You don’t love music. You can’t love music. At least not as much as Penny B. does.
Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie launch the second Phonogram miniseries, The Singles Club, almost completely opposite of how they began the first one. The opening of Rue Britannia was loud, brash, rough and undeniably male-centric. David Kohl, Rue Britannia’s lead character, was all about sexual conquest through Brit pop. Kohl only makes a brief, one panel appearance in this new issue as teenage Penny B, another Phonomancer, takes center stage and acts as our all-to-cheerful and third-wall-breaking guide to a night at her favorite club. Joining Penny but not nearly as cheerful, at least never speaking to those of us in the audience like Penny does, is her best friend Laura, another Phonomancer specializing in… well, we never really find out as Penny doesn’t really know how to explain it. Penny’s specialty is dancing. She dances. Yeah, it may not sound like much but let’s just go with the flow for a bit here and remember that Penny B. is only nineteen and, as such, has the enthusiasms and emotions to go with her age.
If the first issue is any indication, The Singles Club is going to be a very different book than Rue Britannia was. To carry the musical theme of the book over to this review, Rue Britannia was the band’s first album produced on a shoe string budget and probably recorded in a garage in the middle of the night whenever the band could find time. Gillen and McKelvie’s enthusiasm is one of the strongest draws for Rue Britannia as they try to get everything on the page because who knew if there was ever going to be a second book. Rue Britannia is undeniably raw and that’s part of what made the book endearing if you lasted through to the end of it. Now they’re back with a sophomore effort and a larger budget. They’re the darlings of the ball that now can afford some production values and they don’t necessarily need to prove themselves to anyone. The low grade black and white artwork has been replaced by loud and bombastic color. Where the first book slowly seeped into your conscious, this one comes out with guns blazing and amps turned up to 11.
The problem is that with a larger budget and higher production values, a lot of sophomore albums just suck. The energy and vitality of the first albums are often lost to the success and effort to recreate something that only existed in a certain time and place. So is The Singles Club some crappy effort by guys who were once good or a fantastic evolution of what worked the first time around?
The Singles Club works because it’s much more inviting to the newbie than Rue Britannia ever was. David Kohl was superior to you and he made sure you knew it. You were never going to be invited into Kohl’s world; you needed to earn a place in it. Penny B. wants to be your friend; she wants to show you what it is to be a Phonomancer. It’s not that she’s nicer that makes The Singles Club a better book but it helps to get you into the book much easier than Kohl’s cool bravado ever did.
While Penny may seem friendlier and simpler, the world that she’s living in is the same and it bites as deeply as it did to Kohl in the first book. For all of Penny’s apparent goodness, she may be too good and too sweet for her world and the people around her as she’s shunned and ignored by the people she just wants to be with like her best friend or the cute boy that she’s always crushed on. The cruelty of the first mini is present in The Singles Club but Penny is either too naive or too strong to really notice it.
Going back the the musical analogies, The Singles Club #1 is a strong opening for this album. The team of Gillen and McKelvie open up with a colorful wall of sound that’s familiar to fans of their first outing but feels worlds away at the same time. The color and energy in this book are as friendly and inviting as Penny B, even if the world that’s being shown isn’t always a nice one. But that’s how it is; the world isn’t always nice but it’s nice to know that you always have your favorite songs to distract you and pull you into better places.
Phonogram: The Singles Club
“Pull Shapes”
Written by: Kieron Gillen
Drawn & Lettered by: Jamie McKelvie
Colored by: Matthew Wilson
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Tags: Jamie McKelvie, Kieron Gillen, Phonogram, Phonogram: The Singles Club, The Singles Club