Back in the day, DC Thomson’s comics were free of the names of those who wrote and drew the stories they contained. Children would be confused by the information, so the editors said, and be drawn out of the tales they were reading. More to the point, it meant that the writers and artists were anonymous, making it harder for them to build up a fanbase and use that as leverage to ask for more money, or be talent spotted by rival publishers.

This resentment of the people who wrote and drew the comics that the publishers made money from is a typical attitude of the industry, even today. Marvel and DC like to hook their readers onto characters, and the fact that they and the people chronicling their adventures are largely interchangeable means that creative talents can be switched from one title to another without much impact on sales. And as a system, it works. Particularly if you’re the publisher.

In the sixties, all that started to change when fans started to organise, and wrote to and hung out with the people who created their favourite comics. In turn, some of those fans went on to become a new generation of talent in the seventies working for those same publishers — often with not much more ambition than to follow in the footsteps of those they’d admired. Pop will indeed eat itself.

Fast forward to the 1980s. A band called Pop Will Eat Itself celebrated a comics writer whose capabilities were well in advance of his predecessors. Alan Moore knows the score, said the Poppies. Like them, he was a working class product of pop culture, who referenced high and low art in his work. (One of the Poppies, Clint Mansell, has gone on to become a celebrated film composer, collaborating with the Kronos Quartet for the soundtrack of Requiem for a Dream. Alan Moore’s recent work includes The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, which imagines a world based on myriad fictional sources from Camus to Ian Fleming.)

Moore was, and arguably is, most known for Watchmen, his seminal collaboration with artist David Gibbons. It is a work of singular impressiveness, perhaps genius. There sure as hell wasn’t anything like it in comics before the 12 issue series appeared. And it’s appeared ever since, in a number of graphic novel editions, including the superduper paving slab sized one that I invested in the other year. Watchmen is also a truly lousy film, one which Moore had nothing to do with. And he’s taken that stand further, relinquishing his financial rights to the work he created for DC and passing it on to his artists, to give him more time to concentrate on projects that truly matter to him: Jerusalem, an epic novel charting the history of the world as seen from Northampton, and the internationally distributed fanzine Dodgem Logic.

And now DC are planning spin-offs of Watchmen. Prequels and sequels, but you can bet nothing else that equals the brilliance of the original. And DC know that. Which is why led by Paul Levitz they never made such a crass move. Now under Dan DiDio, that’s precisely what they’re doing. Making DiDio even more of a numpty than Simon Cowell, who believes the world wants and needs his banal music, and the preening wannabes who perform it.

Make no mistake: like the film Watchmen, anything that appears bearing that branding is going to be karaoke. Remember that phrase means ‘empty voice’. And sure as hell the comics shit out of DC’s sphincter will bear no more relationship to Alan Moore’s Watchmen than an Oasis tribute band does to The Beatles at their height. But people will buy them, and some of them will enjoy what they read, for the same reason that millions eat at McDonalds when actual burgers are available elsewhere. All of which is a reminder that, for the majority of publishers, the lowest common denominator is what it’s about — even if at least some of the creators signed up to them aspire to writing and drawing work of lasting worth.

It’s been a while since I ran a writing workshop. I’ve been doing plenty of script doctoring and working on my own projects, and that tends to be a great platform for running a class. As you develop your own skills, you come to new conclusions about how they relate to the bigger picture and details of writing, and one of the times I find out where my own understanding is when I’m asked to share it with others.

That opportunity comes next Saturday, February 13th, in a free workshop I’ll be running as part of the Nottingham Loves Learning event. The class kicks off at 2 in The Arts Organisation, 3-21 Station Street, Nottingham NG2 3AJ — just by the train station — and finishes at 5. That said, I can see us heading somewhere we can continue to chat over food and drink into the evening. To indicate your interest, email me: adrian at youdothatvoodoo dot com, or call 07815 158123.

The session will be suitable for people at all levels of experience. There’s always something you can learn, whether it’s by going back to basics or coming across a new understanding. Besides, my approach is to ensure people have a good set of creativity tools to work with that can be used across the board, and not just screenwriting, seeing as it all starts with your ability to play with ideas. There’ll be time for questions and answers as well, and it’s possible we could start some kind of regular group if enough people are interested.

So, get in touch and let me know if you want to participate. It promises to be a fun session, using a range of exercises designed to get you coming up with material quicker than you might have thought possible, and give you some different perspectives on writing — all that, and industry tips too.

The workshop is brought to you by the Department of Business Innovation and Skills, Nottinghamshire: City and County Employment and Skills Board, Transformation Fund and The Learning Revolution. Not forgetting the letter W.

I was in London a while back, and opposite me on the Underground was a poster for Nespresso, a coffee product advertised by George Clooney. A father was using it as a lesson to his children about the evils of advertising, saying that Clooney was pimping caffeine for money, which is a Bad Thing. I restrained myself from talking about how Clooney uses the money from adverts to fund ventures such as Syriana and Good Night and Good Luck, two films of a leftward persuasion that could be viewed as advertising of the decent kind.

Anyway, Clooney’s here again — this time to entertain — with Up In The Air, a superb comedy drama directed by Jason Reitman (known also for Juno), co-scripted by Reitman and Sheldon Turner. George plays a man who spends his life travelling from airport to airport, stopping off to make people redundant at whatever business is going down the tubes in the vicinity. For most people that would seem to be an empty existence, but George’s character loves his anonymous life. Or does, until he meets a woman who seems to share his vacuous value system. Naturally, and gradually, he falls for her.

It’s class from the word go, with people who really have lost their jobs playing people who do likewise, adding it the same kind of authenticity that School of Rock benefits from by having young musicians instead of actors playing the kids. George’s impossible good looks and smooth upbeat manner are an alien contrast to their mere mortal ways.

Not only that, but George really does believe he’s got it made. And he wants you to know it. When he’s not sacking people, he’s got a sideline in motivational speaking, and holds forth on the value of a life with minimal attachments – the only baggage he wants is a stylish rucksack, and even that’s replaceable.

George’s bubble bursts when the company he works for hires a smart young woman who realises that people can be fired online rather than in person. The savings on plane flights would be enormous, and people would get to spend more time at home with their loved ones. Exactly not what George wants: nothing horrifies him more than the idea of commitment.

Travelling with the digital evangelist gradually brings home to George that you can’t live without people, and he invites the vapid woman he copped off with to accompany him to his sister’s wedding. He wants more than that – and discovers that she’s married, with kids, and wants nothing to do with the man she views the same way he perceives his conquests on the road. Ouch.

Well judged in every respect, this is a film I’ll be picking up on DVD and sure to learn more from with every viewing. At one level it’s a thoroughly modern comedy attuned to today’s economy and technology. But it’s also timeless, in the tradition of classics like the Howard Hawks gem His Girl Friday. Put Clooney back in time and he’d stand in for Cary Grant’s role just fine, and vice versa.

Every now and then a film appears which catches the zeitgeist in a way that couldn’t be planned. It’s arguable that Clooney has already been in one such film with Michael Clayton, an exploration of corporate wrongdoing that at heart is about one man learning to do the right thing. And at its core, that’s what Up In The Air is too, regardless of its comedy aspect. The Full Monty is another example, focused on life for those made redundant, but like Up In The Air treating the subject with a light touch – a reminder that comedy is serious business.