When the comic book writer Alan Grant, who has died aged 73, was at school in Scotland in the 1950s, he was regularly beaten by his teachers for being left-handed, and frequently excluded for rebellious behaviour. So it is perhaps surprising that he went on to write celebrated runs of the adventures of two of the most authoritarian comic characters — Judge Dredd and Batman.
Or perhaps not. Judge Dredd, which debuted in the British sci-fi weekly 2000AD in 1977, is a sharp satire on an all-powerful future police state, while Batman is the brooding vigilante who has to mete out justice because the corrupt authorities are failing in their job. So maybe Grant’s writing was in some way revenge for the injustices he suffered as a child.
