There's almost a universe as big as the Marvel Universe with X-Men. I mean, Deadpool is something I think everybody was taken surprise by, except for the people who read the comic book.

Matthew Vaughn phoned me up and he said, "Hey, listen, the movie has just done gangbusters. We've got to do the second one." And I was like, "Matthew, I have no second book. Dave and I haven't done it," and he's like, "You're kidding!" He said, "This movie's just made $420 million!" I was like, "...We've got nothing." So the amazing thing was, because we own the rights, we still get paid and everything, which is fantastic.

Even when I was a little boy, when I was seven, I absolutely loved Wonder Woman, and I saw her as one of the superhero greats with Superman and Batman, and I think it's because she was her own thing. She always felt like the real deal the same way that Superman and Batman did. Whereas the She-Hulks and Spider-Women and all that kind of thing felt like a continuation of a concept.

Maybe in this Star Wars world maybe subconsciously I was preparing myself. But I've just found all of my ideas I've been coming up with are big sci-fi things, and I wanted to do a big epic, a big space opera, and this is it. This is mine.

All my kids love superheroes, but my middle daughter in particular is obsessed with Wonder Woman and Batgirl.

For years I've wanted to work with this guy, so to actually write at the top of my scripts "Empress, Script by Mark Millar, Art by Stuart Immonen" is an absolute pleasure.

The trick was really finding the appropriate publisher for each of the projects I'd devised.