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.

It's been a very interesting exercise as a writer - writing a little family group, like The Incredibles or The Simpsons or something like that, and setting it in a big Star Wars-type setting. It's been really fun, definitely different from the kind of thing I normally do.

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.

I don't see one as bring better or more literate than the other and there's a real buzz to not only writing about a character I love like Superman, but also writing something that kids can enjoy.

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

Marvel movies, are seeming slightly less exciting now that Star Wars has appeared and everything.

Oddly, I think if you look at comic books, you look at the shelves in the store, it's predominantly male characters, historically. But if you look outside the window it's 52-percent female, and something odd is going on there. So I do think it's your responsibility as a writer, really, to create stuff that little girls can get into too. I want my daughters to have role models that are female.