Comic-book writer Mark Millar interviewed

In purely demographic terms, Mark Millar isn’t too different from the rest of us. He’s a middle-aged, wiry-haired, churchgoing Scot with two kids. He subscribes to The Spectator, and enjoys his ‘weekly treat’ of reading the latest issue in the bath. So, unless you have excavated this copy from the yellowing stack in your dentist’s surgery, he could even be scanning these words at the same time as you — right now.

But demographics, often inadequate, are practically useless when it comes to Millar. He may tick the box marked ‘Spectator reader’, but he actually spends most of his time on bizarro worlds in distant corners of the multiverse. He’s surrounded by assassins dipped in blood and sadists wrapped in capes. Everything is sweary and kinetic and extraordinary. And the reason why? Millar is a comic-book writer.

This is a good time to know about Mark Millar. The first instalment of his ten-part superhero saga Jupiter’s Legacy has just been published to a chorus of ringing cash registers and roaring adulation.