In fact, Grant imbued all his comic book writing with his experiences and political beliefs, though the latter were often as quirky as the strips he wrote. Alan Grant began writing comic book stories at DC Thomson in Dundee. Grant continued to fall foul of authority after school - in 1969 he spent three months in prison for possession of half a tab of LSD, a circumstance that later formed the basis of a story for his 2000AD strip, Mazeworld, created with the artist Arthur Ranson, which debuted in 1996. So maybe Grant’s writing was in some way revenge for the injustices he suffered as a child.

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 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. 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.

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