In case you haven’t heard of it: http://www.phonogramcomic.com/blog/

Like many Unknown Armies fans, I’ve anticipated Phonogram ever since I heard of an upcoming comic about a dangerous, underground community of obsessive, postmodern magicians called “phonomancers”. I want to like this comic. I want it to be I-can’t-believe-it’s-not-licensed UA fiction. I’ll try not to let wish fulfillment color my opinions. That said, I did enjoy it, and I’m glad that my copy was the last on the shelf at my local comic store.

Phonogram: Without Your Permission opens with several extreme close-ups of David Kohl giving his outfit a final once-over. It proceeds to fling the reader by the hair into Kohl’s life and the world he lives in. Author Gillen McKelvie paints this world in broad strokes, implying more than he states and showing more than he tells. There are no expository text boxes and no “as you know, Bob” dialogue; McKelvie jumps into an expedient tableau of why this setting is cool and what happens in it. His style is amazingly exciting and fast-paced, especially for such jaded, superficial characters.

Phonogram tells the story of a narcissistic, womanizing hipster named David Kohl. Kohl is a phonomancer, a wizard who works magic through music. As a phonomancer, Kohl is part of a shadowy subculture of fellow music-mages within the British club scene. In Without Your Permission, Kohl attempts to meet with a fellow phonomancer whom he hasn’t met in person before at a feminist rock concert. There, he hits on a woman, complains about the music, wonders where his friend is, and acts quite mundane. Phonogram’s fantastical elements don’t appear until near the end, which I won’t give away.

This issue does not explore the specifics of phonomancy much. However, some things are clear: both examples of phonomantic spells in Without Your Permission concern emotional manipulation. One spell has ritual and symbolic trappings, but the other doesn’t. A character refers to symbolism as if it is magically important. The setting contains deities who can take human form. These deities can teach magic, but magic doesn’t appear to require a god’s aid.

These characters could easily have defeated Phonogram, but McKelvie narrowly escapes some easy mistakes. On the one hand, the sort of armchair philosophy and poetic wax that usually makes me groan riddles Without Your Permission. Nonetheless, McKelvie redeems his comic by making the dark, hip, edgy characters who do dark, hip edgy things into shallow assholes; the story is self-conscious enough to avoid pretension. McKelvie combines symbolism and pseudophilosophy with snappy, sarcastic dialogue, for an effect reminiscent of Sandman, had Daniel Clowes written it.

On the other hand, it sometimes seems that McKelvie’s self-consciousness goes overboard; thus far, there are no likeable characters, and McKelvie emphasizes nothing more than how much of a bastard our hero Kohl is. However, this is an obvious redemption story, especially since, in McKelvie’s “statement of intent,” (at the back of the book) he says that he loosely based the protagonist on himself.

There are a few problems. McKelvie’s storytelling becomes confusing at times, and many things didn’t make sense until the second read-through, although the first was still entertaining. The issue does have an obligatory scene featuring gratuitous exposed breasts and barely off-panel lesbian sex. (Why are there so many lesbians in “edgy” comics, and barely any gay men?) I probably would’ve enjoyed Without Your Permission more had it had just one likeable character, or showed some redeeming quality in the protagonist, instead of (hopefully) waiting for future issues. Nevertheless, the good definitely overshadows the bad.

Thus far, Phonogram finds a healthy balance between fantasy and reality through metaphor. In his statement of intent, McKelvie says that, through fantasy, he wants to explore the way music impacts our psyches and our culture. He wants the magic to refer to something real, and the real to refer to something magical. The way in which he blends the fantastical and the mundane seems reminiscent of Last Call, only with High Fidelity offering the mundane elements. This is the kind of fantasy I like to read, write, and play. Mckelvie’s is a noble ambition, and so far, he’s succeeded.