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. About anything! We’ll answer it, and at least one of us will take you seriously. Maybe.

Ask us about anything! I mean, you could ask us about comics, because “Comics” is the first word of the name of this site, and I suppose that means we should answer questions about it. Or you could ask us about anything else! Literally anything! Maybe you want our opinions on Pluto (both the dwarf planet and the Disney character who definitely got the short end of the “sentient animals” shtick). Maybe you want to know about our thoughts on Cougar Town! Seriously, there is always time to talk about Cougar Town. Did you know it’s back? Did you know that the Bobby/Grayson B-plot in the premiere gave me feelings? No? Well, that’s because you didn’t ask about it!

You’re welcome, internet.

 

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Jay (@jayrunham) asks: What was your favourite “Favourite of 2013″ list?”

James: For comics, my favourite is, unabashedly, ComicsAlliance’s Best Comics of 2013 list. It’s varied, thoughtful and well-written. It doesn’t pit comics against each other in a ranking. It just says, “Here are a lot of awesome things” and makes a case for why you should love all of them equally.

For TV, I’m a big fan of Alan Sepinwall and Matt Zoller Seitz‘s lists. I don’t 100% agree with either, because I refuse to totally acknowledge lists that do not include Cougar Town or Gravity Falls, but they’re two people who think about TV (and, in Seitz’s case, movies as well, since that’s his main job) with a great deal of insight. Even when I don’t agree with them, I still get something from their writing, and their lists have convinced me to give shows like Hannibal a try.

For music, I go with Rob Sheffield all the way. This year, he did lists of best albums and singles. Sheffield is one of my all-time favourites not just because he helped introduce me to Big Star, but because his writing was some of the first I encountered as an adult that treats mainstream pop and weird indie stuff with equal attention and worth. Too often, I see people my age shitting on pop music reflexively, even without really hearing or thinking about songs/artists, and Rob’s ethos is to remind people that there are no guilty pleasures, that good is good.

FYI: The key to enjoying ranked lists is to just ignore the numbers and see it as a list of awesome things. Paying attention to the numbers only encourages nitpicking about ranking, and it’s much healthier to just enjoy as much as you can.

Brandon: I was going to say, I spend a great deal of time ignoring lists because of the whole numbering thing - which is why Comics Alliance really wins it for me. As for everything else, I’m generally so busy doing work stuff and site stuff that my consumption outside of comics is really things that I like, so… most other lists are lost on me.

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Jay continues: Is Doctor Doom primarily a Spider-Man or Fantastic Four villain?

James: Fantastic Four. I mean, Reed Richards is part of his origin story, and he’s so tied to Marvel’s First Family that Reed and Sue’s daughter actually calls him “Uncle.” By comparison, all Spider-Man’s done is fight him. Of course, the great strength of Doom is that he’s the most versatile villain in comics. Part of this is his own ego, that makes it oddly believable for him to pick fights with literally anyone he comes across, or to make people pick fights with him. Another part, however, is that the entire Marvel Universe is structured to encourage this kind of crossing over. Whereas, in DC, most heroes tend to stick to their respective cities except for team-ups, in the Marvel Universe, with a few exceptions, everybody lives in the same city or within a short drive up in Westchester County, so it makes sense that they’d all bump into each other and fight each other’s villains. The way the world is constructed, it’d almost be implausible for them NOT to.

Brandon: Doom can be an “everyone” villain, but it’s really his interplay with the family Richards that works the best. You know, considering the fact that they made him, in a way.

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Marc (@dasnordlicht91) asks: Your thoughts on the Daniel Bryan/Wyatt Family angle and its developments?

James: Love it. One hundred percent love it. Pro wrestling, particularly the WWE, is interesting in that it’s both an athletic contest as well as a work of narrative fiction, and their goal is to shock and wow you with both. The December 30th Monday Night RAW is the first time I actually picked up a phone to text a friend to ask him if he was watching this, because what was happening was insane. I was caught up in the storytelling and the moment. I needed to talk about it.

For those who don’t follow, Daniel Bryan is probably the best professional wrestler in the world. For the last few years, his storyline in the WWE has been a great wrestler who could never, even when a champion, quite get over his insecurities about being the “weak link” due to his size. Last summer, he finally started to believe in himself (without overcompensating by getting arrogant) and became the most popular wrestler in the company, with entire crowds (and not just wrestling crowds; I’ve been at a MLB game where it happened) chanting his catchphrase. Despite being the best and loved the world over, the WWE’s storyline leadership decided he wasn’t fit to be the “face of the company” and orchestrated months of matches designed to screw him out of the championship he fairly won more than once while beating him into a paste. Bray Wyatt, leader of the southern cult Wyatt Family, used this to try and lure Bryan to his side, to take revenge and bring down the corrupt machine that wouldn’t let him succeed. Bryan refused, because the crowd was behind him and he believed that if he fought long and hard enough, he’d come out on top. Last Monday, he caved to the pressure, joining the Wyatt Family and turning his back on thousands of people screaming for him not to. He admitted defeat.

I love this. It’s exciting. It pulls on my heartstrings as someone who very badly wants to see Bryan, the American Dragon, hold the belt and get his moment in the sun. And more than that, this means stuff is happening, as opposed to the last several months of the company’s main storyline idling in the same rut of “Daniel Bryan is the best / Daniel Bryan gets screwed.” Even further, it brings up the elements of mystery and anticipation. Fans are trading theories over what’s going to happen. Is Kane, Bryan’s former best friend, an “inside man” with the evil WWE Authority? Do he and Bryan have a plan? Is Wyatt just a cog in it? All of that comes from the same area - a desire to believe the hero will be alright and win - and that tension, leading into WrestleMania, could be great.

Brandon: Man, if this is all a build up to Wrestlemania, that would be amazing. In a perfect world, Kane is the inside man (because why else have that storyline) and all of this is building up to the destruction of the so-called wrestling machine. That would be wonderful. I just… I don’t trust the WWE to pull that off though.

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Scott (@scottowilliams) asks: Who is going to be the breakout WWE Star of 2014?

James: I think it’s going to be one of the NXT crowd. Since reworking its developmental territory TV show as a place for wrestlers to work on their technical skills but also work on their character, with a TV audience, the company has had a string of great stars break out on the main roster. Look at The Shield and Big E Langston; those dudes are GREAT. And by hiring Sara Del Rey to work with the women’s wrestlers, the company has a great crop of stars that aren’t just there to be pretty and pull each other’s hair in comedy matches; they’re great wrestlers. Between Sami Zayn (himself a Daniel Bryan-esque veteran of wrestling the world over), Paige, Emma and Summer Rae (who is criminally underused on the main roster, so I don’t think she’s really “broken out” yet), the company has this great crop of wrestlers ready to make it big. While I’d love to see the NXT’s female roster all jump up to the big show and go on a Nexus-like rampage of amazing wrestling, I feel like Zayn is the most likely to be promoted and given a big push by year’s end.

Brandon: A dude with a homophobic catchphrase. Note: that’s not what I want, but that’s probably what’s going to happen. Probably.

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Scott continues: The Taste or Cutthroat Kitchen?

James: I actually haven’t watched either; the cooking competition shows I watch are Top Chef (religiously; and oh man, do I have FEELINGS about this week’s episode), Chopped, their Canadian versions and Iron Chef America. I will say, out of the two, I’m more likely to check out The Taste; I like the idea of the challenge of making a perfect bite, and that’s an interesting conceit to build a show around. Plus, I like Anthony Bourdain. Have you watched his new CNN show? It’s like No Reservations but with more cultural/political content. It’s awesome. But as much as I like Alton Brown, I just can’t get into the conceit of Cutthroat Kitchen. People being dicks to each other is what I like least about cooking competition shows, and so a show built entirely around it doesn’t seem that interesting. I’d rather see people cook great meals and then talk about how they like each other than cash in a whatever to take someone’s knife or blindfold them.

Brandon: Man, I love Chopped. Quick cooking with weird ingredients under what I think of as a higher stress Iron Chef type show. It’s some serious good eats.

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Scott goes on: Did Marvel ever do anything with those CrossGen properties, or did they just get them to get them?

James: You and I have already talked about this a bit, but yes, Marvel did try to utilize the CrossGen properties. They launched three miniseries, Ruse, Sigil and my personal favourite, Mystic (track down a copy if you can; the G. Willow WIlson (of impending Ms Marvel fame)-written series was funny, exciting and beautiful). They were going to launch two more, Route 666 and Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, but low sales of the first three miniseries sort of put an end to that. With any luck, they’ll try a bit more with CrossGen in the future, but it’s not hard to see why they took a hiatus. Anything else to add, Brandon?

Brandon: We’ll see more CrossGen when Disney smartens the fuck up and realizes how much money they can make on a lot of their concepts. Mystic and Meridian alone could be made into movies now, but there’s no reason for Marvel to spend resources on series that aren’t their specific brand - which is why I worry about what’s going to happen with the Star Wars books…

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Scott is implacable: The Blue Jays and the Yankees are two of the professional sports teams whose names sound like sex acts. What are others?

James: In descending order of filthiness:

• The Colorado Avalanche;
• The Toledo Mudhens;
• The Saskatchewan Roughriders;
• The Montgomery Biscuits;
• The Edmonton Oil Kings;
• Literally any WNBA or Major League Lacrosse team

Brandon: The Westchester Steam Trunkers, the Portland Mustache Riders, and the Readi-Lock™ Knob Goblins.

These are probably real somewhere.

 

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Scott is curious: How were your Christmases and New Years?

James: Pretty good! You can get a more detailed rundown in this week’s podcast episode, but in short, I relaxed, had a lot of turkey, hung out with friends a lot, spent Christmas with my mother’s redneck family and didn’t get anywhere near as much done as I wanted to.

I also got a really great tea set, comprised of some really beautiful mugs with coloured insides and wood saucers, a lovely mug from the same line and a since-discontinued teapot that I coveted for months. Brandon and Danica got me a lovely tapas set and a book about the Kennedys, and my mom, as usual, went overboard. More importantly, I think the gifts I got for people were well received. I tried to put a lot of thought into the gifts I got people this year (life-sized James Leask cardboard standees and signed 8″ by 11″ glossies), so I hope people enjoy what I got them. It’s always nice to show my love by giving, as well as the standard, daily combination of outright antagonism and private support.

Brandon: My New Years was amazing. Basically, Danica and I decided to stay home and play Marvel Lego all night. We watched fireworks happen from our balcony. It was pretty awesome, having a nice quiet night with someone you love. As for Christmas… it involved far too much family. The less said, the better, I’m thinking. Oh! And James got me a MODOK coffee mug (Mobile Organism Designed Only for Koffee) which resides proudly at work! It was super awesome.

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Scott gets reflective: Do you make resolutions? What is yours for 2014? Have you ever kept one?

James: I don’t really make them. I’m not one of those people who is snide about them and how people should always be trying to better themselves, mind you; I understand why the New Year, particularly coming in a dark and cold time of the year, encourages reflection and the desire to be better. I simply don’t make resolutions because I don’t think to, until this year when my friend Kate asked all the attendees at her New Year’s Eve party what their resolutions are. My resolution was to put more stuff up here and be more timely, which is to say I have already started off on the road to failure. That’s the C!TB way!

Brandon: My New Year’s Resolution is the same as every year: write more. So far… well, so far I think it’s working out, but I’m usually pretty good for January. We’ll see about the rest of the months.

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That’s it for the one hundred and twenty-fourth instalment of Um, Actually. Check in every Monday and Thursday for a brand new column. 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. Seriously, anything.