My first contact with superheroes was when Batman guested in an episode of Scooby Doo way back when. I was fascinated by this cowled and ominous figure, like no fictional character I’d seen before, and Batman entered my dreams that night.

Next, I found Batman in a box of American comics that one of my grandmothers had stashed away from when my uncles were younger. I could make little sense of what I read – no surprise, given that it was the team-up of two groups of superheroes from parallel worlds who for that reason each had a near-double in the story – but I was captivated by everything about the comics. I learned more about Batman, who didn’t just hang out with the Scooby Doo characters but also associated with other costumed good guys. Sometimes he’d be in Gotham City, sometimes in space, but wherever he was adventure would surely follow, and he’d tackle it using his wits and his fists and whatever gizmos he had to hand.

As it turned out, I became more of a Marvel Comics fan, perhaps because in Hulk, Spider-Man, and X-Men their characters had more messy stuff about alienation and growing up different that teenagers can easily latch onto. DC’s characters were…purer somehow. Which is maybe why an icon like Batman is so malleable, equally at home tackling an alien invasion at Superman’s side, and tracking drugs kingpins in shady alleys. And I was happy to read either kind of story. It was only after I’d read a fair few of them that I started to filter for quality, and recognise what that meant. And when I’d worked that out, I was able to seek it for myself, dropping titles I’d read uncritically and heading towards those written and drawn by creators I respected.

Walt Simonson’s run on Thor. Claremont and Byrne’s X-Men. Howard Chaykin’s seminal American Flagg. The unfinished-looking but still compelling Thriller (Robert Loren Fleming and Trevor Von Eden). And finally, after the weird-looking Ronin, which was too much for me at the time, Batman got the creator he deserved in Frank Miller. The Dark Knight Returns is a stunning piece of work, sprawling and ambitious and knowingly mythic, and I’ve read it many times over the years. But in many ways I prefer Miller’s other tale of the Caped Crusader, which he wrote but didn’t draw. Batman: Year One has a narrower scope than TDKR, and David Mazzucchelli’s minimal artwork hasn’t got the grandeur of Miller’s, but it’s a more disciplined and affecting story. It’s like the difference between Apocalypse Now and The Conversation: both Coppola in fine form, but one operatic in scale and the other intimate.

My first training in scriptwriting was at the London Cartoon Centre, and at that point in my life I’d have done anything to write a comic. Thankfully that didn’t happen – I had raw talent then, but nothing like the craft and tenacity required to make a career out of it, so it’s for the best that my career went in other directions. But I still love comics, and have been thinking about them more of late given the impetus of a competition to devise a superheroine for Shadowline and Image Comics, with the incentive of a guaranteed three-issue series co-owned with the artist.

How do you go about devising a superheroine then? For one thing, I wanted a character who was distinctly female, and not merely a hero with breasts. Which I did, but then found that a couple of the concepts I had were good on paper, but not ones I’d be wise to write…both were similar enough in some respects to Alan Moore’s Promethea that I chose not to proceed: you don’t win any favours by playing on the home ground of the medium’s finest writer in your first outing. So instead I went for another couple of heroines with a lighter feel to them, meaning I’ve come up with three pitches that I know would be a joy to write. Much as I’d like to tell you more, I can’t until the competition results are announced. Sorry.