Like many comic book writers and artists, Mark Millar’s love of comics began as a young child when his older brother would take him to comic book shops. But now the Scottish author has become the latest beneficiary of the global obsession with bringing the stories to life on the screen, after his publisher Millarworld – whose titles include Kick Ass, Kingsman and Wanted – was bought by Netflix this week.

The price paid has not been disclosed but experts estimated it would be between $50m and $100m (£39m-£77m). It is the first company acquisition in Netflix’s 20-year history and an indicator that superheroes, old and new, will be on our screens for a long time to come.

Dave Gibbons, one of Britain’s most respected comic book artists whose works include Watchmen, began working with Millar in 2012. The pair created Kingsman: the Secret Service, which is among Millarworld’s most successful titles. He said the Netflix deal made a lot of sense for Millar, having successfully translated works such as Kick Ass from page to screen without losing their distinctive essence.

“Mark does think very filmically, which is why I think his stuff does translate and will translate to movies and TV,” Gibbons said. “He has really paid his dues, starting out working on really very straightforward, unambitious comic fare and then upped his game, and by this point he’s already had a career that is quite unique and exemplary.

“And he has learned how to play the game. Us of older generations got kind of screwed over, to one degree or another, with the kind of deals we got doing comics but Mark in particular has very much learned from what happened before and done his business deals in a very canny Scots way.”

Gibbons added: “He’s not backwards in coming forwards and he’s very good at promoting his own brand, as he should be, so I think those are the things that have really led him to be in the rather wonderful position he’s in now.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Kick Ass, starring Chloë Grace Moretz, was a Millarworld title that was successfully brought to the big screen. Photograph: Allstar/Lionsgate

Millar was born into a working-class Catholic family in the deprived area of Coatbridge, near Glasgow. He was one of six children, with four brothers and a sister, and it was not an easy upbringing. His mother died of a heart attack when Millar was 14, and he had to drop out of Glasgow University after his father died, to help look after his brother. Money was so tight that “the cat ate one day and we ate the next”, Millar once said.

Millar was a 16-year-old comic book obsessive when he wrote Gibbons a letter, though the pair wouldn’t formally meet and collaborate until decades later. “Mark wrote me a fan letter when he was 16 and said that my next step, after doing Watchmen, should be to work with him on a story that he’d created,” said Gibbons. “I’ve got no memory of it but I apparently wrote him a very gracious letter and sent him a sketch and thought nothing of it until years later.”

Millar eventually found himself working on 2000AD, the British title that bred most of the UK’s top talent. By 1994, his work had drawn the eye of American publishers DC Comics, and later Marvel, where his successes included The Ultimates, a reinvention of Marvel’s supergroup The Avengers, which was Time magazine’s comic book of the decade, and is credited as the inspiration for the current Avengers films.

This was when Gibbons said he realised Millar’s talent. “I was such a huge fan of The Ultimates, I enjoyed the stories so much they really made me feel like a kid fan again, haunting my local comic shop to see if the latest issue was in,” he recalled. “There was some wonderful character work. Mark has a really good understanding of human emotions and motivations and he’s the master of the moment that just rocks you, and makes you stop and think ‘wow’.”

You should do your own characters. I didn’t do Superman and Batman and Tarzan and Sherlock Holmes. I went off and did the X-Men

Millar’s motivation to start his own company came from the man considered the godfather of comics, Stan Lee. Interviewing Lee for a feature in SFX magazine in 2003, when he was already a well-established writer for Marvel himself, Millar told Lee about his work with Marvel characters. “That’s great, but you should do your own characters instead of doing mine,” Lee said. “I didn’t do Superman and Batman and Tarzan and Sherlock Holmes. I went off and did the X-Men.”

Millar began creating his own characters and storylines and in 2004 left Marvel to launch his own comic book company. It quickly gained momentum and one of the first titles, Wanted, sold over a million copies – making it the highest-selling creator-owned comic of the decade. It was made into a movie starring Angelina Jolie, Morgan Freeman and James McAvoy, which grossed $340m.

However, his most successful jump from comic book to screen came with Kick Ass, in 2010, which he adapted with director Matthew Vaughn. The script was rejected by seven film studios so Vaughn independently raised the $50m needed for the film. It went on to take almost $100m worldwide, was critically acclaimed and spawned a successful sequel.

Kingsman: The Secret Service, first published in 2012, was another box office success for Millarworld when it was adapted into the 2014 film starring Samuel L Jackson, Colin Firth and Michael Caine.

Millar still adores original characters such as Superman and recently purchased the cape worn by Christopher Reeve in the original film, as well as the cat Reeves saved in the film which had been stuffed after it died and later sold.

Throughout his career Millar has embraced working with major film studios and is scathing of those who see such deals – including his sale to Netflix – as selling out. “I want to be Marvel rather than just work with Marvel,” he said.