When I was a kid, I sometimes got confused when we went to visit my one grandmother because she’d tell stories that went on and on. I couldn’t distinguish between when she was talking about the latest goings-on among her friends and neighbours, and what she was relating about her favourite tv soaps. The whole became an ongoing stream of low-grade incidents populated by characters who didn’t stand out for me, all the stuff of narrative but none of the pull that it presumably had for her. She was relating stories, sure enough, but had no real sense of how to engage an audience, or at least this younger listener: I had no way of distinguishing between what was happening at the (Crossroads) motel and how her sister Dot was doing.

If she’d been a writer, you’d have said my gran had problems clearly establishing flashbacks and dream sequences from the main narrative she was relating. That’s something where there’s a clear distinction in, say, Billy Liar. Although young Billy is himself prone to fantasy, we the audience have no problem understanding when he’s fantasising and when life is more prosaic. Get this stuff muddled and the audience gets muddled too.

Somewhere along the line, Lost lost me. After a bravura opening, and some strong episodes in the first series, the piling on of weirdness on weirdness got too much. Having an air of mystery is one thing – the show’s writers being unable to explain the inexplicable is quite another. As timeslips and monsters and conspiracies accreted, my attention wavered. Lose the internal logic of a show to that extent, and it’s hard to care about the outcome. Same applies to hotly touted comic series Green Wake – when you’ve got not only an ambiguous setting but mysterious characters within it, it’s hard to form an emotional relationship with the story. When anything can happen at any moment, does anything matter?

I’ve mentioned my soft spot for amiable stoners Harold and Kumar before, liking these gently subversive and humane guys and enjoying the capers they get caught up in. They’re at it again with a new festive themed story, A Very Harold & Kumar 3D Christmas, in the course of which they run afoul of a vicious Russian mob boss, turn into Claymation through the effect of hallucinogens, perform in a musical being staged at a cathedral, and shoot Santa in the face. Oh, and there’s a baby that develops a taste for Class A substances, a walk-on appearance by Jesus Christ, and a robot that makes waffles.

For all that craziness, there’s a solid core to the story, which however bizarre the circumstances never strays from two men reigniting their friendship under the threat of dire consequences if a Christmas tree isn’t found to substitute for one that the duo accidentally set in flames early on. That resolute focus on emotions and character held my attention in this, the third outing for the hapless duo. It helps that there’s some great humour and real visual inventiveness – but to get over my general distaste for drug stories the team putting Harold and Kumar together are clearly doing something right.

The ability to engage an audience with the plight of characters they care about is fundamental to your ability to tell a good story. Get that right, and anything else is possible. I’ve never experienced vast wealth, but found it easy to empathise with Howard Hughes in Scorsese’s The Aviator (contrast with the poor little rich girl in Sofia Coppola’s Somewhere). Never been pursued by supernatural forces, but have been at the edge of my seat in stories as varied as Blair Witch Project and The Omen. As humans, we’re equipped with the ability to empathise with one another. And can even identify with animal (Bambi, Lassie) and otherwise non-human protagonists (Wall-E, RoboCop) with ease. So please, when you’re writing a story, make it easy for us to do that. Get it right, and everything else will be fine.

Oh, what a fussy creature I am. DC go to the trouble of launching a specialist crime imprint, part of their successful Vertigo brand, and I get all sniffy about what they’re putting out. And with good reason, to be fair. The big name launch title was a risible Hellblazer story that wouldn’t have got through the net if it didn’t have Ian Rankin’s bankable name on the cover. And though I haven’t bought all of those that have followed, I found a couple trying so hard to be movie pitches that they didn’t fully spread their wings as comics – Christos Gage’s creepy trepanning tale Area 10 was at least superior to Andy Diggle’s formulaic The Rat Catcher.

I’ve not been able to finish Brian Azzarello’s contender…I wanted to give him another go after finding 100 Bullets impenetrable, but haven’t got past the first 20 pages of Filthy Rich, finding it laborious. Even Pete Milligan, normally a favourite of mine, didn’t quite deliver the goods with The Bronx Kill, getting in his own way with the ‘cleverness’ of its protagonist being a writer. So, it’s good to report that – though Vertigo Crime is no more – at least one title gets a double thumbs up from me.

Fogtown is written by Andersen Gabrych and drawn by Brad Rader. The latter’s style doesn’t have the sheen that fans of superhero comics tend to like, but I found his occasionally naive approach supported the very human heart of a story that uses genre tropes to reach somewhere deeper, and has something to say as it does. It’s 1953, and our hero is a hardboiled PI, Frank Grissel, the only difference between him and his clients that he sometimes gets a day rate and expenses for the shit he deals with. A missing person case leads not just to an investigation of sleaze and corruption, but to Grissel confronting the truth about himself, which he does his best to avoid through drinking and self-loathing.

On the surface, Fogtown is a standard-issue crime yarn, and it works well in that regard. What elevates it is the way it weaves issues around sexuality and identity into the whole, not in a bolted-on way but so that they are fundamental to the plot. In my perception, that’s the strongest way to introduce issues into a story – make them part of the fabric of what’s going on, so as the story unfolds the audience empathises with what’s going on for the characters. Elsewhere in comics, Jason Aaron does this brilliantly with Scalped, involving me with issues of Native American politics and culture and the way they’re caught up with the politics of casinos and reservations far more than a documentary would have.

I don’t insist my entertainment comes with a side order of liberal politics. Far from it – I like to be challenged and stretched by at least some of what I read, see, listen to. The beauty of Fogtown is that at no point does it feel like modern attitudes are being imposed on characters existing nearly six decades ago. It feels every bit like a pulp novel of the time, only one that someone like William Burroughs had a hand in crafting. And in telling a story about the past, it’s also telling one about now – for all the progress there’s been regarding homosexuality in society, coming to terms with sexual identity can still be a tortuous experience for some, and no amount of rainbow banners will stop that being the case.

DC are to be congratulated for taking a risk with these black and white crime yarns. As with their science fiction imprint Helix, the results of the experiment have been mixed. Transmetropolitan was the one that people remember from Helix, but I’m contrary and prefer to remember the excellent work Walt Simonson did in his collaboration with Michael Moorcock there. And just as people will most likely speak of headline titles like Ian Rankin’s, the Vertigo Crime book I will remember most fondly is Fogtown.

There’s a long tradition in jazz of adapting popular tunes for line-ups featuring trumpet and sax and whatnot rather than whatever instrumentation they originally had. Miles Davis did covers of the likes of Bye Bye Blackbird, giving himself and his band a chance to do a new take on a ballad of the day, or one which had become a jazz standard. Perhaps the ultimate example of this is John Coltrane and his dazzling reinvention of My Favorite Things, taking the apparently unpromising raw material of a Julie Andrews song from Sound of Music and transforming it magically.

That notion of taking what someone else has done and doing your own version of it has a long history in the arts. I can look back at some of my early work and the efforts to ape someone who knew what they were doing show through. And that’s fine. It’s a stage you go through on the way to finding your own voice, and having the confidence to use that and not attempt ventriloquism. Some creators who’ve demonstrated their chops continue to drink from the well of those who went before. One such is Alan Moore, much of whose career rests on a Coltrane-like ability to imbue what was apparently pop culture detritus with substance.

Such reinvention is what Moore did with Miracleman, itself a British knock-off of the American superhero model, which he offered back to the world in a form that transcended its source material. He repeated the trick to brilliant effect in Swamp Thing, taking a rather silly bog dweller and using the character as a vehicle for powerful and poignant horror stories where the genre elements were fused with a socio-political sensibility unusual in the medium.

Most of all, Moore did that reinvention with Watchmen which — remember — was intended to be done with a bunch of characters from defunct publishers Charlton. No need to go into the historic significance of the 12 issue series that redefined what was possible in the medium. Well, at least to those who hadn’t been keeping their eyes out for the similarly inventive but less self-conscious steps that the likes of Howard Chaykin was making with American Flagg, and Frank Miller with Dark Knight. And all of them, Moore included, were building on the work of innovators including Will Eisner, Jack Kirby, George Herriman, Steve Gerber, and many many others.

Watchmen being the one that got the most press, it’s been Moore who has got the most press since those days. Which is why we know the ups and downs of his relations with publishers and collaborators, his feelings about the state of the industry, and why you really shouldn’t make films of his work. And now, without his blessing — not that such needs to be granted, any more than Moore himself asked for permission to use out-of-copyright characters from 19th century fantastic fiction to create his League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen – DC has commissioned stories set in the same world as Watchmen.

These stories don’t exist, but the messageboards are ablaze with people decrying them, and calling for them to be stopped in their tracks. It’s all very…predictable. Moore occupies a place in the firmament that means he’s accepted unquestioningly. In some respects, he’s become the Bob Marley for smarter teens — a poster child whose wild hair and wilder ideas (and epic consumption of cannabis) mark him out as a counterculture hero.

Thing being, we won’t know what this new work will be like until it’s out there. And you don’t have to buy it if you don’t want to. I might be tempted by some of it, since Darwyn Cooke is one of the creators supposedly involved and I am a big fan of his work. But I don’t expect the quality of most of it to be up to much, any more than I suppose that whoever follows Ed Brubaker on Captain America will deliver the goods that Brubaker has consistently done.

As for the rest of it; the bluster about Watchmen’s canonical status, and Moore’s sainthood…it’s irrelevant. I’m sympathetic to Moore about some of the travails he’s experienced, while feeling that taking legal advice would be a better remedy for some of the situations he’s been through than expecting others to abide by an ethical code that is important to him but not binding for others. And however good or bad the Watchmen spin-offs turn out to be, the original will always be there. If ‘original’ has any meaning, that is, in a world where the definitive take on a work might not be first out of the gate…

There are some stories that could survive being told in several forms. What starts as a book can become a film and a comic series, say. Joss Whedon’s concepts have that kind of robustness, and it can be a good thing, not least commercially speaking. Get yourself a viable franchise and you can count the money coming in, all being well. Which in Whedon’s case allows him to experiment with online play like Dr Horrible. And that’s fabulous: finding ways to allow creators to create more is to be encouraged.

I’m just as interested in stories that are very specific, and can only be realised in the form that they appear. I’ve read two recently, in the form of graphic novels. Carla Speed McNeil’s Finder I’ve followed since it started, pretty much. It’s a chronicle of a world she’s been dreaming up for years now, a clan-based society that at times is recognisably like the world we live on, and goes off on tangents that reveal more intricate delights at every turn.

The character readers have most latched onto is Jaeger, who belonging to no clan has no status, and has even less than that for other reasons. Many of the stories feature an ex of his, and her family, and the latest volume — Voice — looks at one of the kids in depth. And it’s here that Carla comes into her own. I recently bemoaned a story in Scalped, a series I generally love, because of the feeling that its take on homosexuality was researched rather than felt. Carla immerses us in a world of gender ambiguity, where members of an aristocratic clan flirt with sex and gender, and succeeds in bringing what could be alien ideas to life in ways that are evocative and moving. Her delight in drawing the human body is a major asset here — she understands how the human form works, what sensuality is, how people move, and what clothes look and feel like.

While drawing us into a world that could seem strange, Carla also tells a well-structured story of an adolescent growing up, experiencing what it’s like to be allured and to have allure. It’s all done with a real lightness of touch, skating over issues that theorists get bogged down with to present a story that’s alive with possibilities, and feels like life as lived, not as researched in a dusty archive somewhere.

Where Voice tells a universal story through the very particular, The Milkman Murders takes a different approach to get to its destination. Written by Joe Casey and illustrated by Steve Parkhouse, it recounts a somewhat stereotypical American family and proceeds to pull that myth apart in a truly alarming fashion. If it were done as a film it would almost certainly be a brainless slasher movie, but with the creative team collaborating beautifully we are instead presented with a tale that’s genuinely heart-rending.

In a way, The Milkman Murders is a one volume rejoinder to the hundreds of stories that have been told about Marvel’s badass vigilante The Punisher. Where Frank Castle’s adventures are steeped in machismo, which has cultural currency (you can draw a line connecting The Punisher with Gordon Ramsey and Jeremy Clarkson, two other angry white men), Casey and Parkhouse present a no less plausible version of what happens when a middle-aged woman decides enough is enough, and takes action against a family that treats her like an animal.

Totally different in what they do, and how they do it, these two graphic novels are by creators at the top of their games. It’s a shame they can’t get more attention for their work, but hopefully over time they’ll find their audience, and go on to produce more work of this calibre.

Here we are again, with the latest superhero film from the Marvel Comics stable. After a decidedly patchy start with the likes of Daredevil and Ghost Rider failing to bring to life what makes those pulp comic heroes appealing, far more impressive — if formulaic — takes on Iron Man and Thor have made the superhero film a workable box office proposition. Spider-Man is a separate issue: he was lucky enough to have Sam Raimi chronicle his adventures in a trilogy that has plenty to offer. The thing with Iron Man and Thor is that they’re an attempt to build up a sequence of connected films that will lead up to a Joss Whedon-helmed Avengers movie next summer. So it’s important that they get the latest in the series right. And, somewhat to my surprise, they have: Captain America is a resounding success.

What makes the film shine is they’ve stuck to what makes the character work. A superhero who’s a symbol of his nation works a lot better in days before there was irony about that notion. So the bulk of the story happens back in World War Two, when a patriotic hero kicking Nazi ass played well with the public. Steve Rogers is a wimp with the heart of a hero. When he’s given a supersoldier formula he gains the body and prowess to go with his convictions. One interesting touch is that he’s initially conceived of as a propaganda tool, and has to win over those who view him as a jingoistic vaudeville turn. Smart touch: having made the transition to having a hero’s physique does not make him a hero. That’s something Rogers has to win.

It’s tremendously enjoyable stuff. Nazis are biffed, and we discover something more evil still in the form of HYDRA, an organisation dedicated to the promulgation of mad science headed by the villainous Red Skull. The name is pretty much a spolier for his appearance, and one thing that struck me was that the only vivid reds in the film are associated with Herr Skull and the figure-hugging dress that Cap’s paramor Peggy Carter wears to attract his attention. Sex and death — a combination as classic and lethal as burger and fries.

One thing that definitely appeals is that Cap is a man of action. No prevaricating and neuroticising in the style of a Brian Bendis written hero. There’s a place for all that, absolutely. But believe me, it’s not in the majority of superhero fiction. Seeing Cap having dilemmas about whether to pursue the Red Skull as the evil mastermind heads for New York with a deadly cargo in his sweep-wing jet, or wrestle with his conscience about the ethics of using HYDRA disintegrator weapon technology…no, there’s a time when what’s needed is unadorned action in pursuit of a morally inarguable objective. And that’s precisely what the film delivers.

If you’re in a mood for a high-octane action yarn, you’ve come to the right place. As with other recent Marvel movies, Captain America is dotted with much better actors than you might be expecting to see, this time including Hugo Weaving and Stanley Tucci, and the whole is more than capably choreographed by director Joe Johnston, who in many ways seems to be picking up where he left off with Rocketeer — another strong adaptation of something with a vintage pulp feel.

Fast and kinetic, this is high-adrenaline filmmaking that’s thoroughly enjoyable from first to last. And for long term Marvel readers there are a few Easter eggs dropped into scenes that don’t get in the way of comprehension for the audience at large. That — please take note, Green Lantern team — is how you do these things. The source material is disposable fun, not the Old Testament. And it all bodes very well for the Avengers film. I look forward to Joss Whedon building on the contributions of his predecessors.

These are interesting times. It’s looking like the multi-platform entertainment concept for children that I’ve devised with artist Andy Tudor has a seriously credible and business-savvy backer, who is putting money into what we’re doing to allow us to develop our ideas further in collaboration with people who have expertise that we admire. That’s majorly exciting stuff, and I was buzzing when we concluded our meeting at the St Pancras branch of Carluccio’s.

Still in the station, I wandered around prior to getting my train back and came across a book I’ve been aching to read: Grant Morrison’s Supergods: Our World In The Age Of The Superhero. It was at full price, but it was a signed copy, and I couldn’t conceive of a better treat to celebrate the start of a new phase of things. And who if not Grant Morrison is going to be a good guide to what happens when reality dissolves and something bigger and grander appears in its place?

The book is a delight. Grant, it turns out, is a fine non-fiction writer as well as being perhaps my favourite comics writer. He’s without a doubt my favourite comics character, and the book is in part a chronicle of the way he invented and reinvented himself. There’s Grant the working class lad whose parents’ politics and reading matter shape the young Scot’s development. He was creating comics alongside friends to share with them at an early age, so by the time he approached the industry for work he’d already got quite a bit of experience.

His capabilities recognised by DC back when Vertigo was starting, Grant and the other Britpack writers cultivated by editor Karen Berger were encouraged to present themselves as hip young things, and made the most of the opportunity. Those were extraordinary times, which gave rise to Pete Milligan’s Shade, Neil Gaiman’s Sandman, and Grant’s calculated reinvention of Animal Man, the audacity of which led to continued work in America.

The book covers all that, along with tales of Grant’s adventures in magic, psychedelics, and uncategorisable experiences. Some will dismiss those aspects of what he discusses, but having experienced parallel adventures myself I can only applaud him for being so honest about what he’s been through and what he believes it means. Besides, there’s no doubting that Grant walks his talk: a huckster wouldn’t have the energy for the concepts Grant spins casually, and which form a central thread to his work and life. To pick up on a joke in the book about an exquisitely painful fan encounter, he’s the surreal deal.

Besides, look at what Grant’s approach leads to. Encountering someone dressed as Superman at a point when he was puzzling how to reinvent the character, Grant engaged him in conversation as if he was the icon he purported to be. He was impressed by how relaxed this big fit guy was. That registered: why wouldn’t Superman go round in a casual fashion, when there’s pretty much nothing on the planet that can harm him? That conversation was one of the threads that came together to form All Star Superman, the collaboration with Frank Quitely that’s unquestionably the finest the hero from Krypton has been written, and drawn.

As well as Grant’s own story, you also get his generous and perceptive account of the work of heaps of other creators working in the field of superhero comics. It’s clear that Grant loves what he does, and has a unique and fascinating vision of the field that’s coloured by a quiet radical optimism about not just the artform, but about humankind as a species.

One ways that smart writers differentiate themselves long term is being able to come up with new facets to the way they think about their stories, or indeed the medium. Not something you’re likely to see from Jimmy McGovern, who puts ten or more angry hours of writing a day into tv drama about how the British working class have been betrayed. There’s a place for that, sure. But given a choice of role model, I’d rather opt for someone less guilt-ridden and liver-damaging. Which is one of the many reasons to look to Joss Whedon as the career to emulate.

Now, you could say that Joss Whedon is to teenage girls what Jimmy McGovern is to angsty Catholics. But I know whose characters have more fun, and which would be more enjoyable to write. In Buffy, Whedon created a template for stories that ran several seasons on tv and created a subgenre in the process. And having done so, and made a fortune in the process, decided that he’d like to continue the concept in comics. Not that there’s any serious money to be made there — but Whedon likes the medium.

And this is where the smart thinking can be seen. Whedon stayed with the concept of the Slayer, a teenage girl who can kick vampire butt, and did something new with it. He took the story into the future, and made his new heroine someone who had no idea of her destiny. Smarter still, he made the reason for that part of the story itself: his heroine Melaka Fray had a twin brother. She’d grown up fast and tough, he’d been tormented by knowledge of Slayer ancestry. And drawing on what he knew, became the Big Bad of the eight issue series.

All of which demonstrates some nimble thinking on Whedon’s part. The kind of thinking that can extend a franchise into all kinds of directions. It seems obvious to the reader, because it fits in well with what’s come before. But developing a concept where the core elements are so distinctive and having room for variance that adds to character and story potential shows real smarts. Which is why I’m writing about Whedon, and Whedon’s not writing about me.

Another writer wtih intelligence about his medium is Warren Ellis. Part of his talent comes from his study of comics as a form. He knows how a page works, understands the implications of different lettering styles, how to turn black and white printing to his advantage when he’s working for a publisher who can’t afford colour. With new project SVK he’s gone a stage further still, coming up with a way of using what could have been a gimmick that is utterly congruent with the story he has developed.

The gimmick? Invisible ink. Some parts of the comic are printed in an ink that can’t be seen unless it’s exposed to ultraviolet light. Which is where the second twist comes in. SVK comes bundled with a cute uv torch branded in line with the world described in the comic. It’s a nod to the very British tradition of giving away novelty toys with comics: 2000AD had a space spinner and who knows what other sorts of plastic tat in its early days.

The real coup of SVK is that all the gimmickry exists in the service of a solid near-future tale of corporate espionage. Which is very much Warren’s thing: he’s good at that stuff. For me though, the best moment was one of pure emotion, when a character realises that his girlfriend really does love him. It’s a reveal that happens when he gets to read her thoughts which, you guessed it, were invisible until exposed to UV. And going for that emotive payoff rather than something tricksy is a powerful reminder of Ellis’s ability to go above and beyond where most other writers would reach.

One of the reasons that some genres have trouble getting mainstream acceptance is because of the unusual nature of aspects of the stories they tell. If you’re hardwired to a particular version of reality, then science fiction is always going to be a stretch for you. Sometimes, the issue isn’t so much with characteristics of the genre as defiantly different approaches to the use of a medium. I know one person, for instance, who will have nothing to do with stories that are drawn, whether Asterix, Batman, or Charlie Brown, because she thinks that’s cheating. God only knows what she’d make of Green Lantern.

The problems stack up when you see the approach the filmmakers take with their superhero comic source material. There are hundreds of issues of the Green Lantern comic, and the character also appears as a guest with other characters in their titles. Meaning, there’s a lot of backstory to get across — at least if you want to approach the matter in that manner. That’s unfortunately the choice that was made with the film, which commences with a tortuous sequence that is designed to allow viewers to follow what’s to come. Excuse me?

Oh dear. So, faced with reaching a worldwide audience unfamiliar with their oddly named character, execs at DC and Warner have elected to reach back into Green Lantern’s murky mythology and spend a fortune on turning it into the filmic equivalent of those leaden notes and maps obligatory in fantasy novels, outlining the relationship of the characters, their elven heritage, and showing which imaginary kingdoms they come from. I’m sorry, but that stuff is lethal to people who don’t buy into the genre. So why frontload a $300 million movie with a whole bunch of it?

If you want to see how this stuff is done, check out Sam Raimi’s masterful Spider-Man. He conveys Peter Parker’s origin sure enough, and does so in a fast-moving cinematic way that’s intrinsic to the story he’s telling, rather than being some kind of preamble designed to contextualise decades of comic book mythology for those new to it. The Green Lantern approach is the equivalent of sitting someone down and forcing them to listen to Wagner’s Ring Cycle so they’ll understand what happens when Ride of the Valkyries plays when helicopters swarm in Apocalypse Now.

There’s a visual issue here too. All of this portentuous stuff is very CGI-heavy and done in often lurid colours. You could rightly say that this is a very comic book looking way of doing things. But it’s also somewhat alienating, more so because there isn’t a human character on screen during this preamble. Having an otherworldy look and no humans in the opening sequence of what’s intended to be a summer blockbuster might be a choice that the filmmakers come to regret…and possibly already have given the film’s disappointing box office take so far.

Some of the details of the mythology look frankly silly when you spend a heap of money bringing them to life. The notion of dividing the universe into 3600 sectors, each policed by its own energy-ring wearing space cop, sounds kinda cool. Seeing 3600 rings zoom into the cosmos to find suitable fingers to slip on to…lacks a certain something.

All of which is a massively expensive shame. Our introduction to the human ring bearer, test pilot Hal Jordan, looks spritely by comparison to the leaden stuff that’s come before. All of a sudden we’re in a film that moves at the pace of the jets he flies. But by then it’s too late. And the awkwardness of what’s already happened made me more conscious of the clunky scripting, as well as giving me the ominous sense that I knew what was going to come round — and didn’t want to be in the cinema when it happened. Which explains why I spent my time CD shopping when I could have been watching Hal Jordan get caught up in that turgid stuff his movie mistakenly kicked off with.

Creators who get to work in the fictional universes of superhero comics publishers Marvel and DC like to compare the experience to playing with cool toys. It’s an apt comparison, both because some of those creations are a lot of fun, and because merchandise in the form of toys for all ages is an ever-important part of the overall picture of the profitability of these dynamic examples of intellectual property.

Sales of Marvel and DC titles have been falling for twenty years, and publishers and creators are complicit in serving that small readership up reheated portions of what it’s been getting for decades now rather than risk putting anything else on the menu. Hopefully DC is intending to shake things up with its forthcoming Year Zero relaunch, with new creative takes on established titles and an emphasis on making them easily available digitally on the day of print publication.

All of which makes summer blockbusters the real arena for connecting audiences with superhero stories. Technology is now up to the task of conveying the scope and scale of the characters and their adventures, and the hoops they jump through can easily be conveyed to slack-jawed teens slurping from buckets of Coke who may not care for ambiguous motivations and complex backstories.

In the circumstances then, X-Men: First Class is quite an achievement. It’s a prequel to a patchy series of films chronicling the adventures of Marvel’s mutant misfits, and looks set to become a franchise in its own right. And for the first hour or so, it does a very impressive job at cherrypicking the most relevant bits from the comic’s history and presenting them in a form that makes sense to an audience that doesn’t come preloaded with footnotes about everything that happens onscreen.

The key to it all is the relationship of two men, both of them mutants. Charles Xavier is a telepathic geneticist with a utopian vision of what mutantkind can do for the planet. Erik Lensherr saw his people killed in concentration camps, and his mother shot by a doctor who wanted the young man to draw on his powers of magnetism.

Working together, under the guidance of the CIA, the two men assemble a team of young mutants, all of this setting the stage for what viewers of the previous films in this sequence have already seen: Xavier becomes known as Professor X, and his former ally Lensherr becomes his enemy Magneto.

It’s all done with impressive brio to begin with, but in an effort to contain both the history of the X-Men and dovetail it with the real world Cuban missile crisis, the script takes on entirely too much. The effect is of being stuffed with story, but there comes a point where it just keeps on rolling out plot points and I for one was less emotionally involved the more plot was covered. I was also let down by one underthought element: the mutants in the comics are often shoe-ins for the way that people are picked on for difference. Shame then, that the character’s only black X-Man is killed before he’s more than a cypher, and the sole Latino sides with the bad guys as soon as she can.

If you’ve ever talked with a comics fan about their favourite title, you may well have wished you didn’t as you’re subject to a seemingly endless list of betrayals, feuds, revenge and reconciliation between costumed oddballs who seem pretty much interchangeable. Unfortunately that’s how X-Men: First Class gets as it goes on, more and more story bullets being shot into the audience but few of them connecting with any emotional impact.

It doesn’t help that director Matthew Vaughn uses splitscreen techniques some way in to it all. He’s putting three or four slices of story up there at the same time, but the effect is much like being given a PowerPoint presentation about the line dancing festival a casual acquaintance went to. And that’s the abiding impression I came away with, despite some strong performances and an intermittently good script by a team of a half dozen or so writers. The sheer number of hands on deck is an indication of the problem, and in this case many hands did not make light work.

Strong as my memories were of Walt Simonson’s run on Thor — strong enough for me to order the 1200 page omnibus collection without a pause — I was still cautious when it came to wading in. I’d hate to be disappointed, and I’m pretty sure that some of what I was reading then doesn’t stand up to the light of day now. And I’d had the authoritative word of a comic shop owner, the manager of what many believe to be Britain’s best store, that Simonson’s Thor was basically a bunch of thees and thous and not much else.

Thankfully, he’s wrong, on this at least. Sure, this is a comic of the 80s and reads differently than those of today. That doesn’t actually make it any worse though. Today’s tropes are today’s tropes. Nothing more, nothing less. And then there’s the majesty of Simonson’s artwork. He’s one of a select group of artists whose work is truly alive on the page for me, his vigour of line enough to persuade you that he conjures his images in a single furious movement. It’s an illusion, but the dynamism and vitality of Simonson’s art, and his way with designing panels and pages, impresses me — excites me — no end.

What I hadn’t banked on was the quality of the writing. Sure, there are times when it’s pretty wordy, and the cuts between scenes lack elegance at times. But the wordiness is actually an asset when it comes to getting across the mythic dimension to what’s going on. This, after all, is the adventure of a thunder god. You don’t want to see him umming and aahing over coffee. He’s a living archetype, and as such can be forgiven for doing things without prevarication or irony.

Besides, the key thing here is action. Thought and deed go together for Odin’s favoured son, and that’s as it should be. What truly impresses me though is Simonson’s ability to make heroes of the supporting cast. While the saga unfolds, there are some self-contained stories which are masterclasses in storytelling. And the one that’s just blown me away is a tale of Balder the Brave.

Balder was a mighty warrior, but he’s now a man of peace, sworn not to kill again. And Odin needs a message delivered, and Balder’s the man to do it as he’s known by all as a man of his word. So Balder goes forth and finds Loki’s lair. It’s overrun by demons in the command of a bad guy consorting with Loki, who shows no inclination to look at the message Balder’s brought.

Balder is in a terrible situation. He doesn’t mind dying. But his task is to give Loki the message. And the only way to do it is to carve a path through an army of demons. Which he does, slaying them by the hundred. He hates himself as he does it. But this is his duty, what he’s sworn to do to the Allfather. It tears him up, heart and soul, as he takes a blade to the legion of enemies. And when he cuts through their ranks, Loki still won’t look at the message. Enraged beyond anything, Balder takes his sword and swipes off Loki’s head. He’s failed in his task. And, worse still, he’s failed himself. Balder is crushed.

It’s bravura stuff. This is storytelling on an epic scale. A man destroys himself to fulfil an oath, and fails to deliver his promise in the process. The emotions are huge, the sense of waste and loss palpable. Truly brilliant.

It has to be said I’m tempted to borrow that story as a template for a thriller. It has something of the remorseless bleak quality of Point Blank, Lee Marvin relentless in the pursuit of what he’s owed. And there are other resonances. The anonymous corporation that Marvin is up against, hiding its obligations behind a bureaucratic facade. Loki’s self-regarding ennui: he’d be a fine corporate exec. Now there’s a thought…