A lot of people rate The Winter Men very highly. On the back page of the graphic novel, the likes of Warren Ellis, Brian Vaughan and Joe Kubert line up to sing its praises. A flick through its pages and it’s easy to see why: John Paul Leon’s art has never been better, capturing life in Russia and Brooklyn convincingly in intelligently-designed pages that flow like a well made thriller.

A man brings a helicopter down by throwing a rifle into its rotors. A table full of Russian gangsters welcome someone to their feast. A young girl’s hand sears an imprint on a wall. A lorry full of Coke explodes. There’s no shortage of visual drama, and with it a cleverly constructed story that looks back to a Russian programme to develop super-powered citizens, and to the present when the legacy of those days is played out in grimy international deals: art forgery, murder, and — most significantly — child kidnap.

Writer Brett Lewis is new to comics but takes to the medium with ease. His skill is weaving different strands so that, as the story moves forwards, we also discover more about the past and the people whose lives were shaped by it. Front and centre in all this is Kris Kalenov, a man whose life is defined by violence and politics, whether formal in the formal sense of state machinations or the intricacies of criminal life.

Lewis is in command of the story throughout. He’s clearly thought through the material not only in a linear way — what unfolds makes sense in that respect, with the requisite thrills and spills you’d expect of a thriller — but in terms of character and theme too. Ideally this should be the case for any writer, but Lewis knows how to enrich every interaction to ensure it works at a couple of levels. Writing this skilful is rare in comics, and not encountered much more often in novels or films.

A good point of comparison here is Jason Aaron’s Scalped. Aaron has a similar control of his material, and both like to come in at stories from unexpected angles. And that’s praise indeed, Scalped being perhaps the finest comic on the market. No sign of Lewis diversifying into mainstream projects for Marvel or DC as Aaron has though — perhaps he has other ambitions, though I’d love to see him write comics again.

While I don’t doubt that it’s all down to nothing more exciting than photo-referencing, it’s good to see that the sequences in Brooklyn and back in Moscow can be easily distinguished. There’s a matter of fact quality about John Paul Leon’s art that adds to the credibility of the story: he draws people with lived-in faces, who seem to move like real people do. A world away from the nonsense that passes for art in most superhero comics.

The Winter Men also reminds me of The Shield, another tale about a morally compromised protagonist. The fact that I’m comparing it to such high quality work tells you about the regard I hold this graphic novel in. Another point of comparison: Howard Chaykin’s seminal comic series American Flagg, with which it shares a corrupt setting, sharp dialogue, and an interesting approach to structure.

You’ve got the idea by now: The Winter Men is good stuff. If you’re at all interested in thrillers, in contemporary Russia, in international crime, in post-WW2 history, this is a graphic novel I can guarantee you’ll get a lot out of. And if you’re someone who’s sniffy about comics, let this be the one that changes your mind about a medium.

Sometimes, you can see beyond the screen into where a film started out. And in Me and Orson Welles the inevitable conclusion is that this is an adaptation of something that existed first as a novel, and that proves to be the case: the book was written by Robert Kaplow and translated into a screenplay by Holly Gent Palmo and Vince Palmo Jr.

Is the film’s prosy background a problem? Not necessarily. But for my tastes it grounded the film into something cosier than it could have been, a safe piece of mainstream entertainment rather than something Welles himself would have concocted. OK, no fair pitching Richard Linklater against the man who brought us Citizen Kane on film, War of the Worlds on radio, and a definitive staging of Shakespeare’s Caesar. But you get the gist.

What’s served up is a coming of age story in which a precocious 17 year old played by Zac Efron comes to inhabit the orbit of the even more precocious Welles, superbly played by Christian McKay. Efron gets a role in the aforementioned Caesar production, and with it an initiation into a late 30s world of sex and booze and creative tantrums.

There’s not a lot you haven’t seen before in one form or another, but it’s done well enough that you can forgive the air of familiarity. Besides, I was sitting in one of the luxury £16 seats at the Belsize Park Everyman, and enjoying the novelty of coffee and carrot cake being brought out into the audience by staff.

Anyway, you won’t be surprised to hear that Welles comes across as a petulant genius, buttering people up one minute and casting them out later when he’s lined up a less mouthy replacement. And seeing that sequence run through once or twice should prepare you for what happens to Efron when he has the temerity to face off with Welles. As soon as Efron has done his opening night performance, Welles bins him. Ouch.

And that, you see, is the rite of passage element to all this. Naive young man is captivated by one of the world’s greatest conjurors, and surprised to land with a bump when he starts to see through the smoke and mirrors.

Fortunately there’s this girl to help him dust off his wounds, a wannabe writer we first meet in the film’s opening, and again at the end when she’s had a story accepted by The New Yorker. All of which was a bit too cutesy for me, the two scenes bookending the film rather too neatly and, well, bookishly.

I’d have liked a messier story. Maybe one in which Efron’s character demonstrates some of the cunning he’s learned in the company of Welles, and uses it to advance his cause back in the world he returns to. Something at any rate in which everything isn’t resolved so neatly and in such a story writing 101 manner.

Still, there is plenty to like about Me and Orson Welles. It looks pretty good, the performances are strong across the board, and it can’t help but make you smile at times. Part of your response to it will depend on how you react to stories of theatre folk, and I’ve known too many for real to be easily charmed.

Let’s be generous though. It’s December, and if you’re looking for a feelgood film to take the family to over the Christmas period, this is a good option, a modest success that can be enjoyed by all ages. And it’s another curious installment in the career of director Richard Linklater, whose films have gone on a trajectory from indie favourite Slacker to mainstream comedy success School of Rock via less easily defined semi-animated projects Waking Life and A Scanner Darkly.

First things first: go and read this excellent post by Philip Palmer. I was lucky enough to be part of a course that Philip led in Brighton a few years ago, and still have occasional contact with him. And when he talks about knowing yourself, he’s speaking the truth.

I know this, because there were a few years when I was writing and not being myself, and one way or another that’ll catch up with you. It all started innocently enough, when I did one of the smarter things I’ve thought up: there was an ad from a filmmaker looking for sample scripts from writers, and I hadn’t got anything suitable but instead indicated my enthusiasm and suggested we come up with something from scratch. That move paid off: I met the director/producer, and we got on well.

Not long later, he was given the chance to take over the making of a short. And he wanted me to do a script rewrite so that he could do the story justice, which he believed the existing script didn’t. I agreed with him. Besides, this was my chance to make a film. So I wrote. And wrote. And wrote. And in the end did about fifteen drafts of what went on to become my first filmed project. And there was a level at which it was pretty cool — it was filmed on 35mm, featured a relatively well known tv actor, and was beautifully shot. The British Council liked it enough to tour it internationally.

But something was wrong, which my friend Nicola put her finger on. “It’s not your voice, and it’s not those characters’ voices either.” Bingo. That was it. In adapting the work of another writer, to suit the demands and style of a director with his own vision, something had been left out of the equation. That something was me. Oh, there are traces of thoughts and feelings of mine in there, no doubting that — but it lacked a coherent voice.

And that surprised me. I’d written and helped devise plays where my voice was present, but something about the development process of that short film stifled it. And I felt similarly about what happened when I got to write episodes of Doctors. Sure, I was grateful for the opportunity and everything — a BBC gig, whoo — but somewhere in the long process between coming up with an idea, having it approved with reservations, selected with considerations, and developed with the input of maybe four people channeled through one script editor, the scripts lost any of the idiosyncrasies that I’d liked them for in the first place.

This, you’ll understand, is seen with my retrospectacles on. I’d like to say I learned from what happened and immediately made necessary changes to ensure my voice was once again front and centre in my writing. But it wasn’t like that. I got involved in all manner of projects for the filmmaker I’d done the short with, which increasingly veered away from anything I could recognise as me. Only when I’d written a treatment for a cagefighting movie that was aired in a meeting with Jean Claude Van Damme did I realise the magnitude of the nonsense I was participating in.

No wonder then, that I had a breakdown of sorts. And, to tell the short version, that turned out to be a turning point for me. For the last five or so years, I’ve only developed stories that I am 100% committed to, that — like it or not — are characterised by my voice, my sweat, my stink. That’s the way I like it, and — interestingly — it’s since then that people have paid more attention to the projects I want to develop. Which isn’t to say the going is easy. Far from it. But I’d rather do things this way and fail than succeed and feel as compromised as I did a decade ago.

Every now and then you have an idea that doesn’t fit with the others you come up with. I’ve got used to developing writing projects on my own, though am involved in a couple of collaborations, both with people known for books rather than scripts. But I’ve had a desire to develop something interesting with a designer and illustrator friend, and a few months ago the right concept appeared.

The trick to collaboration, I suspect, is to devise something that has a hook with relevance to the particular pairing. In this case, it comes from a combination of the artist’s way with drawing characters, and his fascination with space: this is someone who works with the latest NASA news in the background. And it’s from that concoction that our collaboration emerged. I’ll spare you the details since these are early days still, and some confidentiality is in order.

What’s been interesting is the necessity for this partnership to spawn ways of thinking and doing that are new to us both. We’ve formed a company that we’re jointly directors of. We’ve spoken to media lawyers, a postproduction company, and a producer. In other words, this is something that we’re taking seriously, and has big implications.

At first, we thought we were developing an animated series for children. And that’s still the outcome we’re aiming for. But what form will that series take, and how will it be shown, given the way that digital media is going? That set us thinking about possibilities other than the obvious television route. And in particular it made us consider how the world of games could be an interesting place to pitch our wares.

I’ve had some experience of the gaming world, having written a whole bunch of supporting material for one the other year. That hopefully means I can go back to the company who asked me to do the work and suggest a partnership. What we have in mind is offering the world and characters we’ve created to games developers. That way, products using our concepts get out there to consumers, to generate income and awareness — both pretty handy if we’re going to stand a chance of realising the goal of an animated series.

This putative multimedia ambition may be all very naive, and is entirely unsupported by anything resembling a business plan. But it is at least interesting, and so far hasn’t taken that much time and commitment from either of its developers. And people who’ve seen the visuals and listened to the concepts are very impressed with what we’ve come up with. Which in turn could be opening other doors, for instance to someone who works in the world of licenced characters. These days, it’s perfectly possible to make toys and maybe other products for well designed characters even if they don’t come with a show. One example would be the cute/grotesque toys developed by cult artist Jim Woodring.

There’s a long way to go on this particular journey, but it’s worth committing to. We’ve come up with a concept we’re proud of that — all being well — could take us to the fabled world of residual income via partnerships with interesting people around the world. What’s not to like? And unlike screenplays, which I am very particular about, this is a project where I’d be happy to be at the helm and not have to sort out every little detail personally: part of the attraction is of creating a sandpit that others get to play in too.

In the next few months, we’ll be having some meetings and putting a website up there to show the world what all this maddeningly unspecific stuff is in the service of. At which point, you can judge for yourself whether we’ve got a winning idea, or we’re barking up a tree that bears no fruit.