Jamie McKelvie knows what it means to be bored, and more importantly, what it is to dream. McKelvie, who is perhaps best known for his work on Phonogram with Kieron Gillen, has recently released the first issue of Suburban Glamour, his long-awaited solo project.
Suburban Glamour follows British teens Astrid and Dave as they leave their humdrum lives after receiving a warning from Astrid’s imaginary friends that something is coming. The four-issue series, published by Image, explores Astrid and Dave’s relationship with the real world that bores them, the fantasy world they had long ago abandoned and a series of mysteries yet to be unraveled, all through the unique look that has garnered much attention for McKelvie.
PWCW: Was there any adjustment in moving to a solo book after Phonogram?
Jamie McKelvie : I think it's a lot more organic for me. There’s no division between the writing and the drawing because they both exist together in my head, if that makes any sense.
PWCW : Suburban Glamour has been described as “the story of one boy, one girl, one band and two worlds,” or “Blue Monday meets Labyrinth." How does the dream world reflect and interact with the real world, and did you try to create a kind of fantasy feel that embodies films such as Labyrinth?
JM : This is a difficult one to answer without giving too much of the plot away!
I was definitely influenced by that period of filmmaking, though. There were a lot of great films with a similar feel around then—Labyrinth, Goonies, even The Princess Bride. I guess it's that whole desire to believe in something other than reality as we see it.
The imaginary friends Astrid sees in the first issue were fun, though. They’re the product of six-year-old-Astrid's mind, so they're a little different to the rest of the stuff that shows up later.
PWCW : Do Astrid's imaginary friends and the mysteries she encounters later relate to her feelings of boredom in her hometown?
JM : Again, this is a difficult one to answer without revealing too much, but definitely I'd say the whole story carries a certain amount of metaphor for that. It's about that point in your life where you realize you have to figure out what you're going to do with it, and who you are—those choices are maybe made a bit more physical for Astrid than for most people, thanks to the fantasy element of the story
PWCW : Astrid is a fairly interesting heroine in that she thus far doesn't have a quest in the typical sense of the word, a fairly standard attribute for most heroes.
JM : I think with a story like this it's important to ground the "real world" aspects as much as possible, to give the fantasy something to play off. So I tried to make the characters and their surroundings as real as possible, which often involved drawing on my experience of growing up in smalltown Britain. The characters are either people I know or amalgams of people I know. I spent the first issue building a picture of their real lives, so that when the crazy stuff kicks off in issue two, it feels more real. So it's important that Astrid feels like a real person, not somebody on a mythic quest.
PWCW : Growing up in a small town in Britain, did you share any of Astrid's growing pains?
JM : Oh, absolutely. The book is pretty much me working out my own experiences, but with all that monster stuff thrown in, too. It took me about a year after I came up with the idea of the book to realize that's what I was doing. What I wanted to do with my life and what everyone else wanted or expected me to do were two very different things.
PWCW : How would you say Suburban Glamour is different from Phonogram?
JM : It's a lot more easy to understand! Phonogram's a very intense book, which makes sense as it's about a very intense subject. This book isn't trying to be the same book—I'm just trying to tell a fun story, hopefully with a little meaning attached.
PWCW : Your characters are rather stylishly drawn, with a particular attention to detail regarding clothes, tattoos and piercing, very much influenced by fashion and subculture trends.
JM : Yeah, definitely. Comics can be a very inward-looking medium at times, which makes me sad because it's capable of being something that reflects other aspects of pop culture. So designwise, I look to music, graffiti, any modern art outside of comics to inspire me. For the characters, as teenagers the clothes they wear are very strong badges of identity. It adds a layer to their character that doesn't need to be spelled out by dialogue or exposition. That, in turn, is influenced by the subculture they belong to and the music they listen to.
PWCW : You mentioned that you’ve improved as an artist in the last two years. Would you care to elaborate on how you think you’ve grown?
JM : I think I'm becoming looser, more organic. I'm better at expressions, movement, things like that.
PWCW: In his Bad Signal e-mail newsletter, Warren Ellis described you as one of the major new talents of the decade. How does such high praise impact you?
JM : I tell the old man to stop talking such rubbish. (laughs) No, Warren's been a really great supporter, ever since Phonogram. I doubt I'd be doing as well as I am now without his backing.
