So, you’re an alien with a lifespan in millenia, and you’ve used that time to mastermind your own twisted eugenics programme on a backwater planet where your peoples’ battle against an enemy race is still being played out centuries after the resolution of that war back home. All you need to reach the next stage of your plan is for someone to kill you. Which should be simple enough, given the number of enemies you’ve acquired over time, and your skill in manipulating people to your ends.

Only, when it comes to it, things aren’t that simple. You just can’t get the help some days. Even when you’ve choreographed an alleged enemy into being with you while he holds a gun and swears he’s going to blow your head off, he never actually gets round to realising his threat. So, you wind him up even more. And he says he’ll kill you. And the bastard still doesn’t do it.

That wonderfully twisted scenario comes in one of the chunks of writer Joe Casey’s contributions to the mythology of Wildcats. Dark, and delightfully realised by artist Sean Phillips, it beats to a different drum than most comics I’ve seen, and gave me a real appreciation for Joe’s writing talents.

I’d read a lot about Joe Casey without actually reading any of his comics. He’s an interesting interview subject, talking passionately and with disarming frankness about the medium he loves and has never quite fitted in with. Sure, in the course of his career he’s written for iconic series like X-Men and Adventures of Superman, but he’s just as focused on a wide range of less well-known, but frequently applauded, titles such as Godland, Automatic Kafka, and Milkman Murders.

So, he’s written all that stuff, and somehow I didn’t pick up an actual Joe Casey book until I came across a second hand copy of Vicious Circles, the second collection of his run on Wildcats. I’d previously enjoyed Alan Moore’s take on the aliens and superheroes series, and had heard good things about Joe’s take on the title — all of which added up to justification for finally parting with money to check out some of Casey’s work.

There’s a delicious dark humour running through that scene with the alien overlord failing to get an enemy to murder him. Similar delights run through the collection. An android character is beautifully depicted — while his more stylish colleagues sport dark suits and smoke enigmatically, the android dresses like a stereotypical American tourist, in shorts and a colourful shirt. His speech patterns are similarly naive.

Clearly, whatever else might be going on, Joe Casey likes to enjoy himself while he’s writing. That makes a real difference to the finished comics. For all their powers, Casey’s characters have very credible motivations. And Casey is clearly a bit bored by the repetitive nature of the superhero comic. This second volume lays the seeds for what a lot of people reckon is his best work, which shifts Wildcats from being about people hitting one another and instead explores another means of using power to change the world: corporate enterprise.

All that’s to come, and I know now that I’ll go out of my way to find Casey’s other work on Wildcats. And, who knows, maybe I’ll check out more of his work too. Casey’s in an enviable position, as one of the Man of Action collective of writers, of being able to pick and choose what comics work he does, thanks to the financial stability that the team have achieved through developing Ben 10 and other hit animation shows for kids. All of which suggests that Casey’s interest in corporate affairs is not merely academic: getting Ben 10 off the ground is a major achievement, involving interacting with networks and merchandising manufacturers. It’s an impressive feat, and one I’d like to emulate.