Welcome, dear readers, to our regular letter column; a series of missives from and to the internet, delivered by a series of tubes.

Thank you for all your questions and comments. We really couldn’t do all this without you. Continue to appease us and we will let you live! I know where you live. I know how to cut brake lines. I will do it, I swear. DO NOT STOP ASKING QUESTIONS OR FEEL MY WRATH.

Thank you, internet.

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Marc (@dasnordlicht91) asks: Your thoughts on the Harlem Shake?

James: Don’t know what it is, don’t care to find out. All I know is that it involves dancing and people have fun doing it, and that it doesn’t impact my (or anyone’s) life at all that they do so. So really, I guess my opinion is that I’m just fine with it? Like, dancing is pretty great, Marc. People should have fun dancing. I used to say that I didn’t like dancing but now, as someone who dances with friends whenever the option presents itself or in the privacy of my own home several times a week, I’ve gotta level with you: I love dancing and people should do it more.

Brandon: You can dance if you want to. You can leave your friends behind.

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Jay (@jayrunham) asks: Favourite part of the Oscars?

James: It’s pretty simple, actually. I disliked the casual sexism (if a choreographed song and dance routine talking about how great it was seeing Jodie Foster’s breasts in a movie scene where she was gang-raped or cracking about George Clooney having sex with a 9-year old nominee, a joke that would have been written well ahead of time and gone before several non-MacFarlane eyes, can be considered “casual” and not “active efforts at misogyny”) of host Seth MacFarlane’s material. I thought the fixation on performances of songs that weren’t actually nominated in the Best Original Songs category was weird as hell. I don’t really care all that much about who wins because I mostly watch the ceremony to be reminded of all the good movies I saw in the previous year. I’m not really a fashion guy. This leaves one thing: award acceptance speeches.

Now, you might consider this odd, because I am a person that is very picky about acceptance speeches. I bristle when somebody thanks “everybody” and then proceeds to name them all for a minute. I get annoyed when the awards of lower profiles have their winners relentlessly played off at an elapsed time that’s shorter than when a Best Supporting Actor is just getting around to talking about what a transformative experience working on their movie was. All that aside, I still love seeing the thrill of someone who won and genuinely didn’t expect to, or who is bowled over by being on stage regardless, and who is then either breathlessly anxious or really charming. Christoph Waltz’s speech made me smile, just like his last one did. I enjoyed Ben Affleck talking about his wife. But man, did I love Anne Hathaway and Jennifer Lawrence’s speeches, because they were so excited to be there. I’m a big fan of both actresses, from their skill to the friendliness and intelligence of their interviews, and seeing them be so excited they could barely speak was the highlight of my night.

Brandon: Jennifer Lawrence was definitely my favourite part of the Oscars. I liked her before, but then became downright charmed after her seeing all of her reactions to things, to winning, and to tripping. She was funny, and surprised, and she could really give a fuck about all the ridiculous pomp and circumstance of the Oscars. Whenever she was asked about her “dress” or her “process” she would plainly point and say things like “whelp, this is the bottom of the dress, and this is the top” or “what do you MEAN process. I woke up, had a shower? Did make up?” She basically ensured that I see pretty much everything she ever does just by being an awesome human being.

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Jay continues: Who would you like to host the Oscars next year?

James: Honestly, I don’t really care that much. Over the last few years, the host of the Oscars has seen what feels to me like a dramatic reduction in their screen time following the opening. After that first ten to fifteen minutes, they’ll come out every half hour or so, say a joke and introduce the presenter, who will talk for much longer. So unless a host is patently offensive (Seth MacFarlane, that time Billy Crystal came back and did blackface), it’s hard to really have much of an opinion of the hosting. The result will be the same: some people will like it, some people will hate it, people will act like the ratings were far more affected by it than they probably were.

I enjoyed Ricky Gervais’ hosting outings at the Golden Globes, but his loose, drinking-on-stage style is tailor-made for the awards show where everybody gets drunk at their table. I loved Tina Fey and Amy Poehler’s hosting of the most recent Emmys, but Fey has already said she’d never host the Oscars. Almost none of my favourite standups would be of a high enough profile (Jim Gaffigan) or of an appropriate disposition (Louis CK) to host the event. I loved it when Chris Rock hosted, but a lot of people hated it.

That said, I also loved Ellen DeGeneres’ performance as host of the 79th Oscars, and I’d accept her back in a heartbeat. She’s warm, affable and comfortable on stage. She balances crowd work with at-home-audience work. She looks amazing in a suit. I’d also love to see Conan O’Brien get a shot at hosting, though now that he’s on TBS instead of a major network, his profile might have fallen enough that he wouldn’t be considered. This would be a shame: Conan’s got a long career of live performance, he’s familiar and comfortable with the stars and most importantly, he has an abiding love of television and movies, and that kind of enthusiasm goes a long way with me.

Brandon: Two words: Oscars! The Hosts. We’d be totally awesome and probably never work in that town again, but hey, that was never really a concern, now WAS it.

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Sarah (@sjleask) asks: Montreal-style bagels - oui or non?

James: Oui, s’il te plait! I’ll see you tonight when I pick you up from the airport, little sistor!

Brandon: What’s going on? I don’t understand scribbly.

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Matt (@matt_bowes) asks: I’m always fascinated to hear what people have for favourite books. Or, more your style, tell me what people’s favourite books SHOULD be.

James: Matt, you injure me! I didn’t bully you into asking me this question so that I could tell people what their favourite books SHOULD be; that’s not my style! People are okay to love what they love, and I will just have to accept it if people don’t like what I like.

With that in mind, not enough people have read and loved Rob Sheffield‘s book Love Is A Mix Tape, his memoir about falling in love with his first wife as a post-grad, their short but blissful married life, her tragic death and the long struggle of his to deal with that. It’s funny, it will make you cry and it’s filled with a lot of great music talk. It legitimately makes the case for Hanson’s “MMMbop” as a sad song (it is, by the way). It’s a must for any music lover.

Brandon: You know, I haven’t quite given much thought to the books that I love. Also, I think there are two very different kinds of answers to this, and it really depends on what you mean by FAVOURITE. I tend to think about books that I read FAST. The ones that I stopped reading comics so that I could get them done faster. That was how I read the three Hunger Games books. That was how I read The War for Late Night. I’m starting to feel that way about Marvel: The Untold Story. Anyway, those are recent reads that I liked. My favourite (also a book that I read quite quickly, twice) would be Dave Eggers’ A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. I love that dude, and that book is a lot of fun.

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Scotty (@scottybomb) asks: How can a comic author break into a DC/Marvel-dominated “superhero” market?

James: The good news here is that it’s literally never been easier. Marvel and DC might still be the “Big Two,” if by virtue of nothing other than the inertia of their properties, but there are more other players than ever. Image has been releasing tons of amazing comics, and a lot of them have been ones like Witch Doctor, which is to say series that aren’t from Marvel superstars. IDW takes a lot of chances on up-and-coming creators by giving them jobs, as does BOOM!, especially in the backups for its books based on Pendleton Ward TV series.

And then there are digital and web comics, easily the single best way to break into a market, even if that’s by side-stepping it almost entirely. Webcomics and digital comics operate with much lower overhead than print comics do, and with various WordPress plugins or infrastructures like Comixology or Graphic.ly, it’s never been easier to make art and put it online. Kickstarter is a great tool to fund a book if you can capture people’s attention, and things like Twitter help people discover projects and comics more easily than ever before. MonkeyBrain comics is consistently putting out amazing works from creators whose names you might not know until you buy Amelia Cole and the Unknown World. Best of all, webcomics and digital comics operate with different expectations and lifespans. In a print comic, if you’re not getting sales, your publisher can cut you just like that, and they would likely be correct to. With a webcomic or digital comics, playing the long game gets a bit easier because the trajectory of sales is different. A print comic lives and dies by that first week on the stands, and once a shop’s stock is gone, well, it’s hard to get a reader’s attention if they can’t see a copy of your work. Digital and web comics are always available, though, and as a result their audiences grow over time instead of a lot of print comic sales, which generally atrophy unless it’s got that big property to rest on a bit.

Because of this ease of publication, always-available stock and different sales expectations, online is maybe the easiest way to break in. If absolutely nothing else, putting work online - and putting it up regularly - gives you something to show an editor or publisher, as well as establishes that you can work on a schedule. And it’s not just a tool to get into print comics, either - it’s an entirely valid way to make a career in comics.

At the end of the day, just make comics and get them out there. Nothing else will help you break in if you’re not actually making comics; online ones are just the easiest to publish.

Brandon: There are three steps. The first, is to get published. The second, is showing you are capable of hitting deadlines. If you put out two issues of the best comic ever, and then disappear, you will probably not be hired, because although you might be good, you’re going to be a headache, and editors have enough of those without having to deal with talent that can’t hit a deadline. Third: get out to shows and pitch like a motherfucker. Take your best work with you. Put it into the hands of editors who you think put out books that match your esthetic. And if you’re approached to pitch, do not, under ANY circumstances, pitch on something you don’t have the time for, or don’t feel you could do justice to. If your first pitch is late, or terrible, you probably won’t get asked out to the ball again. Let an editor know that you appreciate them thinking of you, but other deadlines would conflict. As hard as it would be to talk away from a Big Two project, an editor is far more likely to call on you again if you seem to be focused on getting things done in a timely fashion, than running late.

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Scotty continues: Why is Jago (@itsjago) such a jerk?

James: His parents have been trying to figure that one out for years.

Brandon: That’s what happens when you let/make people call you by your last name.

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Scotty goes on: Who, in your opinion, is the most interesting superhero? Most interesting supervillain?

James: It really depends on who’s working on them at the time. With the right confluence of creators and ideas, any superhero can be endlessly interesting. I mean, the current runs on Hawkeye and Daredevil are two of the best superhero comics of the last several years but if you’d asked me before I read the series themselves, I’d have told you no way was Clint Barton interesting. Same thing with The Immortal Iron Fist. Grant Morrison has done amazing, character-defining work with Batman and Superman; heck, All Star Superman is one of the best Superman stories ever.

However, Chris Sims has made a very good case for why Spider-Man is objectively the best comic character ever, as well as having the best supporting cast, and that’s a dude whose favourite superhero is Batman. I’d make my own arguments, but Chris did it better than I would, so I’ll summarize briefly: Batman and Superman have a purity to their character (Superman: ”Somewhere, in our darkest night, we made up the story of a man who will never let us down.”) or mission (Batman’s one-man war on crime that sprouts from a child’s tragedy), but the combination of Spider-Man’s origin as a teenager, the fact that his tragedy could be repeated all over again (Aunt May), the aspiration of his mission and a teen putting on a mask to be a “-Man”, and the messiness of his personal life make him the best. You can certainly tell more stories about his civilian life than you can about most other superheroes. Like, Bruce Wayne or Clark Kent stories would generally just be boring while Peter Parker’s is a non-stop roller coaster of ruin.

As for villains, well, dang. Chris Sims has an answer to that too, and I completely agree. Doctor Doom is straight up the most interesting supervillain because he’s the most versatile. Batman’s villains tend to represent and reflect a certain psychosis. Superman has one great villain and a bunch of terrible ones, but that guy, like Batman’s villains or even Spider-Man’s to a lesser extent, tend to be defined by their relationship with their hero, which limits them.

Doctor Doom, on the other hand, is a guy that has his rivalry with Reed Richards, but he also is a credible threat for just about anyone else, which is why he can pop up in things like Young Avengers: The Children’s Crusade or those arcs of Thor or Daredevil and be a totally great villain for the story. He’s a sorcerer. He’s a mad scientist. He’s a dictator. He’s a terrible father. He hits just about every button a villain can, and best of all, he has the ego to do it all and insist he’s the best. Doom’s narcissism is one of his best strengths, because he can barge into just about any hero’s story and become the villain because not only does he have the skill to do it, but he’s just the kind of dick that would do it. He’s an Avengers-level villain like Kang who manages to show up in just about every hero’s book at some point, because he’s so versatile. And because he’s the head of state of a nation, he can do all that crazy supervillain stuff and a good writer can still build up a good case for why he doesn’t get thrown in super-prison because he’s got diplomatic immunity and nobody wants to start an international incident.

Hell, he showed up in Hickman‘s runs on Fantastic Four and FF and he wasn’t even the villain. He was UNCLE DOOM, and that’s fucking brilliant. He’s got an interesting, tragic past, and a conflicted relationship with his neighbours, his adopted son and his arch nemesis. There’s so much you can do with Doom and just barely scrape the surface. Literally the only villain who compares is Magneto, who has an abhorrent philosophy but a sympathetic claim that oscillates between villain, anti-hero and genuine hero. Like, he was the head of state of Genosha, the mutant nation - which automatically makes him Doom-like - and he got killed, became a martyr, then became an imprisoned Chinese mutant with a star for a brain, then a heroic teacher at Xavier’s school, then a villain, then a hero again, then a villain, and now he’s a foil for Cyclops in his bid to out-Magneto the man himself.

The X-Men are confusing, guys.

Magneto’s a guy that would be a hero if only he stopped murdering people, which about a half dozen different alternate X-universes have shown. He’s just begging to be a hero, practically, and a lot of his interest as a character comes from his willingness to be the villain, and know he’s being the villain, but still insist he’s right. There’s a sadness there because he’s so close to being the good guy. But Doom? That guy is a straight up villain whose egotism will never let him accept anything other than being the hero. He is right, and everybody else is wrong, and damn it all, he’ll show them.

You know, I am beginning to see why I like him so much.

He’ll show anyone, which explains why he keeps showing up in other books. His ego makes him expansive in a way that no other villain is, and it makes him funny without negating him as a threat. He’s what Norman Osborn wants to be. He’s what every other villain wants to be. He’s just the best there is.

Brandon: The best hero is D-Man and the greatest villain is The Looter and fuck all of you.

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Scotty wraps up: Does Batman go through too many Robins? Why not just stick with one?

James: Good question, Scott! And while there is a cynical answer to this - deaths sell comics - that is completely wrong. The actual answer to why Batman doesn’t have just one Robin is actually simple, albeit somewhat long, and it goes back to the beginnings of the character.

The first part is based nothing on cold, hard, economics, though not because “deaths sell comics.” During the Golden and Silver ages of comics, young sidekicks like Robin or Jimmy Olsen were a dime a dozen, for one basic reason: they helped sell comics to kids. The thinking was that the kids loved characters like that they could identify with. They might look up to Batman, but they could be Robin, and Batman talking to and hanging out with Robin was the next best thing to hanging out with them.

That helps explain why so many superheroes have young sidekicks, but the specific reasons for Robin are more nuanced. Creators Bill Finger and Bob Kane reportedly came up with the character of Dick Grayson as a way to soften the character of Batman and move him away from his roots as very much a Shadow rip-off while they gave him his own identity. The Shadow was a pulp hero, and could justifiably get away with murder, but as part of the burgeoning superhero genre, Batman had to be different and a little softer. Criminals should fear him, but readers shouldn’t, and having him pal around with and mentor a child was a good way to establish him as a different kind of hero from the Shadow.

There are also reasons for Robin based in story mechanics as Bill Finger once explained,

“Robin was an outgrowth of a conversation I had with Bob [Kane, the villain of the story]. As I said, Batman was a combination of Douglas Fairbanks and Sherlock Holmes. Holmes had his Watson. The thing that bothered me was that Batman didn’t have anyone to talk to, and it got a little tiresome always having him thinking. I found that as I went along Batman needed a Watson to talk to. That’s how Robin came to be. Bob called me over and said he was going to put a boy in the strip to identify with Batman. I thought it was a great idea.”

So the publishers’ desire for sales, the creators’ desire for a softer character and the medium’s need for dialogue resulted in Robin, which brings us to the meat of your question: why doesn’t Batman have just one Robin? In the end, this comes down to story mechanics and character needs.

Batman is a man who, through nothing other than unparalleled dedication and a healthy dose of natural talent, turned himself into a man who could wage a singular war on crime because he trained to be the best at everything. He was such a great teacher that he turned Dick Grayson into a hero in his own right, a boy who could go up against supervillains and win through nothing other than his talent and the training of his mentor, Batman. As a result of this - and of Robin’s success as the leader of the Teen Titans - it got to the point where Robin was so good that it was hard to explain why he wasn’t his own superhero all the time, like he was in that other book every month. Worse, it lessens the value of Batman as a man skilled at everything if he’s only a good enough teacher to train a sidekick. For Batman’s skill to be believable, Dick has to move on. And so he does.

The problem is, of course, that in between 1940′s Detective Comics #38 and 1969, the effort to change Batman into a softer character with the character of Robin worked. So well, in fact, that he had his own superheroic family and Robin was just a part of it. However, he’s also the biggest and oldest part, and, well, Alfred doesn’t go out with Batman in the field. Without Robin, Batman regressed in two big ways to his pre-Robin state: he became a darker, lonelier character and he still didn’t have anyone else to talk to. And so the character of Jason Todd, the second Robin, was created.

What happened with Todd is well-known; readers hated him, and in the only true “deaths sell comics” part of the Robins’ story, DC let readers vote on whether he should be killed, which is exactly what happened. Of course, they were also uncertain about the results: did readers like Batman by himself, or did they just hate Jason Todd so much that they would actually vote to see a child beaten to death with a crowbar? Would the same narrative and character problems reintroduce themselves? So they created Tim Drake, the third Robin, to find out, and he lasted 20 years before he moved on.

This is the pattern of Robins in the medium of the perpetual act, where Batman always needs a Robin but character development and publishing needs say that nobody can stay one. Sometimes, they’re killed because nobody liked them (Jason Todd). Sometimes, they’re only introduced and killed because editors are pricks (Stephanie Brown). But at the end of it all, Batman needs a Robin, and a new one will always arrive.

Are there too many Robins? Not from a pure writing standpoint. At their best, each Robin does something different and has a different relationship with Batman. Dick was the first child, eager to please but ambitious enough he had to move on. Jason was the rebellious second child. Tim was the dedicated third child, the most like Batman and the one so married to the idea that Batman needs a Robin that he was perfectly happy to stay one. Damian is the killer on a journey of redemption, the one who needed to be Robin more than Batman actually needed him. And Stephanie? I’ve honestly always had a hard time really considering her as a Robin, because she was made one just to die three months later; it was never intended for her to stay, which is its own problem in itself (I adored her as Spoiler and Batgirl, though). Regardless, each one has a different relationship with Batman, and they tell different stories. As long as that’s preserved, the number of Robins is just fine.

But in the New 52, where Batman had four Robins in five years? Yeah, that’s too many, because the publisher’s need to say, “Almost everything you cared about still happened!” to placate upset readers trumped its desire for a clean start or for basic narrative coherence. Just over a year per Robin is too much, because it changes the emphasis from Batman as someone who needs that character foil to stay sane to a guy who burns through them before finding a new one. It emphasizes numbers and graduation more than character and family, and it has the added detriment of making Dick, Todd and Jason almost indistinguishable in age and thus appearance. It’s a mistake born of sloppiness, though, not one of the inherent idea that there are too many Robins. The previous 70 years are a good indicator that multiple Robins can be a very, very good thing.

Brandon: So hey, you ever wonder what goes through my mind when James writes over 1000 words about something we have the same opinion about, and then I have to come up with something else to put at the end? It’s not pretty.

Anyway, I figure the best thing to do at this point is let Grant Morrison tell the good folks why he killed off this particular Robin, and how it applies to the themes of his Batman mega-arc.

“I chose to build my story around the basic trauma, the murder of his parents, that lies at the heart of Batman’s genesis. It seemed to me there would be a part of Bruce Wayne that resented his parents for leaving him and especially resented his father for not being Batman that night, so the principal villains were an archetypal bad father figure in the form of Dr. Hurt and a dark mother in the form of Talia, our villain for the concluding chapters of the story. This master theme of damaged and ruined families was nowhere more in evidence than in the creation of Damian, the first ‘Son of Batman’ to be acknowledged in the canon. In many ways this has been Damian’s story as much as it has been the story of Bruce Wayne and it’s a story that had its end planned a long time ago – for what son could ever hope to replace a father like Batman, who never dies?”

It fits along with what James has said, and takes things a little further. When Batman is teamed up with a Robin, there’s generally a purpose in mind. You can write Batman stories about Batman, but the moment you introduce a Robin, it becomes about how he affects them, and how they affect him, and a story like that needs change, which is hard to pull of in this perpetual second act of a medium. So, they either outgrow him or die, depending on what story the writer wants to tell.

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That’s it for the fifty-second installment of Um, Actually! Check in every Monday and Thursday for a new batch of questions. If you have anything you’d like answered, hit up our Contact page! If you submit anything via Twitter – to @blogaboutcomics, @leask or @soupytoasterson - remember to include the hashtag #UMACTUALLY so that we don’t lose it. Remember: you can ask us anything.