Let’s be upfront about something: Phonogram is not an easy comic. By “easy,” I mean it’s not the kind of comic where you can pick up on everything just by scanning the pages and reading a few choice lines of dialog. No, Phonogram requires more than that from its readers and, perhaps, more clearly in this issue than ever before, more than that from its creators.

Jamie McKelvie is a fantastic artist and I’m happy to see that he’s starting to get more exposure and work for the Big Two. He’s so great, in fact, that there are certain issues in this series that feel more like “McKelvie” issues, where the art actually manages to overshadow the story--that’s praise for the art, not an indictment on the writing. But while the art in Phonogram is as great as always, this is clearly a “Gillen” issue.

This issue is so much a part of Kieron Gillen, I’d go so far as to say that the central character is Kieron Gillen, or at least was him at some point in his life.

The character in question is Laura Heaven. On the surface, she is the wallflower of this series, the Robin to whichever Batman happens to present his or her self. She is just a mask with no real identity. Instead, she creates a façade through pop music, specifically the songs of the band Long Blondes. She uses their music, their lyrics, and even their on stage persona as a screen in front of her, because it allows her to feel both more and less connected to the people around her.

And who hasn’t been there? That’s the true beauty of Laura Heaven’s story--it’s universal. It’s also timeless, in that it’s not an aspect of life that’s relegated to a certain period. Sure, I probably spent the majority of my adolescence quoting grunge bands, but even now, years later, I still find myself so enamored with certain bands that their music begins to speak for me, even if I don’t ask it to--and that’s the appeal of Laura Heaven. It would be easy to dismiss her as having no sense of self, of being a cipher, but at a certain point you begin to realize that perhaps that’s not entirely her fault. At a certain point you wonder if she has power over the music, or if the music has power over her.

In the always-essential-back-matter of this issue, Gillen mentions that music played a significant role in his life in 2006, and that Long Blondes, in particularly, took center stage. Given that this story is narrated by Laura Heaven, that she is constantly quoting songs, and that the core of Phonogram is the literal and metaphorical magic of music, it’s impossible to read this issue and not see it as a glimpse of Gillen’s life during that year.

As with every issue of Phonogram: The Singles Club, there’s a back-up story. This one involves a caper and ska and, well, I loathe ska. It has to do with the whole “punk scene vs. ska scene” thing that happened in the '90s and, I’m sure, will be included in my Phonogram: America pitch I’ll eventually send to Gillen and McKelvie after they’ve taken over the publishing world. It’s perfectly fine, as far as six page back-up stories go.

If it sounds like Phonogram is complicated and layered, that’s because it is. The idea of music as magic is a great one, but one that could easily go wrong. It’s a concept that could become either trite or pretentious, depending upon how it’s handled. And while I’m sure others have accused Gillen and McKelvie of doing both, I think they’ve managed to walk that fine line between complexity and potency, between the head and the heart.

Phonogram is great comics and more people should take the plunge into its world, because there’s nothing else like it.

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