The other day, I’m in Gosh Comics in Bloomsbury, opposite the British Museum. I’m here to buy a specific comic, Peter Bagge’s Hate Annual, which is a mistake. Comic shops are places of luck and serendipity. If you’re after a particular comic, you have to second-guess when it’s going to arrive from the US, then ensure you visit the shop soon enough after, before the stock sells out. If it’s been out for a while, forget it. You have to be a real follower of that whole world, or risk losing out. Searching eBay or resorting to costly mail order from US publishers are the only remaining options. It’s all or nothing with comics.

Graphic novels and volumes collecting whole series, however, are a different matter entirely. They’re proper books with spines. They stay on the shelves for more than a few weeks. They can be found in libraries. And they appeal more to – well, I hesitate to say ‘real people’. But certainly to those who, while not feeling able to call themselves comic fans, do want to enjoy the ones they might enjoy.

I found myself discussing Alan Moore’s Watchmen in a pub the other day, inevitably turning to the subject of what a movie adaptation might be like. Like Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy, it’s one of those films that you hear is ‘in the pipeline’ on and off for years, even decades. And it’s always a double emotion if you’re a fan of the book. A Watchmen movie could only be brilliant, and it could only be awful. You want to say no, and yet you want to see what it’d be like. Just because.

There’s the sense that movie adaptations are the ultimate medium, that they’re the best thing to happen to a book or comic or play. This novel is so good, goes the thinking, that it’s even been made into a film. The real mark of success is a film adaptation. Which is of course, not true. It’s an illusion created by mass media. More people are involved, with more money, that’s all.

The sheer inevitability of the Harry Potter movies being made goes hand-in-hand with the equally predictable compromise: they can never be as good as the books, say the hardcore fans. The movies in this case are more like celebrations of the books, which you’re meant to have read, and within hours of the things being on sale too. The solitary experience of reading is transmuted – if not downright transubstantiated – into the group ride of going to the cinema. But with Harry Potter, it’s unlikely that those aware of the films are unaware there’s a series of books that came first.

Whereas From Hell and The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen are known to most as lacklustre movies, rather than the rich and inventive Alan Moore books they adapted. Moore’s fans have to engage with the uninitiated in a stoop of defensiveness, for both the medium itself – comics – and for the middling-to-rotten movies that represent his works. When Lenny Henry appeared on Desert Island Discs and asked to have Watchmen as his sole volume of choice, presenter Sue Lawley refused, saying it wasn’t a proper book. Different mediums connect with some, while pushing others away.

And thence to pop music. Celebrating music tends to be via prose; which is, of course, missing the point. No one quite hears the same record as anyone else. Music should never be made to be written about. John Peel once said that the best compliment you could pay to a book about pop music is that it makes you go back and listen to the music. So music criticism is essential, yet pointless.

There is a point to this rambling, honest.

In Gosh Comics, I am fingering the pages of a new volume called Phonogram: Rue Britannia, by Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie. ‘One of the few truly essential comics of 2006’ says someone called Warren Ellis, on the back cover. To qualify Mr Ellis’s credentials, his name is followed by what I assume are his Best Known For works: Fell, Transmetropolitan and Planetary. I haven’t heard of any of those. Would I like them? Do tell.

Then underneath is a similar endorsement from Luke Haines. Now, I know who that is: he’s a singer-songwriter. But he gets brackets after his name too: The Auteurs and Black Box Recorder. Definitely names of bands. Not comic books.

Actually, for all I know, Warren Ellis is a singer with the bands Fell, Transmetropolitan and Planetary. It’s that favourite subject of mine again: osmotic notability. Received opinions. How you’re meant to be have heard of X, but not Y. And that you’re meant to think this about X, and that about Y. Guilty Pleasures. So bad it’s good. Famous for fifteen people. What ‘cult’ means. Tallest pigmies, big fish in small ponds. Or is it tallest pigmies in smallest ponds?

I realise that if I dwell on these thoughts any further, I will either go actually mad, or solve the secret of the universe. Neither would do.

Phonogram is a beautifully drawn and intelligently written tale of goddesses and ghosts , time-travelling, memories of lost love, portals into other worlds. But the ‘hook’ of it is how all these elements connect to pop songs, specifically those from the UK music scene circa 1995, taking in Britpop, Blur, the Manics, Oasis, Afghan Whigs, and Kenickie. A lot on Kenickie. There’s also unkind references to Kula Shaker, Shed Seven and Echobelly. And some up-to-date comments on Pete Doherty, Dirty Pretty Things and The Arctic Monkeys. Whoever they all are. I’m joking. Slightly.

Do these band names mean anything to you, Dear Reader? Do you have an instant, unshakable image or opinion in your head when such names are mentioned? Well, that’s part of the point of the story. But Phonogram comes with a very handy Glossary at the back, so all is not lost. You don’t need to know the music to enjoy the story.

It could have been a self-indulgent piece of pop nostalgia, but there’s enough arresting ideas in the words and artwork to more than justify the proceedings. A goddess at Ladyfest curses a man with menstruation – a ‘Curse’ indeed. Aging male music fans are described as not men, but ‘a different colour of boy’. And the torture of sitting through awful support acts has never been more vividly realised.

Says one girl character on Kenickie, ‘When Marie sings ‘Classy’, I’m a statue made of dust and glitter. I feel the future at my fingertips. I can do anything.’

I mention this because it’s Marie’s birthday this week. Happy Birthday, Marie.

So I’m in Gosh Comics, wanting to buy something – one thing. I’m umming and erring between Phonogram, something by Joe Sacco, or Scott Pilgrim Vol 1.

Then I realise Phonogram namechecks Orlando, and favourably. In the Glossary:

ORLANDO
London soul-pop duo whose Wildean alienation classic Passive Soul was held tightly to the chests of those upset by the laddy excesses of late Britpop.

Sold! I’ll take ten!