It’s interesting to see how different writers tackle different comics characters. There are people like Grant Morrison who find fresh things to say with and through any superhero. And then there’s someone like Howard Chaykin, associated with wiseass womanising Jews, whatever story he’s writing at the time. Fascination with what he’d do with Superman — the ultimate whitebread American hero — pretty much obliged me to pick up a copy of Son of Superman, once a graphic novel and now reprinted at budget price as a 100-Page Spectacular. Art by J.H. Williams III and Mick Gray didn’t hurt either: the pages are interestingly composed and well drawn.

Chaykin’s trick is to go back in time while going forwards. His Superman is the son of Clark Kent, some years hence, with the Kryptonian hero seemingly dead and a new world order in place with Lex Luthor calling the shots. All of which gives Chaykin (and co-writer David Tischman) the chance to renew his acquaintance with a favoured theme — a maverick against the system — which itself echoes some of Superman’s very first appearances, when the character would side with striking workers, and take on bad bosses whose moneygrabbing antics endangered lives.

It’s clever stuff, the creative team skilfully setting up the pieces on the board in the opening sequence. The future world is sketched in enough detail that you can follow what’s going on. And Superman’s son is not only introduced, but gets to discover his powers and his heritage. All that in a few expertly constructed pages. Chaykin is a master at this kind of thing, doing what film writers are supposed to do and entering a scene as late as possible and leaving it quickly. It’s not seen often enough on screen. Witnessing it used so capably on a comics page is a reminder just what’s possible in a medium where there’s still everything to play for.

One of Chaykin’s repeated themes is that real power is economic. That’s pretty much the core of this story, which pits a revived Superman and his son against a world ruled by his chief enemy, in alliance with the billionaire members of the Justice League. In practice, the situation is more complicated than that with more going on that first appears, but realpolitik is part of Chaykin’s DNA as much as lingerie and biplanes. This is a political situation that the hero is taking on, muddied by the fact that there’s a terrrorist group who’ve been committing acts in his name since Superman disappeared from the scene nearly 20 years ago.

Yes, of course Superman wins the day. What were you expecting? There’s a radical streak in terms of the content, but superhero comics are a fundamentally conservative medium. Besides, what’s wrong with right conquering might once in a while? That’s a story that never goes out of fashion, and it plays well with voters as well as readers: look at the upturn in Obama’s popularity since the death of Bin Laden.

Another strength of the comic is the relationship between Superman’s son and his parents. Superpowered father and boy may be, but the way they interact is like dads with children with world over. There are other insightful character moments between Batman and Wonder Woman, as well as the recommended daily allowance of pulse-pounding fight scenes and demonstrations of raw power.

This is lovely stuff, delivered by creators at the peak of their powers. You could justifiably say there’s nothing earth-shattering going on here, but that’s beside the point. There is room on the shelves for skilfully executed superhero stories which play with the toys of the genre before putting them respectfully back. And Son of Superman does that and more in a way that respects the sensibilities of adult readers more than the majority of allegedly mature comics on the market. Especially while it’s available in this cheaper format, I’d strongly recommend checking it out.

I really like thrillers. And I’m finding that there are less and less thrillers I really like. Good news is, I’m working out why that is, and hoping what I learn enables me to come up with one that audiences respond to for reasons more involved than getting off on the action sequences.

Two recent stories are indicative of a wider trend in the field. One was the ITV two-parter Case Sensitive, the other a recent Vertigo Crime graphic novel, Rat Catcher. And what concerns me is the extent to which they’re reliant on the audience being into the genre in the first place to have any connection with them. Both exist largely in relation to other crime thrillers out there in the world — which is to say, the world of fiction and existing stories, rather than the world that we the audience live in.

Case Sensitive started out in really promising fashion, a detective new to her team having slept with a colleague she’ll be working with on her first case, and neither of them sure how to deal with it. Their relationship turned out to be the strongest part of the whole, sensitively written and performed with just the right hint of awkwardness on both parts. The sweetest part of the resolution was how the woman got the guy to stop twirling paper round, which he only did because of his anxiety around her.

The rest was an overcomplicated concoction that in trying to second guess the viewer got too intricate for its own good. An architect’s wife has been murdered, and we suspect him primarily because he lives in one of those modernist houses that’s all straight lines and no warmth and the audience are used to that being a metaphor for someone who’s a soulless compulsive killer. In fact, the villain of the piece is…the criminologist. A choice presumably made because the writer liked the idea that a stock character in these situations is in fact the perp. Well, he was, but…so what? By which I indicate the lack of emotional connection anywhere in the crime part of the story. There were two cases of someone posing as someone else and a backstory I had no interest in because fundamentally I didn’t care. And if you don’t care, the pyrotechnic aspects of what’s happening onscreen are meaningless.

There’s a similar problem afflicting Rat Catcher, which is a real shame as I’ve very much enjoyed some of Andy Diggle’s other writing. Though it comes in the form of a hardback black and white graphic novel it’s a film pitch through and through, and suffers for that. Oh, it’s an efficient enough piece of writing, in much the same way that Coldplay are competent musicians. Like them, it leaves no lasting impression on me. Maybe with decent actors playing the leads, and more work on the story, the film Diggle is gagging for would be better than the source material. He’s left potential adapters very few places to slip up. But then he probably thought that about The Losers, which I loved in comic form but fizzled out as a film.

The Losers is referred to in the notes on the author as a major motion picture. Is there any other sort? In the same way that every U2 album is a significant release, any film with Hollywood involvement is a major motion picture. Really, both Case Sensitive and Rat Catcher are precision-engineered product. There’s a lot of skill involved in their manufacture, but traces of individuality and personal commitment are as unlikely as a Pizza Hut cook growing the tomatoes she makes for the sauce to slap on the pizza bases she defrosts from the truck they turn up in.

Thor never quite fit in with the other early Marvel characters. At the same time that Peter Parker was experiencing trouble with girls, and the Fantastic Four falling out like only superpowered families can do, how could a Norse god fit into the mix of neurotic New Yorkers that Stan Lee, Steve Ditko and Jack Kirby had come up with?

It was a trick those early creators pulled off by giving the thunder deity a secret identity as a lame doctor, so that he spent at least some of his time earthbound rather than soaring off into the cosmos muttering cod-Shakespearean oaths. With that mortal identity came a love interest, not to mention the business of experiencing life as a vulnerable human.

That mix of adventures on Earth and Asgard is wisely adhered to by the team behind the Thor film. Wisely, the decision has been made to embrace opportunities for humour along the way, and director Kenneth Branagh pitches the whole concoction with real expertise. You get engrossed in the action, moved by the power of the family drama that explains why Thor has been cast to Earth by his dad Odin, and fascinated by what will happen when the newly mortal hero regains his divine mantle.

For the most part, it works really well. Thor enters the story as a boorish brawler, and Odin is understandably upset by his son. Things are complicated just so by Loki, his half brother, and it’s the revelation of the truth of his background that helps explain Loki’s sly nature. Or maybe he’s like that anyway, and just uses his background as fuel for his twisted ambitions. At any rate, the family dynamics are convincing and compelling, which is good since the CGI splendour of Asgard wears off quite quickly.

The scale of the emotions back home helps give a scale to what unfolds on Earth. There’s some genuinely witty fish out of water business as the thunder god adjusts to life in contemporary America, but because of the solemnity and grandeur of his family situation, those scenes are anchored and never threaten to become trite. Besides, they’re played well by all involved — newcomer Chris Hemsworth has the physique and rootedness needed to play Thor, and there’s a real sense of chemistry between him and Natalie Portman.

Whether through aping the Twilight series in an attempt to reach female viewers, or just exploring a situation that has the same potential anyway, Thor’s innate nobility scores points with Natalie in a way that baseball cap wearing youths with single figure vocabularies just can’t compete with. Maybe Marvel’s male readers are supposed to identify with the deity in that regard at least, since his lexicon has always included some baffling words that they’ll be familiar with from the publisher’s output. Frankly, I wouldn’t rate their chances with Natalie, for all the syllables they can wrestle with.

There aren’t any real surprises along the way, unless you count the easter eggs planted for Marvel fans. But really, this isn’t a film you go to be unsettled by, or to leave things unresolved. It does what it sets out to do with a real sense of accomplishment, a finely honed action adventure yarn that overdelivers from time to time with quality performances and effective directorial touches, and only occasionally lets you down with hammy lines or misfiring sequences. Given how atrocious some Marvel adaptations have been in the past — I still wince when I think of Ghost Rider — Thor has to be accounted as a real success. It’ll be interesting to see how it stands up in comparison to Green Lantern, which DC are hoping will establish that lesser known character as a hit with audiences.

There was a Radio 4 program about a childrens’ writer called Ursula Moray Williams earlier. She wrote 60-70 stories for young people, and was very much in favour of the self-contained yarn rather than the series. Commercially speaking, that was a choice that cost her: returning characters are popular with audiences of all ages, and having an audience eager to read more of their adventures can also open the door to merchandising money.

Ursula was full of stories though, and stayed true to her particular path, and children will be able to enjoy books like Adventures of the Little Wooden Horse and Gobbolino the Witch’s Cat for generations to come. There’s something about a self-contained story that lends itself to greater emotional intensity. The stakes can be higher when you’re not going to meet a hero ever again.

For all that, there’s something about licenced properties that continues to pull me back in to them from time to time. Ed Brubaker’s take on Captain America, Warren Ellis on Iron Man, Grant Morrison writing Batman — these are writers whose sensibilities mesh with the character brilliantly. For Brubaker it’s an appreciation of espionage thrillers and pulp fiction that makes his Cap stories soar. Ellis’s fascination with journalism and technology informs a superlative exploration of Tony Stark. Morrison’s mythic approach seems to strike gold consistently.

The return of Dr Who confirms that Stephen Moffat’s perception of the errant alien is up there with Alan Moore’s reinvention of Swamp Thing. Like Moore, he has thought about the character at some length, and found the darkness at the heart of the Gallifreyan. His relationship with River Song captures this perfectly, the two approaching their time together from different ends. The longer she knows him, the more she loves him — and the less he knows her. It started with him encountering River in her youth and her life has not been the same since. The knowledge that they will become strangers to one another could be the death of her.

That relationship has tragedy at its core, but we feel it as audience members because it contains a truth about our own lives. Those we love can fade in our hearts, and we in theirs. It’s that ability to use a device that would only be possible in a story about a time traveller and which has wider resonance with human experience that marks Moffat out as a truly gifted writer. Coming up with clever time paradoxes is difficult in a cerebral manner, and appeals at the same level. Stories that touch the heart are another matter entirely.

Something similar is at work in the baddies that Moffat comes up with. Before now we’ve had the Stone Angels, which were amazing first time round in Blink, even if their second appearance is less memorable. They tapped into something primal that was perfectly suited to a young audience: the idea that something is creeping up on you when you’re not looking. This time round we have creepy critturs in Blues Brothers suits who we forget as soon as we look away from them. Worse than that, they’ve been on Earth for centuries, and the Doctor’s line about this not being fighting an alien invasion, but an occupation, sets the next installment up brilliantly.

None of this detracts from the intermittent brilliance of Russell T Davies’s take on the Doctor. His excitable utopian Timelord demonstrates that Dr Who is an archetype that’s malleable in the right hands, as it has been through the actors who’ve portrayed him. All of which makes me even more excited about the prospect of a Neil Gaiman episode, one of the treats lined up for later in this new season.

Normally when I do a review it’s a more or less considered response to something I’ve experienced recently. And it may be that I write such a piece about the Walt Simonson Thor Omnibus that I took delivery of today. The book is immense, something over 1000 pages in a substantial hardback, as befits as a saga about a Norse god told in the mighty Marvel manner. Leafing through it brings back memories, and it’s those I’m inclined to share…

In 2011, we take for granted that comics can be an intelligent medium capable of all manner of stories. Whether or not we read them ourselves, media coverage about comics has increased over the years from looking at autobiographical and political tales in the review section to contemplating the impact of superhero movies at the box office. It’s like that now because of what’s been happening since the 1980s.

It’s typically the work of Alan Moore (Watchmen) and Frank Miller (Dark Knight) that gets picked up on in the shorthand version of events. Those of us who were around at the time will be able to tell you a fuller story, stopping by at First Comics, which launched several promising titles of which Howard Chaykin’s American Flagg was clearly the most sophisticated offering. Then there were self-published titles, of which Dave Sim’s Cerebus was the flagship. But this was also a time when Marvel comics raised their game.

Frank Miller’s contributions to Daredevil have been given critical attention perhaps because his work is influenced by pulp crime fiction, which has tended to have more of a cachet than superheroes. And that might account for why Walt Simonson’s startling run on Thor has received less note from the world at large. Make no mistake, it’s a big bold superhero comic, one that packs an epic punch as befits a thunder god. There’s no irony, no political subtext, none of the stuff that gets comics coverage in the mainstream press — it’s balls-to-the-wall heroic action on an operatic scale, and if you’re ever in a mood for that, it doesn’t get better than the version served up by Walt Simonson.

Often, that kind of larger than life business works best when the creators and reader mutually agree to a lobotomy, all the better to concentrate on that which zings on the page. What makes Simonson unusual is the degree of intelligence he brings to the proceedings. His artwork is frequently stunning, innovative page designs executed with energy and dash — you can see the Jack Kirby in there for sure, but there’s also a pinch of Mucha and a sheer kinetic pizzazz I associate with Simonson alone.

Then there’s the writing. Simonson gets what makes mythic writing tick, and delivers it in style. This again stands in contrast to the moody alienated stuff that impressed broadsheet readers in features about Moore and Miller, very much part of the mood of the time. A pity that the downbeat neurotic approach has been mistaken for maturity by so many — writers, editors, publishers and public — since. Especially when they could have been enjoying the majestic tale of a god living on Earth, who has adventures in deep space with a trusted alien ally at his side, protecting Asgard and our planet from menaces on a grand scale.

This really is tremendous stuff, skilfully designed and executed with panache that can only come from a creator at the top of his powers. Simonson has done excellent work before and after Thor, but he’ll always be remembered for this four year run that he gave his all to, and which remains for me one of the highpoints in the history of the medium. If the Branagh film has any of the richness and zest of Simonson’s work, it’ll be well worth seeing.

1957. Miles Davis, already a signature force in the world of jazz for his invention of a cool style that’s a remove from the bebop that came before it, issues a compilation of some of the tracks he’s created in the last few years with his nine-piece band; itself an innovation. That collection is called Birth of the Cool.

It’s no accident that the comic Static, one of the titles launched as part of the Milestone imprint developed by Dwayne McDuffie and others for DC Comics in 1993, is collected under the name Rebirth of the Cool. Like the music of Miles Davis, it can be appreciated by all, and has the imprint of a distinctively black American sensibility. And that pisses some people off. Assuming McDuffie was imposing an agenda on a medium characterised by a profoundly conservative mainstream, a lot of potential readers never bothered to pick up Static or other Milestone titles, which presented a world that was not only ethnically diverse, but where race and culture shaped characters and story.

All of which would be irrelevant if the comics were as crappy as the majority of those on the market. Static is the first Milestone collection I’ve read, and it’s very good indeed. Its protagonist is a 15 year old black kid, who with his wit and scientific aptitude it’s hard not to see as a stand-in for McDuffie himself. Whatever. The quality of the writing — some issues were co-scripted with Robert L. Washington III –soon makes you forget that, and immerses you in the world of young Virgil Hawkins.

You could see Static, because of his age and the dilemmas he faces, as a more modern take on the Peter Parker/Spider-Man riff. In the same way that Miles Davis could cover a jazz standard and make it his own, Static is a distinct character in his own right. There are some classic tales in the early years of Spider-Man, but there’s something very straight and very white about them. McDuffie was a fan of Frank Zappa, who was colour blind when it came to hiring musicians. Zappa used the expression “putting the eyebrows on” to describe the process of going from the basic tune as written, to the one that’s performed in a particular concert, a response to the energy of the evening, the mood of the players, and sometimes what was in the news. You can look at Static as McDuffie “putting the eyebrows on” the template that Stan Lee and Steve Ditko had created with Spider-Man.

The dialogue has sass, the plot has pace, and the structures are solid: this is quality comics writing by someone who knew exactly what he was doing. Like Miles learned jazz ballads and put his own twist on them, McDuffie plays with familiar tropes like girlfriends, school rivalries, and the interaction of heroes and villains, and brings them to life with wit and style. The fact that he’s working with an artist of the calibre of John Paul Leon means that the stories look as good as they read, and for some of the same reasons: these are comics, but not like you’ve seen them before.

Socially conscious without being worthy, emotionally credible and with characters it’s easy to empathise with, Static is a stand-out series that’s well worth picking up a collection of. It also led to a highly successful animated series, Static Shock, that reached a bigger audience than the comics ever would. In the process it established McDuffie as perhaps the most significant black creator working in comics, someone whose writing skills were supported by the business acumen needed to get Milestone off the ground where he could showcase work that he believed in, for — among others — a multi-cultural audience that had rarely seen itself in the pages of the comics they read, and certainly not with the insight and prowess that Dwayne and his collaborators brought to the table.

I don’t intentionally listen to The Archers for the same reason that I don’t intentionally poke myself in the eye with a pencil. It just happens sometimes. I catch random bits of Radio 4 while I’m in the kitchen, and that sometimes happens with the latest update from the folk of Ambridge. The one encounter that I relish even less is when I catch some of Gardener’s Question Time. So you can imagine my delight when, as I chop a courgette to go into dinner, I cotton onto the fact that one of the current storylines in The Archers is the possibility of Gardener’s Question Time being broadcast from Ambridge. Be still, my aching sides.

This sort of thing doesn’t happen by accident. It occurs when self-important people with oversized salaries sit around a table thinking they’re creative when they use phrases like ‘leveraging brand potentiality’. Something similar happened in Masterchef last week when the contestants had to cook for the cast of Merlin. And guess what? All of the shows mentioned so far are made by the BBC. They’re spending the money that you and I give them to celebrate their own output, in what could charitably be described as hyperreal but is perhaps more accurately termed opportunist crap. The idea presumably being that fans of a rural soap may be into a gardening show, and that if you like food, you’ll love wizards.

Annoying though this is, it is as nothing compared to the self-referential nature of superhero comics. You’ve heard of The Hulk, yeah? And probably Captain America. They’re two of Marvel’s big iconic characters, with plenty of merchandising dollars wrapped up in putting their images out there in the world. They’ve been around a long time, and when Marvel was gaining in popularity in the sixties they had the bright idea of putting some of their well known heroes in the same comic. Good idea: give readers the chance to follow the adventures of existing heroes, and introduce them to new ones who could potentially get comics of their own if readers responded to them. That was the idea behind The Avengers, which went on to be a team comic of variable quality under its many creative teams, some issues of which I have fond memories of.

That was then, this is now. The convoluted pseudo-history that’s created by decades of Marvel comics supposedly happening over just a few years — essentially to avoid the dynamic young heroes being older than the readers’ parents — is crumbling under the weight of attempts to rationalise its obvious paradoxes. The solution? Create a whole new universe for Marvel characters to have adventures in. And sure enough, that involves the creation of a new set of Avengers, only this time round they’re called The Ultimates. Same principle though: put together the big hitters with some second division characters, see if any of them take off with fans.

Only, once The Ultimates have been going for a while and engaging with the rest of the Ultimate Universe, it too starts to collapse under the weight of its own nonsense. Oh, and there’s an Avengers film on the way, so Marvel want as much product with that name on as they can fit on the shelves. Which is what leads us to — and you might want to take a breath before you read this next bit — a series called Ultimate Avengers Vs New Ultimates. Because obviously, the Avengers are so cool that they need to be split into two teams, each of them an alternate world spin-off of the tried-and-tested Avengers brand.

If your head isn’t spinning enough, I urge you to check out what’s happened to the Avengers that avenge stuff in the original Marvel Universe, as opposed to the one where the Ultimates hang out. And there, Marvel have opted for what’s called brand extension. You know how you can get a lite version of some beers? Well, Avengers now come in several flavours too: New, Secret, Mighty and Dark. There might have been something like Avengers: The Initiative in there as well, but you know what? I’m past caring. Next time I want to see costumed poseurs upsetting one another, I’m watching Dancing On Ice.

One of the first superhero comics I was taken with featured the Fantastic Four transported to an alien planet where they were pitted against inhuman adversaries in gladiatorial combat. With creative powerhouse Jack Kirby providing the graphics and more, and the aliens adopting the form of Prohibition-era gangsters, it was a real thrill for me at 12 or so.

I didn’t realise what a hackneyed story it was, because it was the first time I’d come across it and it was well executed. But typically, it’s a sign of creator fatigue when that particular plot gets dusted off. And I had no intention of revisiting something that was a waste of space when it was called Secret Wars or Secret Wars II. Only, I’ve been looking to add to my embarrassingly small collection of Dwayne McDuffie work since eulogising him, and came across a copy of Beyond.

Let’s not pretend that Beyond is anything but what it is — a well-executed take on a hokey story. But just as a good guitarist can elevate blues from being a succession of twelve bar cliches, so can a good writer turn unpromising material into something interesting. That’s pretty much the definition of success in the comics mainstream, come to think of it, and McDuffie shines here paired up with artist Scott Kolins.

McDuffie’s intelligence as a writer shines in the best possible way — he doesn’t draw attention to himself, but his ability to deliver fast paced stories with high quality dialogue marks him out as a true talent. Beyond can be followed perfectly well by a 12 year old, as it should be, and rewards the attention of anyone who appreciates a well crafted tale.

Given that McDuffie’s work was all aimed at a young audience, it’s worth noting that a writer requires all their wits to hold the attention of that lively readership. No ducking behind metafictional games and fancy-pants vocabulary — the readers want to be entertained, and will happily drop you for a more engaging computer game if you can’t do so.

One of the central characters in Beyond was new to me, a young hero called Gravity. He meets his end in the story saving the day for the others. But this being comics, that’s no impediment to a longer career. Whether through editorial fiat or because McDuffie liked the character, he was resurrected in Dwayne’s run on Fantastic Four.

Here, with characters whose relationships are established and can be picked up and played with, McDuffie’s skill at writing three-dimensional personalities with emotional lives is more apparent than it was in the more action-focused Beyond. The writer’s intelligence and scientific background clearly shapes some of the concepts he comes up with — he’s got an impressive ability to think through an idea and see it from several angles, laying a trail for the reader to follow one track and then leading them on another.

McDuffie’s intelligence allows him to write brainy characters like Reed Richards, Henry Pym and Black Panther convincingly. Where lesser writers dumb down the cast to highlight the relative intelligence of the bright one, McDuffie convincingly demonstrates how a smart mind would plan ahead and react, not least because that’s how he generates stories in the first place.

And I notice that I’m writing about Dwayne McDuffie in the present tense. Which is where his stories will remain for those who come across them. If you’ve got children in your life, gently point them to whatever work of his you can find — whether his tv work on Justice League, Ben 10: Alien Force or Static Shock, or the various comics he was involved with, most notably DC’s Milestone imprint. The world has too many merchandise-led opportunities to relieve children of their pocket money, and while Dwayne was astute commercially he did so with the highest intent: to provide intelligent socially-conscious entertainment for young people.

Time was, when a comic went out of print, that was it. But one by-product of the Baby Boomers and Generation X is that the artefacts of our younger days never f-f-fade away. Instead, they’re immortalised in deluxe editions, portentuously packaged hardbacks like the Marvel Masterworks editions or the DC Archive equivalents. And part of me wonders what’s going on when the adventures of forgettable characters as chronicled by second rate creators are given that kind of veneration. But then a publisher like IDW collects the wonderful Journey, or Dynamic Forces and Image gather up the excellent initial issues of American Flagg, and I forget all that cynicism and go shopping like a good consumer.

I can’t say I’ve ever been a big fan of Scott McCloud. His Understanding Comics is without doubt an important piece of work, an intelligent exploration of how comics function — but Reinventing Comics had too much of the zeal of the convert about it, in this case the hymn of the early adopter who wants everyone else to go digital. Turns out he was a bit too early, and anyway I was never really the target audience for his polemic, nor his other book on making your own comics.

All the while, I was aware that McCloud was first known for a series called Zot!, which I’d never latched onto. But in the same way that you can now get old episodes of Star Trek with added digital effects, and deluxe editions of Fall CDs, there’s now a single volume collection of the 26 black and white issues of Zot! that ran from 1987 to 1991. I overlooked it when it was new, but finding a cheap second hand copy I picked one up — I’m glad I did.

Zot! The Complete Black And White Collection is named after a teenage boy superhero from another dimension, where technology is advanced compared to our own, and life is generally more upbeat and smily. And he’s befriended a teenage girl on our Earth, Jenny. They have adventures together, but the core of their stories is very much emotional and not heroic. That’s ever more the case as the series progresses and Zot is marooned in our dimension, not a flying car or robot in sight.

I wonder if McCloud’s storytelling is influenced by his friendship with Kurt Busiek — the two are lifelong friends, and the little I’ve seen of Busiek’s work is much more emotionally centred than the vast majority of superhero comics. At any rate, it was a pleasant surprise to discover how adept McCloud is at guiding emotions through skilled choices in his art and writing. There’s no real depth to the characterisation, but it’s easy to empathise with the characters anyway, if only because the relative simplicity of the artwork allows for easy identification.

What reading his non-fiction did prepare me for was the intelligence of some of the ideas — his villains are an inventive bunch, and in line with his thinking more generally McCloud has a schema for them based on the way they exemplify and extrapolate different visions of technology. Never mind the theory — what counts is that a couple of these guys really are unsettling.

McCloud’s talent develops visibly as you go through the book’s near 600 pages. In his essays between the stories, McCloud comes across a little embarrassed at the naivity of some of his work, but there’s really no need. Sure, it’s the work of a younger man, but there’s a lot to be said for that — the bravura of his synthesis of American and Japanese influences could only have come from someone whose youth has been immersed in both, and the rawness of the emotions is a direct reflection of his own very real feelings about love and life. At times it’s arguably a bit self-conscious as McCloud addresses social issues in the stories, but as with all of his work, I’d rather read someone aiming high and falling short than a creator settling for competent mediocrity any day.

There are people whose influence transcends their work. In the case of Dwayne McDuffie, I’ve not actually seen that much of the comics and animation episodes he’s written. But he’s an influence nonetheless, for the way he lived his life, as I got to discover it through interviews, internet forum posts, and a brief email exchange.

Regular readers will have come across my allusions to a multi-platform project for animation and computer games that illustrator Andy Tudor and I have been working on for 18 months. It’s at a critical stage, in the form of a 70 page project bible that a few people have seen, and has received unanimous praise from those who’ve read it. That tiny audience includes people with real track records in the film, animation, and entertainment world, and we want to translate that enthusiasm into a sustainable concept that, sooner or later, you’ll get to experience in the real world.

That project wouldn’t exist without the influence of several people — Dwayne McDuffie is one of them. And Dwayne McDuffie is dead, just a day after the launch of his animated DVD version of All Star Superman, the Grant Morrison/Frank Quitely classic. I’ve not seen it, but I’m sure it’ll stand alongside the work he did on Justice League and Ben 10.

Those of you thinking “but they’re just kids’ cartoons” are right, and so so wrong. Dawyne McDuffie wrote cartoons, yes. He wrote cartoons that were respectful of the bright young minds watching them. And he created Milestone, a line of comics for DC in which black heroes like Static and Hardware were front and centre, and became massively popular in animated form with young black audiences. Just a cartoon? Yes. But even a cartoon character can be a role model, and that matters. It’s important.

A highly intelligent African American with a scientific background and a passion for stories, Dwayne’s integrity has been praised by all those who knew him. He stood up for what was right, even when he knew he was going to lose whatever fight he was caught up in. One of those fights was for creators to own their work, and his commitment to that cause was and is an inspiration to me.

What Dwayne did — along with creators like Joe Casey and Steve Seagle — convinced me that there is no better future for a creator than to originate and own stories, and profit from that ownership. Their success — seen most clearly in the ubiquity of Ben 10 merchandise in supermarkets and toy stores — is proof that creators can put out work that’s an intelligent contribution to mainstream culture. Proof too, that comics creators can engage with the business world and succeed on their own terms, rather than in the somewhat cranky style of an Alan Moore or Dave Sim.

That vision inspires me infinitely more than the idea of churning medical drama out for the BBC. I’m glad I had that experience in writing for Doctors — it was interesting and educational — but it really isn’t the future I want. Sure, the animation/game/whatnot project is a longshot…but what isn’t? There are some goals worth pursuing, both for the potential payoff and also for the adventure along the way and the doors that are opened in the process, and this is one of them.

Tonight, I’m going to watch some of the animated shows Dwayne was involved in. I’m sure I’ll enjoy them, and I’m equally sure I’ll learn from them, and as I do I’ll remember the stories he shared about the arguments he got into with Marvel and DC. And I’ll look forward to the battles that Andy and I have ahead of us, and hope we can face them with the quiet resolve of Dwayne McDuffie.