MORE than 150 people queued in York to meet one of the most well-respected comic book creators working today.

Mark Millar - who created Kick-Ass, Wanted, Kingsman: The Secret Service, and has worked for Marvel and DC - met fans and signed books at the Travelling Man store in Goodramgate on Friday, and spoke about his career.

He said: “I remember in the nineties being slightly embarrassed that I loved it. When people would ask me at parties and things ‘what do you do’, I’d always feel that slight sense of ‘it isn’t a real job’. People would always look at you like ‘really’?

“And overnight, it changed, and what changed everything was the X-Men movie and then the Spider-Man movie. Suddenly you had credibility via Hollywood, and the difference was unreal. By 2002, people were like ‘Oh wow, that’s really cool’, when you said you worked at Marvel, and it was amazing that suddenly this brand was an aspirational brand.”

Millar is now a consultant with Marvel, but still writing his own material and running his own ‘imprint’, Millarworld, which nurtures writers and artists.

This month, he launched a competition to help publish new creative voices and give people the chance to break into the business using his own characters.

He said: “I think it’s the best job in the world. I really love doing it. When I was five, this was what I wanted to do and I was so lucky I stumbled into it and everything worked out. What I wanted to do was show a path.

“Sometimes people don’t know what to do - ‘I’ve got all these ideas, but I don’t know what to do with them’. So I thought I’m going to create that path. It’s been so good to me, I’ve managed to have my own company and a Hollywood career, things like that, it just seems odd to pull the ladder up completely behind me, especially in my own country, and I like the idea of, in the UK, more people coming through.”

Matthew Wannell, 23, was among the first in line to meet the Scottish writer, and said: “I’m just a fan of his work. Kick-Ass was a great film, Kingsman was amazing.”

Mike France, 31, said: “I’m looking to get a few things signed as presents and a few things for me, and I’ll probably ask what’s happening with his upcoming film adaptations.”

Ben Goldsmith, manager of the York branch of Travelling Man, said Millar’s appearance at the store was “fantastic”, and “the most successful signing we’ve ever had”.

To find out more about the competition, go to millarworld.tv