aspect for me was taking a character who represents the personification of an age of war which is pretty much dead. It's the core idea that in combat you'd be standing eye to eye with your foe, even soldiers these days don't get that close.

Exquisite Things: As opposed to today's modern warfare that's frequently fought at a safe distance?

Kieron Gillen: Yes. Take Athena, she was the god of pressing buttons. Ares was the god of pulling out eyes. I think we should be glad that age of war is over, it was fairly brutal. So, I see Ares as the personification of that age, and I thought it might be interesting to pit him against the modern military. The second aspect of the character I wanted to tackle was his desire to change. He's got a relationship with his son, but it's a tricky thing. He obviously cares about him deeply but what does that mean? How can the personification of essentially 'a really bad attitude' build a relationship with his son? These are the kind of questions that interest me.

The thought process is all about sitting down and dissecting the emotional make up of your cast, that's the angle I come at it from. In the process, you also discover a lot about yourself and why you're doing it. So far it's been an incredible job that I've really enjoyed doing. The pay's good and I actually thrive on the pressure of working to deadlines. I've been a journalist for ages so it's almost second nature now.

Exquisite Things: I wanted to ask you about the comics industry in general, more specifically about the distribution of comics. In recent times we’ve begun to see a gradual shift towards comics using digital distribution systems. Although we’re nowhere near the kind of paradigm shift the music industry has undergone, we are slowly beginning witness some changes. With the advent of systems like Longbox how do you see online comics distribution panning out over the coming years? In other words, in five years time do you think there'll still be a market for pamphlet style comics?

Kieron Gillen: I wouldn't be foolish enough to try and predict the way things might go.

Exquisite Things: But in terms of your own experience, how do you see things going? You mentioned earlier that Phonogram likely won't have a third series because of financial pressures.

Kieron Gillen: Not in singles anyway. Phonogram might be the last great single issue comic. The final issue's going to be incredible, we've really gone to town on it. We'll go out with a big a big 'Fuck You'! And goodnight!

In the final issue everything explodes! (both laugh)

Exquisite Things: Pyrotechnics! Fist pumping adrenaline!

Kieron Gillen: Exactly! Good evening Leeds! Are you read to ROCK? ... No... no you're not... there's only four of you here. Shit...

Exquisite Things: The whole crowd stood with folded arms, looking fashionably disinterested.


Kieron Gillen: Anyhow, where were we? Ah, yes, online distribution. I think it will really help the 'mid list' comics. I think a lot of indy books will have real trouble selling in floppies, and floppies for all intents and purposes are really an extended advert for the trade. There are definitely areas where there's no reason not to go online, backed up by a printed collections. With Phonogram, if we were actually making enough money off the trade just to sustain it, that would be fine. On the other hand, we put a lot of effort into the floppies.

Exquisite Things: I guess it comes back to the 'back matter' as Warren Ellis termed it. Those mini essays at the back of each issue really add a lot to the book. We've seen it with Fell, Casanova, Criminal, and these are the comics that people who care about quality pick up.

Kieron Gillen: Yes, but the problem with that theory is that it makes very little difference to us, commercially speaking. We put in all the effort creating the comic, but the audience has remained exactly the same. We've analysed this for years, and the wierd thing about it is that we sold about 4000 of the first issue of The Singles Club but Suburban Glamour's first issue sold 6000, despite the fact that Phonogram sold so many more in trade than Suburban Glamour.

So why is that? It would be safe to assume that a great many shops simply didn't up their orders, or that they didn't care or simply weren't paying attention. All the effort we put in doesn't really fucking matter. The thing is, back matter is great, lots of people like it but I don't think it sells comics. I feel good doing it and people who buy the book get more out of it as a result. However, I don't think it has the slightest bit of impact on how many copies shops order us.

Exquisite Things: It's very much down to shops acknowledging and recognising quality, then actively promoting that to their customers. You don't see that everywhere. There are a few shop that do it but it's the exception rather than the rule.

Kieron Gillen: There are a lot of wonderful shops out there that have been very supportive, but there are just as many that simply don't care. I just think the general trend that we'll see emerging will be singles as an art object. You'll be selling to those people who want an art curio. I think singles will continue for some time yet because people like the object, it's how they like to buy comics. If you're on the web you're not creating an object.

Saying that, I do hope Longbox is a success because our biggest problem is distribution. Some people who want Phonogram simply can't get hold of it. If people can just click a button, well, that breaks down a lot of barriers. Equally, web to print is very interesting. People in a load of shops tell me that Freakangels is Warren's best selling trade at Avatar.

Exquisite Things: Somehow that doesn't surprise me. It's an interesting model, if people like an online comic most of them will shell out for the hard copy collection. Sure, web comics are accessible to everyone at no cost, but there's still that desire to own the tangible product. I'm still like that with it comes to buying music.

Kieron Gillen: It's interesting to look at the long term on these things. I have a lot of friends who do webcomics and it's intriguing to compare what they're doing with traditional cartoonists. They're used to getting paid for the work they do, but with webcomics there's no immediate pay out. It's all about the merchandising. People who do webcomics are quite happy being businessmen, where as old school comic artists are more than content to just be artists. This is where the problem arises, if creators aren't particularly business minded, they'll never ever do web comics.

Take someone like Bill Watterson, creator of Calvin and Hobbes, we'll never see anyone like that emerge through web comics. Never. He believed that any merchandising detracted from the work, it just didn't appeal to him on any level. Evolution doesn't necessarily imply direction, it's just what's happening right now and that's the problem with the web comics model.

You need to be doing a certain type of comic for it to work on the web. There needs to be a certain critical mass or saturation point for it to work and not everything is suited to the web. If social trends continue to change over the next ten years maybe people will become increasingly disinterested in physical collections. It's hard to predict how things will go, but if people do stop buying books, then that's one source of income that dries up for writers and artists.

Exquisite Things: Finally, to round things up in true Phonogram fashion, what's been on heavy rotation on your stereo?

Kieron Gillen: End of year so I always try to do some manner of list. I'm back into the xx album. I went through a worrying obsession over Florence & The Machine. I like the Pains of being Pure at Heart a lot.

Indie nonsense, basically. Same as it ever was.

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Interview by Matthew Dick, 2009. More information on Phonogram can be found here. Kieron Gillen's workblog lives here, Jamie McKelvie's is here.