Recently in Writing for Comics Category

I must have been five or six when my Dad took my younger brother and me to the local newsagents one Saturday afternoon to choose a comic each. We debated the various merits of each comic before we both settled on a title. My brother chose ‘Pippin’, a title aimed at early readers and featuring recognisable characters such as ‘Larry the Lamb’ and ‘Trumpton’. I chose ‘TV Comic’.

• Tired of local crime?


• Have plenty of time free in the evenings to patrol rooftops and attend team meetings? (Bring you own beer)


• Love the feel of lycra against the skin but can’t go to ‘those’ clubs anymore?

Then you too can follow these simple steps to become a superhero! Choose and combine any of the following qualities to construct your own, individual superhero origin!

1. Become Mega Rich (preferable inherited)

Being a superhero brings a lot of its own pressures without having to worry about having enough change for the parking metre. Bruce (Batman) Wayne never has to worry about receiving a red disconnection notice. Tony (Iron Man) Stark isn’t collecting coupons for a dollar off fabric softener.

I don't think I've made any secret of my love for the Captain Britain character. Back in the 70s, I was the right age to get excited about discovering a hero who was quintessentially British, occupying the same world I lived in.

By the time Alan Moore and Alan Davis revamped the mythology in the 80s, I was hooked. Right up to the gut-wrenching moment when Marvel UK announced the character was crossing the Atlantic to join the roster of the major Marvel heroes.

Captain Britain an X-Man? Betty Braddock transformed into an Asian styled Ninja? These were not the characters I had invested years of reading in. Even when the Excalibur title created a British version of the X-Men, I wasn't convinced. Sure, many elements of the old mythology were still there, but Cap was no longer the star of his own book. If anything, he had become an also-ran, a second or third tier character shoe-horned into the X-Men world with all the subtlety of a round peg in the proverbial square hole.

Comic book scriptwriting has come a long way since the days when a dime got you 22 four-colour pages of smash bang pulp superhero action.

Comic scriptwriting has become far more sophisticated over the decades, reaching the heights of modern literature with writers such as Neil Gaiman, Alan Moore, Warren Ellis and many more. But there are still plenty of comics that have not progressed that far from those golden and silver age days of simple superhero fiction.

After decades of reading comics, there are certain clichés I really think have had their day and should automatically disqualify a comic scriptwriter from ever entering the lobbies of Marvel or DC again.