‘In the end, I saw Superman not as a superhero or even a science fiction character, but as a story of Everyman. We’re all Superman in our own adventures. We have our own Fortresses of Solitude we retreat to, with our own special collections of valued stuff, our own super–pets, our own “Bottle Cities” that we feel guilty for neglecting. We have our own peers and rivals and bizarre emotional or moral tangles to deal with.

I felt I’d really grasped the concept when I saw him as Everyman, or rather as the dreamself of Everyman. That “S” is the radiant emblem of divinity we reveal when we rip off our stuffy shirts, our social masks, our neuroses, our constructed selves, and become who we truly are.’

I wouldn’t want to make him sound respectable. Moore’s comics are utterly mad. He believes in the occult and is a practising Magus. In Black Dossier his characters end up in a mystic alternate reality which he seems to be claiming is a real place, not a fiction. In fact he appears to believe that fictional personae have their own existence in some spiritual realm he can access through magic. Now you’re disturbed. Well, we’re always being told art should disturb. Moore makes artists like the Chapmans look like the middle-class entertainers they are. He’s a real force of imagination in a world that is full of fakes.