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Phonogram: The Immaterial Girl #1

by: Tia Vasiliou

If music has ever made you feel powerful, you just might be a phonomancer.  At least, that’s the way of things in Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie’s Phonogram.  Music can literally be magic.  For a price…  

The Immaterial Girl follows Emily Aster, a woman whose wit is as sharp as her eyeliner thanks to her Faustian bargain with the god of music videos, to whom she traded half her personality for this power.  (Apropos of this, I think we can all agree that McKelvie is in fact the god of eyeliner.  See also: Leah of Hel, Young Avengers, and…well, pretty much everyone, The Wicked + The Divine.  What percentage of my personality can I trade you for some of this eyeliner game, Jamie?)  

Although Phonogram is about elitist music snobs, it is not exclusively for them, so don’t let that intimidate you.  If the more esoteric music references go over your head, there is a handy (and hilarious) glossary in the back, but Gillen doesn’t rely on them to tell the story.  Readers will be able to connect to Emily’s plight without prior knowledge of  “Babes of Suga, The.”  McKelvie gives his characters expressive faces and body language that tells the story as much as Gillen’s snappy dialogue, and colorist Matt Wilson sets a distinct tone in each scene, using an eerie, muted palette to indicate a step away from the more stark or saturated here and now.  

The Immaterial Girl will be the third volume of Phonogram.  The characters carry over, but each volume works as a standalone so new readers can [stage] dive right in.  Most recommend volume two, The Singles Club, as the best place to begin if you wanted to read back, but Rue Brittania is also well worth a read.  If you’re the type who waits for trades, you may want to make an exception here to take advantage of the excellent “B sides” (mini comics by guest creators) at the back of each issue, which are not collected in the trades.

[Read Phonogram: The Immaterial Girl #1 on comiXology]

Tia Vasiliou is a digital editor at ComiXology, a job she’s pretty sure she landed through some manner of phonomancy involving a Best of Queen album that was left in her car over a fortnight.

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