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

We welcome your comments and questions. Especially Pokemon ones. Seriously, dudes, between buying a Wii U and Pokemon X, October is gonna be a lot of “Uh yeah uh shit sorry gotta get some gym badges and save Hyrule,” responses to these questions. If you want good answers, you’d better start sending them in pronto, or just start asking me more questions about how great Bulbasaur is.

You’re welcome, internet. (J)

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Emma (@lou_reid) asks: Will Boyd Crowder and the Dean make out in Season 5 of Community, and will this be so sexy that I’ll spontaneously combust?

James: For those of you whom I didn’t text in all caps last night because your personal fetish isn’t “Boyd Crowder and Deal Pelton make you forget you’re married to a woman,” Walton Goggins has been cast in the fifth season of Community. According to the announcement, his role will involve:

“A dangerous accusation, a tantalizing offer and a devious plan that will change the group forever,”

And Emma, any three of those things could be referring to the thing the be-penis-ed thing your heart wants. I don’t mean to set you up for disappointment, but I am 90% sure this is going to happen. Boyd may be there under a different name, and he and the Dean may not kiss on camera, but I think we all know what’s really going down at Greendale.

Hint: it is totally dongs touching.

Brandon: I’m not sure what a Boyd Crowder is, but right up until I started writing this sentence, I kept reading it as “Boyd Chowder” and I was deeply confused and aroused. That said, I think that was the point of this question, so there’s that.

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Scott (@scottowilliams) asks: The Cranberries’ “Linger” or Sixpence None The Richer’s “Kiss Me”?

James: I see you there, Scott, trying to trip me up with an impossible decision that will force me to pit one of my favourite parts of the 1990s versus another and break my heart, sending me into a deep spiral of depression whereupon you will snatch my half of C!TB from me.

I see you.

But here’s the thing: not only am I able to contain immeasurable love for woman-fronted rock bands in my heart, but I think you underestimated how easy this choice would be for me. After all, to the best of my knowledge, only one of these songs was included in two iconic 1990s teen romantic comedies. They may both be about Teen Feelings, literally one of the three things I want more than anything else in the media I consume (the others are baseball and self-reference), but only one of them was used in She’s All That and Dawson’s Creek, and that is “Kiss Me.”

I mean, one of them was in a movie starring Rachel Leigh Cook, who would go on to star in Josie and the Pussycats, the greatest comic book movie that has ever been made, and also used in a WB teen drama starring James Van Der Beek, the very spirit animal of C!TB itself.

Unless “Linger” was used in Can’t Hardly Wait, it’s not even a competition.

Brandon: Can’t Hardly Wait was an underrated movie!

Anyway, I really do have to go with “Kiss Me”, partly due to James’ logic, and partly because it was the one that immediately started playing in my head right after both were mentioned.

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Scott continues: With Futurama once again ending, what are some of your favourite episodes of the series?

James: A small selection:

-”Jurassic Bark” (S04E07): This is straight-up emotional terrorism. A really funny, heartwarming episode about friendship and letting go of the past instead of trying to relive it (see also: Season 1′s “A Fishful of Dollars), this episode ends with Fry deciding to not reanimate his dead dog because he figures the dog had a long life after Fry got frozen and moved on, and then immediately shows that this is not the case. In truth, Seymour waited out the rest of his life alone and anticipating Fry’s return, as we discover in one of the saddest final scenes in television history. FUN FACT: they were originally going to do the whole thing with Fry’s mother, but decided that it would be too sad. Showing Fry’s only friend in the world during his old life slowly dying was the happy option. Straight-up emotional terrorism.

-”Luck of the Fryrish” (S03E04): The emotional opposite of this, where Fry learns that his brother, who he thought hated him, spent the rest of his own life after Fry disappeared pouring as much love into his son as he could, in part because his son reminded him of Fry, and that love propelled his son to some of the greatest heights in mankind’s existence.

-”Time Keeps on Slippin’” (S03E14): Both really funny (an extended riff on Space Jam) and really heartbreaking (Fry realizes what he did to win Leela’s love, does it, but she doesn’t see the grandest romantic gesture in the history of romantic gestures, and he is crushed as sad whistling commences.)

-”Godfellas” (S03E20): Bender learning that being God is hard and maybe also God is there. Super funny, kinda poignant.

-”A Head in the Polls” (S02E03): Earth President Nixon!

-”Why Must I Be a Crustacean in Love?” (S02E05): The first Zoidberg-centric episode.

-”The Day the Earth Stood Stupid” (S03E07)/”The Why of Fry” (S04E04):

“You mean the way I feel when I’m drunk is right?”

“Yes, except the Dave Matthews Band does not rock.”

or:

Fry’s gleeful exultation at his kiss with Leela after the screen goes black

-”The Sting” (S04E12): This is an episode that is literally about bees in space. I was never going to not love it.

-”Bendin’ in the Wind” (S03E14): It has Beck.

-”The Devil’s Hands Are Idle Playthings” (S04E18): A wonderful last line and a great place to end the series, or so they thought.

-”The Prisonder of Benda” (S06E10): Everybody switches bodies, resulting in Professor Farnsworth and Zoidberg’s bodies having weird sex.

-”The Late Philip J. Fry” (S06E07): With Fry lost in time, Leela leaves a heartfelt message created by the passage of time itself. Also, it ends with Bender burying the corpses of himself, Fry and the Professor.

Brandon: Of course, James picks more episodes than there were seasons. My favourite is in there, but I’m far too beligerant about this to tell you which.

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Scott natters on: Who, besides, each other, is your nemesis?

James: In my last year of my undergraduate degree, there was a woman in one of my classes who was so obnoxious that the entire rest of the class literally all became friends solely because we had to complain about her. Years later, I am still friends with a few of the people from that class; I even went to the wedding of one of those classmates two weekends ago, where she and I privately shared a toast at the woman whose hate introduced us so that I could share Kate’s special day. Years after she has stopped actually being in my life at all or having any real impact on her, my hate for her is still so strong that I still call her my nemesis. In nay case, she was the first.

The rest, obviously, are my readers.

Brandon: It’s you Scott. It’s always been you, ever since I kayfabed the shit out of that concept at our old comic-reviewing stomping grounds.

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Scott gets academical: Who is your Jungian shadow-archetype?

James: By its very nature - someone who I hate because they represent a part of myself that I dislike, as popularized in literature by Robertson Davies - I probably wouldn’t recognize my own Jungian shadow, and will instead have to go through expensive Jungian therapy to identify. Unless you all help me: who is someone who is an obnoxious know-it-all?

Besides me.

Brandon: Mark Millar is James’ Jungian shadow-archetype. Mine is probably the internet.

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Scott gets difficult: Which pokemon would you most want as a pet?

James: My immediate impulses is Bulbasaur, because it’s the best. Bulbasaur is also literally made of poison, so maybe I don’t want that around all the time. It can’t be good for your health to have something that produces spores that can kill you just sitting around. My next thought is Victini, because it is known as a caring pokemon that brings victory/good luck and oh also can fly. That… is pretty compelling. But it also can send visions to people and I’m not sure I want my pet disrupting what little sleep I get because it decided someone’s in trouble or we’re out of Oreos. So, sadly, Victini is out.

Really, what it comes down to is that I don’t just want a pokemon pet that is friendly and unobtrusive in my life, but also one that’s useful. And since I love the ocean and refuse to pay those sky-high prices for ferries or cruises, I’m looking at pokemon that can learn one of the greatest of all HMs, HM03, aka Surf. And son, at that point it doesn’t look much better than Gyarados, who is a dragon that can fly and also carry me across the water. That’s baller as all get-out.

Then again, Gyarados is also notoriously difficult to tame, so I guess we’re going back to the drawing board. Friendly, unobtrusive, able to learn Surf… oh my god, we’re talking about Snorlax.

I know it’s odd to call Snorlax “unobtrusive,” since it’s whole deal is that it’s giant and in the way, but hey, as long as he falls asleep in a place that’s not my doorway, dude can do what he wants. Plus, as a thing that’s usually asleep and also really hard to wake up (seriously, just don’t play a damn magic flute around it), I wouldn’t have to worry about my own erratic sleep cycles disturbing it. And when he woke up, we could go for pancakes! And, as a fellow big dude, I know we wouldn’t be rude to each other about it.

Dudes, I totes want a Snorlax.

Brandon: Like most pets, all Pokémon are assholes, and will be a dick to you eventually. For pet purposes, I’d probably go with a Squirtle, because I know what it is, and I can deal with water problems better than, say, poisons or electricity or fire.

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Scott gets sensual: What language would you most like to learn to speak?

James: It would be pretty neat to learn Japanese. However, I might go with Cree, since it’s a language relevant to my own heritage and family. I legit cannot even read the family bible.

Brandon: More German. I know a few words, but I think it would be fun. That, or French.

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Scott gets cute: What is your favourite thing by Quentin Tarantino?

James: Since my experience with his movies is so spotty that I have not even seen Pulp Fiction even though my family has had it on VHS since the mid-90s (it is actually still in the plastic), I’m going to have to go with his adorable high-pitched voice.

Brandon: Things that I’ve experienced more than James? This… feels weird. My favourite is probably Pulp Fiction, with nothing else really coming close, despite all of them being generally entertaining.

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Scott mumbles: What is your favourite thing by Mike Judge?

James: The ability of Office Space to stand up over the years despite the fact that anybody who is referencing it to you is probably being obnoxious is really, really impressive.

Brandon: Office Space all the way. King of the Hill, I found, was entertaining enough when I happened to stumble on it, but it was never anything I tried to watch. I don’t care for Beevis and Butthead, and Extract and Idiocracy are… okay. Except for maybe Extract, which is just… fine.

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Scott climaxes: Who is marvel’s most underrated character? Who is DC’s?

James: Marvel’s, for me, is either Squirrel Girl or Doop, mostly because they’re really funny in use and I think they’re sadly underused. I feel like they could both me regular members of books to a really great effect (Doop’s appearances in Wolverine & the X-Men are some of my favourites, and Squirrel Girl’s inclusion in Bendis’ New Avengers was way too brief. I also need a Dazzler series in my life.

As for DC, I’d say Wally West. If not underrated by readers, he’s certainly being underrepresented in the New 52, which is to say he has not appeared in it yet seriously what the hell dudes. Francis Manapul and Brian Buccellato have outright stated that they have a proposal for how to use him on Dan DiDio’s desk, and for reals get on that already, DD.

Brandon: Doop is underrated by a lot of people, if only because Marvel did a fantastic job of trolling the entire fanbase by claiming that Doop’s power stats were all maxed out, and that he was, in fact, smarter, faster, and straonger than everyone in the Marvel Universe. Oh man, people were upsehhhhhhhhht. As for DC, it’s Stephanie Brown, who lives in a deeper shadow than a lot of those characters who are consistantly stuck in the shadows.

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That’s it for the ninety-ninth 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. Remeber: you can ask us anything. Seriously, anything.