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.

How do you wrap up a show like The Shield, in which over seven seasons cop Vic Mackey turns every relationship in his life bad through his determination to be the most alpha of males? He lies, he bullies, he plants evidence, he tortures, he kills — and he fascinates. That simple juxtaposition, the same one seen in women who like bad boys, a conundrum which compels, drives tens of hours of screen drama with Mackey portrayed at a level far beyond mere skill by actor Michael Chiklis.

In the process, the show’s writers, guided by series creator Shawn Ryan, come up with the finest sustained tv drama I have yet seen. British television has produced work of incredible quality, but I can’t think of an example of a prolonged narrative with anything like the power of The Shield. More than that, British tv is institutionally not geared to produce such a thing: power rests in the hands of commissioners who come and go, and who always have one eye on this week’s ratings. Sure, commercial considerations drive American tv, but structurally the system is very different, with writers able to attain power through creating and running shows. The sort of singular vision required to drive a show like Deadwood, MadMen or The Sopranos is not encouraged in British tv.

Anyway, The Shield wraps up beautifully. The big question is what would happen to Mackey. One of his trusted lieutenants has already been driven to kill himself and his family as a result of being involved with Vic. And he betrays the one who still swears loyalty in an attempt to secure a deal that will protect his family. Restitution is needed. Only, prison just wouldn’t work for Mackey: his methods would probably make him the kingpin there, just as he is on the streets of Los Angeles. The solution that’s arrived at is perfect: a very personal kind of hell for Vic, who gets to see the world he’s been king of, but not participate in it. And the longer he’s away from the action, the more his ghosts will come to haunt him.

Along the way, the other characters get some kind of resolution to their journeys, often with the lightest of touches. A cop tormented by his sexuality gets to see gay men happy with their lives. Another for whom approaching women has been an issue finds that he makes an impression without even trying to. And so on, one character after another being highlighted for a moment in a way that acknowledges where they’ve been and suggests where they might be heading. It could only work in the context of characters played brilliantly by just the right actors for a sustained period, and it’s a wonderful thing to behold.

Shawn Ryan moved on from The Shield to be an executive producer on The Unit, a series created by David Mamet based on a book by a former Special Forces member he’d met in putting Spartan together. With the clout he’d got from The Shield, it was easier to bring The Unit to the screen. The two shows share some DNA in that they’re about tough men in a tough job, whose relationships with women are central to the story.

Stylistically, they’re very different. Where The Shield is all handheld camera and street noise, The Unit is more conventionally shot, and uses a synthesised soundtrack. It might look more traditional, but with Mamet scripting the pilot episode the dialogue has a cadence you won’t get elsewhere, and a way of exploring gender that gets beneath the surface and raises some interesting questions. I’m not convinced it has the power of The Shield, but only time will tell — I bought the first season yesterday and there are another dozen episodes to go before I decide whether I want any more.

Why is it that I have no desire to see the new Peter Weir film, The Way Back? He has previously made some films that I rate very highly indeed: Picnic at Hanging Rock, Witness, Fearless and The Truman Show. So what is that makes me look at the marketing for his new release and think ‘that just doesn’t do it for me’? And, by the way, it’s not just me — the local multiscreen has this new big budget movie playing just once a day.

Take a look at the trailer and see what you think. Sad to say, there’s part of me that’s had its fill of concentration camp movies. The very setting speaks of worthiness and historic significance. I cringe as I write those words, but that’s just how it is. Call me shallow, but it’s a world which I step into warily: for every Schindler’s List there’s a half dozen films struggling under the weight of their self-importance.

Stylistically too, there’s something very old-fashioned about the look of The Way Back. The trailer has, as they all do, quick edits — but I can’t help feel that in the reality of the film those scenes will be long, as the camera insists on confronting the audience with grim detail and relentless truth. And, again, I wince in saying that — but it accurately pins down some of why I don’t want to engage with what, in all likelihood, will be a fine film.

Let’s take a step back. Something interesting has happened with films about serious themes in the last decade, maybe more. Where some topics were once handled with that kind of Richard Attenborough reverence I find deathly, we’re now seeing movies like Hurt Locker and United 93 treat contemporary war and terror in a contemporary way. Handheld camera, subjective approach, a stylistic vocabulary that belongs to the 21st century. Compare to The Way Back — objective camera, and a general feel that it could have been made at any time since the 1950s. The one contemporary touch is in some of the soundtrack — not the generic orchestration, which is again old school (compare to the percussive soundtrack of Three Kings, another brilliant recent look at warfare) — but the stereotypical woman-wailing-ethnically bit which is so familiar to anyone who’s seen Black Hawk Down and the Lord of the Rings films, to name two offenders.

Put it all together, and the messages convey a sense that seeing the new Peter Weir film is going to be a bit of an ordeal. Everything about it seems ponderous, with the underlying feel that this is something that’s going to be good for you rather than something enjoyable. And, it has to be said, the same applied to a lesser degree to the advance material for Master and Commander, Weir’s last cinematic outing — which turned out to be a great film when I got round to it. But again, one with a feel of the timeless epic about it, which is not necessarily the sort of film a modern audience wants to see.

Just to be clear, I am very much in favour of films with serious messages. But that doesn’t mean they have to be tackled in a po-faced way. The puddingy feel of the trailers for The Way Back puts me off seeing a film that I may well relish if I could persuade myself to see it. But when the other choices available to me include the spritely looking 127 Hours, I know which I’m in a mood for.

127 Hours comes to us from Danny Boyle. His film is marketed in a way that it sits comfortably along other fresh looking choices available to the modern consumer. The trailer is bright, pacy, has a cool soundtrack, and so on — with all the lifestyle signifiers that an audience can relate to. And, like The Way Back, it’s about sacrifice and pain and doing what you need to do: the tag at the end of 127 Hours ‘there is no force on earth more powerful than the will to live’ could apply equally to both films. But, sorry Peter Weir — it’s Danny Boyle’s film I’m going to be seeing today.

Enjoyable though some of their output is, you don’t associate Marvel Comics with socially committed work. Sure, there are those who claim that Civil War had interesting political facets, but let’s be honest — Watchmen it wasn’t. And that’s fine: comics can be whatever the people making them want them to be, whether that’s the off-kilter dreamworld of Jay Stephens or the retro noir of Darwyn Cooke’s Parker reinventions.

Still, it’s a surprise to find a work as politically engaged as Captain America: Truth, a subversion of the patriotic icon by writer Robert Morales and artist Kyle Baker that puts race centre stage. This is, forgive the hyperbole, a work of some significance. The equivalent DC story would reveal that Superman is the sole survivor of Krypton because he’d killed and eaten its other inhabitants. You fuck with icons at your peril, but when it’s done with the edge, the passion, the dignity of Truth then the job is worth taking on.

Make no mistake — this isn’t some faux-controversial headline grabber in the manner of Mark Millar’s fan-baiting projects. This comes from an earlier time, in 2003, when Marvel was struggling to redefine itself and in the process created some genuinely out-there material under the stewardship of the company’s president of publishing and chief operations officer Bill Jemas.

So, what’s the big deal with Truth? Simply, that its creators go back to Captain America’s roots to reveal that before Steve Rogers became a supersoldier, black servicemen were experimented on to establish the efficacy of the serum used. That’s an interesting premise anyway. What takes it further is its connection to undeniable reality — the Nazis are now notorious for their views about racial purity, but they were commonplace at the time. America and Britain both did dreadful things to keep the genepool clean, sterilising the mentally frail and subscribing to ideas on eugenics just as much as Hitler did in his plans to create a master race.

For a comic like Captain America, where the villain of the piece is more likely to be a moustache-twirling Frenchman called Batroc the Leaper than institutionalised racism, Truth is something radically different. Which itself is a point: superhero comics are singularly ill-equipped to deal with the intricacies of serious issues, especially in installments of 22 pages including two fights and a chase.

All the more reason to praise Truth, for laying out with slow burning power a story which outlines the wrongs done to America’s black servicemen in World War Two — treated as second class citizens, and only allowed to have blood transfusions from other black people, so as not to taint whites with the blood of the Negro. Strong stuff, but especially so for a company that prides itself on the one size fits all metaphor of mutants as persecuted minority — not a bad idea, but typically facile in its execution.

Typically, more mainstream comics fans were affronted by Kyle Baker’s art for the project than any of the ideas it contained. He can and does do the kind of detail-rich emphatically muscular characters that so many superhero fans need to see to recognise what’s before them as being something they want to read, but opted on this occasion for a more cartoony style. It was an intentional choice: Baker wanted to reach black readers who weren’t checking out comics, and figured his apparently simple linework, reminiscent of cheap tv animation and graffiti, would do the job better than dudes in figurehugging lycra. But as this cover makes clear, that simplicity made for powerful iconic imagery.

I’m not the first person to hanker for the days when Marvel was putting out work of this calibre. Sure, it was all part of a — successful — experiment to revitalise the company when it was in the dumps, but does it really take crisis to provoke a business to create work of genuine social and creative merit? What if…that were the intention on an ongoing basis?

It was probably at the point that a flying shark pulled a hansom cab into a sky full of likewise soaring shoals of fish that I accepted that wherever Steven Moffat was taking us in the Christmas episode of Dr Who, I would be at his shoulder. The show was a triumph of — and celebration of — imagination, that managed to do that thing Neil Gaiman pulls off so well sometimes, of being at once postmodern (in this case, by reinventing the Dickens classic A Christmas Carol and setting it on another planet) and a thoroughly old-fashioned slice of rip-roaring fun.

At its heart, was heart. The frozen heart of a little boy who’s grown up despite himself to be the image of his fearsome father, and who through the Doctor’s meddling with time had his heart melted by a beautiful girl. It was pure fantasy, but now and then Moffat the science fiction writer made some token effort to provide cod-scientific explanations for the flying fish and whatnot…every time he did so he was bitten by one of the fish, a lovely way to tell himself and the audience to just shut the hell up and enjoy the spectacle.

And what a spectacle. Set on a colony planet with a Victorian vibe, the whole had a steampunk feel that looked a treat — a monstrous weather-control machine akin to a Wurlitzer designed by Frankenstein, metal pods to hold frozen family members in as security against loans, and the ubiquitous goggles that have become shorthand for steampunk. Mix all that, and stir with a beautiful woman serenading a dying shark to coax it back into life, and there was more imagination on screen for one hour than I’ve seen the BBC concoct in the last hundred or so I’ve seen of their programming. It certainly beat the prospect of watching cot death on Eastenders, which is what the nation’s broadcaster deemed fit for its Christmas special.

Now, there’s an audience for dead babies, and there’s one for phantasmagoric triumphs of the imagination, and I know which I lean towards. There is indeed a case and place for social realism on our screens, though realism got mixed up with miserablism somewhere along the way, which was never the point of socially committed drama. But in the same way that a whole market has developed of books with soft-focus photos of unhappy people, with titles like The Woman I Called Mum, and Beaten and Bloody recounting allegedly true tales of woe, there’s an audience for similarly downbeat telly. You can see them in the script conference, wondering what woe to visit on the people of Albert Square: “I’ve got it…Christmas is a time when a baby was born. How about we celebrate by having a baby die?” High fives all-round.

I should reiterate that I’m a big fan of the BBC. Conceptually, anyway. It’s obvious though that someone else should be in charge of the actual programming. The poverty of imagination is shocking for a supposedly creative organisation. Someone I know was invited to attend a BBC course designed to gee up writers to come up with ideas for shows rooted in fantasy and science fiction. A great idea. So what did the BBC do? Invite writers whose CVs were studded with episodes of Doctors, regardless of whether or not they’d got any demonstrable interest in or commitment to genre storytelling. Having heard some of the ideas that they came up with, it’s no surprise that nothing has come of that particular initiative.

And it’s not hard to get that stuff right. Points for trying, for sure, but I could rally up a more convincing bunch of creators to do what the BBC had in mind with just a few emails and phone calls. Get them together in a hotel for a week under the guidance of Philip Palmer, whose reputation as a science fiction novelist is secure and also has experience as a writer and script editor for tv, and I can guarantee that wonders would result. It’s that easy, if you want it to be. If you want it to be…

You can rely on Warren Ellis to be surfing the zeitgeist and — much of the time — pull off some impressive moves as he does. This time round, the comics writer has teamed up with design agency Berg to create a comic with artist D’Israeli. SVK will, as well as being packaged as some kind of unique objet d’art, have a conceptually sound reason for including product placements as part of the piece.

Well done Warren, always ahead of the curve in his thinking, and — as this project demonstrates — out there staking his claim in the shifting media landscape. Interesting that this news comes in the same week that rumours abound regarding product placement being given the go-ahead in British television, for commercial channels at least. And it was only the other year that an approach from Eurostar led Shane Meadows to make the film Somers Town.

Part of me wants to overlook the fact that I really do not like Somers Town, at best an overelongated and sentimentalised short film. This could have happened in any case, but is it possible that the gestation process involved led to the film being made when maybe it wouldn’t have been in other circumstances? Eurostar aren’t known for their expertise as film producers after all, and it’s possible that Shane bit at the chance to make a film with less constraints than may have existed otherwise…and I’d argue that Shane Meadows is a creator who could do with a firmer hand regarding his indulgences.

The bigger issue is about the relationship of art and commerce, to put it pompously. To realise your creative dreams, someone’s got to pay the bill, and is some kind of sponsorship arrangement conducive to doing so without compromising your intent, while at the same time being of service to a benefactor?

It’s all about the execution, in practice. Seeing rock festivals with big corporate banners and the best tickets reserved for executives sits uneasily with me, but even then there’s a distinction to be drawn: the Carling concerts in Leeds and elsewhere seem faithful to the raucous spirit of Reading, but I’d hate to see a similar approach taken to Glastonbury. Raising money for CND is one thing, for Barclays quite another.

BMW commissioned a series of short films, and a tie-in comic, to promote their cars, and it’s an exercise that seems to have been handled with class by all involved. Credible creators produced work that was at least as good as most of the stuff seen at film festivals, and I dare say didn’t fetishise the cars any more than filmmakers already have a tendency to do. And it’s a proactive relationshop compared to merely supplying some cars to be driven by whoever James Bond is in the hope of some sexy (and profitable) synergy.

These things are more nebulous than seeing Clive Owen at the wheel inspiring you to choose the same car as your next motor. Branding is more subtle than that, or can be. Companies queue up to sponsor tv shows that are known for their quality and distinctiveness, and are happy to cough up to be associated with someone else’s success. It’s magical thinking in essence — ‘if we stand next to someone cool, that makes us cool’. Which works best when the business involved really is distinct from the pack, and not just wanting to hang out behind the bikesheds with the arty kids.

I have no inherent problem with companies wanting to sponsor films in some fashion. Soap operas are so-called because, way back when, detergent manufacturers wanted women viewers to think well of them and so sponsored daytime dramas. And why not? There’s a world of difference between that and suspending high school students for wearing a Pepsi t-shirt on a day deemed to belong to Coke by school, to use one egregious example of what happens when these things are done ineptly.

Paul Haggis has written one of my favourite films: In The Valley Of Elah. And he’s written other notable ones, including Crash and Million Dollar Baby. Which puts him high on the list of writers I’d like to have a chat with. Well, there’s no danger of that happening in the immediate future, but I did acquire a DVD in which Haggis is interviewed by producer Mike de Luca when I subscribed to a film magazine. The magazine never did anything for me, but I’m more than pleased I got the DVD.

What attracts me to Haggis’s work is his capacity to present morally complex stories without editorialising. You could say that there are no answers in his work, only questions, and that’s something he’s conscious of, saying that what attracts him to a concept is “some great human dilemma, some question I don’t have an answer for”.

It wasn’t always that clearcut for Haggis, who was lucky enough to break into tv writing in his twenties, and made a hefty amount of money on sitcoms. He views that time as being invaluable to his ability to write filmable material to a deadline. But something was missing, and it took a while to figure out what it was. One lightbulb moment was his presentation of a script to a producer he’d not worked with before. The producer asked “What’s it about? What does it mean to you? Where does it come from within you?”. Haggis’s puzzled response was “It’s supposed to do that?”

It took Haggis some time to venture beyond the security of his tv gigs to explore the world of film. He was driven in part by a dream in which he saw his own grave, on which he was described as the creator of Walker, Texas Ranger. Figuring he wanted to be remembered for something other than a Chuck Norris series, Haggis started to apply the craft skills he’d learned to matters that mattered.

It’s fascinating to note that two of Haggis’s biggest successes — Crash and Million Dollar Baby — were speculative scripts. That comes from his commitment to following your own muse rather than industry trends: variety of experience counts for more than a subscription to Variety. In turn, that dovetails with a belief that he articulates thus: “It’s always good for a writer to be an outsider of some sort.” Even, to some extent, an outsider from the film business — get too caught up in it, and there’s a danger of second guessing what people want rather than following your gut instinct.

Clearly, there is a career to be made by writing at the behest of others. I’ve done plenty of it myself in the form of the freelance copywriting work I do. That’s fine: there’s a clear mutually beneficial exchange of thinking and writing skills in return for money. I have no problem with that. But I wouldn’t pretend that such work nourishes my soul in the same way that the screenplay I’m working on does. And I spent a lot of time pursuing projects that ultimately proved unsatisfactory for me with one filmmaker in particular. But I don’t regret that experience: how can you know for sure what’s right for you until you’ve found out what’s wrong?

Making those distinctions takes time. It’s also why I gave up on Doctors after a couple of episodes. Competing with a couple of hundred other writers for episodes on a daytime series I felt no true passion for, to be rewarded with the opportunity to script more medical drama that doesn’t interest me but gets a bigger audience because it’s shown at night — the carrot the BBC dangles to novice Doctors writers — is not, it turns out, my idea of having a good time. Particularly when the Writers Academy is producing writers who are increasingly providing the material that the BBC is interested in.

I don’t know what will be written on my grave. But I do know that I’m living a happier life following, in my own way, the example of Paul Haggis, than I ever would churning out medical dramas in line with the strictures of someone else’s five act formula.

So, there are plans for a new Buffy The Vampire Slayer movie without the input of the man most associated with the show, Joss Whedon. And his fans are upset about this. Which is fair enough, since without Whedon there wouldn’t be any interest in Buffy’s adventures in the first place.

But let’s have a grown-up talk about this whole thing. I’ve not fervently watched Buffy because my experience is that it’s only intermittently as good as its fans claim. More…mittently, it’s just kind of…better than average, and — IMHO (In My Head Only) — not as deserving of its accolades as the gushing it continues to receive would make you think.

Also: how about Joss Whedon moves on? He’s written a very amusing letter about the situation, which hides its snark and passive aggression beneath the characteristic jaunty sheen that Whedon brought to the teen dialogue in BTVS. But make no mistake: snark and passive aggression are in the area nonetheless.

I have high regard for Joss Whedon, as my liking for Firefly makes abundantly clear. You could say that Firefly never got to hit the languors and damp spots that Buffy did, or choose instead to believe that this was the one Whedon got right from the start. Whichever: its fourteen episodes are peachy to the point of perfection, even if its spin-off movie is less so.

And that’s why this matters. I don’t want to see Whedon going backwards to play with the toys in the Buffy box again. I’d rather see him move forward, and create new material. I’m holding out for good things from his involvement with Marvel around their Avengers movie, and hoping that catapults him into a position where he’s given bigger budgets to play with, and doesn’t have to harken to past glories since the ones ahead will be even more glorious.

See Joss? It’s for your own good that I don’t want you hanging round with those teenagers. It’s not natural for a man of your age. Not when you’ve got that nice Captain America and Iron Man and Thor wanting to hang out with you. Besides, isn’t this vampire thing going to run its course at some point? Please? Don’t go back. Not even to Firefly, foreshortened as it was. Better to imagine the brilliance that could have been than to see it sputter and fade as Buffy did over its duration.

You’ll notice I’ve not mentioned Dollhouse. There’s a reason for that: I’ve not seen it. I may well get round to it one day, but here’s the thing: I’m not a hardcore Whedonite, who will applaud anything the man does. I think he’s a highly capable writer, and what I want my favourite writers to do is what will stretch them. And note, this is different from what fans want. Fans want more of the same please.

Nice as it is to have a fanbase, Mr Whedon, I’m more representative of the population at large since I won’t automatically watch anything you’re involved with. I’m a comics reader, but you won’t find me picking up any Buffy, Angel or even Firefly comics. Not interested, especially when you’re not writing them. I dabbled in comics you did write, when you wrote Astonishing X-Men, but I note I didn’t actually pick up a copy, just read the trade paperback at a friend’s house.

It’s not your fanbase you have to court, Mr Whedon. It’s people like me, who are favourably inclined to your work but don’t have the rictus of the devotee. Say goodbye to Buffy: she’s still a teenager, and you’re going to look increasingly like her ‘uncle’, if you know what I’m saying. And I think you do. Instead, go out there and create something new. Something that makes us all sit up and take notice.

Some years ago, I was caught in a loop of developing short film projects that never went anywhere. Many of them were collaborations with a particular filmmaker, and the ideas were ones we both had interest in. The territory we marked out was invariably low budget and naturalistic. Which is all very well, but there are other aspects to what stimulates me.

One week I decided I wasn’t going to do any of that stuff, but instead came up with a science fiction epic of humungous scope. The concepts were grand, the characters larger than life, the setting literally out of this world. It was a liberating experience after writing so much grounded material to do something that soared off into the stars.

My intention was to develop the project in comic form, and I wrote the first episode of what was supposed to be a 2000AD series for what came to be called Dadtown. A curious title that I like, chosen because of its thematic connection to the story: it begins with our teenage heroine’s revolt against her father, the corrupt mayor of a space colony. And builds from there to explore the relationship of the colony itself to Earth.

I duly showed the script to a comic artist friend, who rated it highly. Only, what with him being good, he’s got a load of professional work to be getting on with, so I set about finding my own artist. And, after some searching online, found a guy in America who seemed pretty much perfect. His portfolio had illustrations that demonstrated the kind of gritty futuristic look that would work for Dadtown, with a manga twist that took it somewhere else. I liked it, and he seemed excited by the material.

So I waited.

And waited.

And then contacted him to ask what was going on.

And never heard from him again.

Hey ho. This is apparently a familiar story, but it was a new one to me. And I got busy with other projects, and put Dadtown to one side. I went back to it, realising that it could be realised as an animated film. Or even a series. The story naturally breaks down into three acts, each different and bigger in scope than the preceding one, so it could be developed as an intense one-off story, or a prolonged experience of three seasons.

And then Avatar appeared. Large aspects of which bear strong relation to what I’d done with Dadtown a decade before. Only, Jim Cameron got there first. For a while, I figured that was the end of the road for Dadtown. Anyway, I had other projects to be getting on with. But nothing is wasted, and out of the blue I realised I had a way of getting it back on the go again.

The way in was a favour for a friend. A businessman he knows is putting together a football-themed comic, and wanted artists for it. To help out, I Twittered for some, and the call was repeated by others. A few artists indicated their interest, and I pointed them in the direction of the football gig. Then had a lightbulb moment: artists who can draw football comics might be interested in drawing other comics.

I know, I was slow on the uptake there. But when I made the connection, I looked back at who’d responded, and one name stood out. Not a name I’m going to mention for now, but if this develops as I hope, then you’ll hear about him soon enough. We’ve not met yet, but I’ve seen his work, and it’s good. And knowing that he works as an animator gives me confidence in his ability to deliver the goods in a professional manner. Result.

I’ll lead up to this idea slowly, because I fear the response if I pull the rabbit out of the hat in this first paragraph. But consider: we’re at that time of year when festive movies are on the horizon. And only just after the traditional Halloween glut of horror films. Which led me to thinking, what if there were a Christmas-themed horror franchise..?

Now, brains being what they are, you set them a question like that, and they come up with answers. Which in this case, leads me to presenting the concept of Bob Slay. I don’t need to say much more than that, do I? Like any good high concept, it’s all there in the title. And a poster. Hmm. Where do we start? Well, there’s got to be a festive tree, with presents neatly and colourfully stacked underneath. And something to indicate the carnage that cinema-goers are looking forward to, having been promised it in the title. How about a splash of blood, and the suggestion of a child’s corpse?

All very well, but who is Bob Slay, and what leads him to commit midwinter mayhem? One thematic tie-in is with Herod, known for slaughtering the innocent at this time of year, and to whom we can ascribe a catchy slogan in the form of ’suffer little children’. That’s got legs, for sure, and it could point to Bob being a reincarnation of the kiddy-killing king, which would play particularly well in evangelical parts of the States. Better yet, he’s on the lookout for another Messiah, hoping to stop him in his tracks before he gets to do his godly business.

Or we could take more of a Friday 13th route, and make Bob a regular guy with irregular issues. Maybe he was molested at a grotto by a man with a white beard and red face as a kid, or lost his job as a department store Santa. More Tea Party still, he is an ex-Santa because the creeping forces of godless liberalism dictated that there is no room at the inn for Judeo-Christian celebrations in this politically correct age. Whatever…while others celebrate the birth of baby Jesus, for Bob Slay it’s a time of pain and retribution — against the kids he was sacked for scaring, maybe.

It’s all hanging together nicely, like baubles on the seasonal pine. We’ve got a seasonally-themed bad guy who can helm a sequence of novelty slasher films. Not too classy, admittedly, but at least it’s not torture porn. There’s a line over which I won’t tread, and on one side of it is a pile of childrens’ corpses admittedly — but at least they were killed in the heat of the moment by a psychopath, and not systematically tormented by a calculating fiend.

Look on the bright side: with the money we make from this, we’ll be able to make touching Britflicks about aspiring jockeys and wannabe Morris dancers aplenty. Maybe we need pseudonyms for such an endeavour. Or relish in the opportunity to make arthouse and slasher films both — that’s the kind of publicity that the Weinsteins would love: who wouldn’t like cinema’s own equivalent of Iain Banks and Iain M. Banks? They set up Dimension Films precisely for such lowbrow fodder, and took Dimension with them when Disney bought Miramax: that’s how committed they are to genre films.

What are we waiting for? Who’s with me on this? This is a surefire hit that’ll do wonders at the box office on an annual basis: think Saw with tinsel. Think James Bond with the recurring bad guy to end them all. Think Harry Potter with mince pies and dead children. Just don’t, whatever you do, think of turkey.