Posted in: Comics | Tagged: Comics, entertainment, phonogram

Phonogram Just Beat Me Up With Its Pipe Wrench

This week saw the return of Phonogram from Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie, with a round of publicity to back it all up.

I was talking about Phonogram: Immaterial Girl #1 to a fellow comic book reader in London yesterday, in their twenties. And so happy to buy the most recent issue of the series. And seemed fully up on many of its references… but not on the final video scene.

I have to say I was dumbstruck. Apparently the video for A-Ha's Take On Me isn't known by every single person in every single part of the planet anymore. And I'm sure at one point it was.

This was the video,

This was Family Guy's recreation of it.

This was Harry Hill's sausage-obsessed version for Children In Need (look out for TV's new Lucifer in the cafe)

And this is Phonogram's.

It seems remarkable that while a number of videos have ripped it off, comics haven't – despite the scene totally focusing on a fictitious (and strangely wordless and decompressed) comic book.

Also note censored swearing inside an eighties TV music video… as opposed to other uses of that word elsewhere in the comic book.

 Intriguingly, it's not just a reference to the original video…

but also focuses on aspects higlighted in the literal video version, the video that started all literal videos…

There are even T-shirts.

And it's all thanks to the work of Michael Patterson who animated the original video with 3000 original drawings, recruited for the job after a short film of his impressed many….

There's lots to love in the first issue of Phonogram. But special kudos for bringing the A-ha video back where it belongs, into comic books…. and to keep it going into issue 2!

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