Grant Morrison is a name you’re unlikely to know unless you read comics. That’s hopefully going to change in the nearish future with the release of We3, a film he scripted based on his own comics story about animals that are experimented on to become weapons for the military. He’s a fascinating writer, able to concoct the most outrageous stories, that inevitably have a real spark of humanity at their heart, and I’ve been rereading him of late in an effort to understand how to write mythic stories in the modern age.

The recently released collected edition of JLA: Ultramarine Corps serves to demonstrate Morrison’s approach: he thinks on an epic scale, with whopping great seven-league beats to tell enormous stories about larger than life heroes. And, it’s done with a real sense of joy and humour.

The Ultramarine Corps of the title were invented by Morrison some years ago when he was the regular writer on JLA (which stands for Justice League of America, fact fans). They’re a group of supersoldiers in essence, experimented on by a military madman. At the start of the story they’re taking on Gorilla Grodd and his legion of super-apes, and they reckon they’re winning. But Grodd is a tough cookie, and he’s allied with another baddie, the sinister Neh-Buh-Loh, who tells us “My original country is in the cold region of the Vampire Sun. I was born of the Eternal Fogs, there in Last Country…I prepare the way for my Queen of Terror.” This injection of what sounds like legend injected into the hyperreal superhero world is typical of Morrison, who stripmines myth and legend for its potential in telling new stories.

And let’s not overlook the myth of the superhero. In this tale, we’re presented with a quantum keyboard that can rewrite reality. Robot duplicates of Superman and Wonder Woman and other JLA members to activate when the real ones are otherwise engaged in a parallel dimension, in this case the infant universe of Qwewq. Even Aquaman, so often a lame character in the hands of other writers, grows in stature under Morrison’s guidance, “with muscles that permit him to swim Niagara Falls upstream.”

Batman’s role in all of this is particularly interesting, Morrison writing him as the brains of the outfit, with a plan for every occasion. But this is the same Batman known in other comics for patrolling the streets of Gotham City. Are they really one and the same? Morrison has an explanation at hand, as Batman reveals a cupboard full of futuristic gadgets to his faithful butler: “I’m opening the sci-fi closet, Alfred. Don’t tell my friends in the GCPD about this…did my flying saucer arrive from the factory?”

Gorilla Grodd has managed to triumph over and control the minds of the Ultramarine Corps thanks to his alliance with Neh-Buh-Loh. The JLA arrive just in time to prevent Batman being eaten by the fascist gorilla, and then proceed to give a beatdown to everyone else involved.

When the dust is settled, there’s the question of how to deal with the Ultramarine Corps, whose triggerhappy ways have led to a lot of problems. It’s left to Superman to explain: “These ‘no-nonsense’ solutions of yours just don’t hold water in a complex world of jet-powered apes and time travel.” Their punishment? The Ultramarine Corps are banished to the infant universe of Qwewq, which has evolved without superheroes to protect and guide it. They get the chance to redeem themselves, and Earth is rid of a bunch of characters designed to lampoon the violent excesses that many contemporary comics creators are driven to in the absence of an imagination as exotic and generous as Grant Morrison’s.