The hilarious slapstick drawings show how it works. In the first picture you see the accidents that happen when the superheroes intervene and in the second picture the disasters that would have occurred if they hadn’t. Collapsed houses, a bus in a tree, broken legs: we should be grateful to those superheroes!

With Superheroes Loes Riphagen picks up the thread of her highly imaginative debut Bedroom Beasties, an entertaining encyclopaedia of creatures that live in your bedroom, such as the not-on-your-nellies and the snig-gigglers. This time Riphagen takes a comprehensive look at just one creature in her witty and varied picture book.

She devotes a whole page, for example, to superhero anatomy: they have wings for steering and a usefully long nose for sticking into other people’s business. The proboscis needs regular grooming with a sort of toilet brush, as we discover on the page about superhero equipment.

The illustrations are so cheekily flexible it’s as if they’re made of elastic. The colourful compositions are always unexpected, with their cartoon-style frames and the inserts with magnified details. There’s a lot of humour in the facial expressions too. A delight to behold.