Phonogram ends on a treatise about growing up

 Earlier this year, I read the first two of the three volumes of Phonogram by Kieron Gillen, a comic book about music and magic. I finally got the third volume and finished reading the series. 

Upfront, the series absolutely peaked at the second volume, The Singles Club. But the Singles Club is a high water mark, one of those comic books you use to convince non-comic book readers to read a comic book and to prove that comic books are real literature. However, The Immaterial Girl was still a strong finish.

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Phonogram is set in a world exactly like ours, except some people are able to use music to perform magic. How much is it like our world? All of the literally hundreds of musical references are for real acts. Fortunately, there is also a detailed and snarky  appendix at the end of each volume, explaining all the references. That said. I honestly think the actual stories are clear and easy to follow, even if you don't know who 75% of the artists are.

The magic phonomancers use is much less flying and fireballs and much more about redefining yourself and influencing other people. Really, its really just describing how so many of us use music couched in magical terms. Heck, the Singles Club could be revised to remove all the phonomancy elements and still be just as strong.

The third volume focuses on reoccurring character Emily/Claire. She used phonomancy to basically split her personality in half, exiling the one half to a world of music videos. The conflict in the story is the banished half fighting back and  how the two halves ultimately reconcile.

 

And it's good plot. Like the first volume, it has some definite influences from Garthg Ennis's first run on Hellblazer but that is not a bad thing at all. But that's not what I took away from the Immaterial Girl.

Virtually every phonomancer is an arrogant, self-centered poser. More than that, that seems to be pretty much a requirement.  (The one exception is Kid-With-Knife, who is, at best, a phonomancer by association and who we only see use magic once. Honestly, I think the point of the character is that he's comfortable with who he is and doesn't have any need for phonomancy) The Immaterial Girl is about the passing of an era, the cyclic nature of social behavior and just plain growing up.

Gillen uses the death of Michael Jackson as a powerful end of an era moment. A point where the older characters realize that its time to start acting like a grownup. And when the younger characters start taking over and look to be doing the same darn thing. The moral of The immaterial Girl is kind of obvious, growing up is rough but it sure beats remaining an immature brat, but its still true and it does a good job telling it.

Now that I have seen Phonomancer as a whole piece, its good all the way through.