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.

Seriously, ask us anything! You can ask us about comics, because that is a thing that people do, as you will see below, but why be so limited? You could ask us about anything! Film! TV! Music! All things that Brandon doesn’t know as much about and so James gets to feel like a big man. Isn’t that the best? It is totally the best. So ask questions like that! Shame Brandon into watching more TV and movies with James! That’s basically what the internet was created for.

You’re welcome, internet.

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Scott Williams (@scottowilliams) asks: Which three All New Marvel Now titles are you most looking forward to?

Brandon: At this point in time?

• All New Ultimates // Marvel is returning the Ultimate line back into a place where vibrant new voices tell awesome new stories, and they’re bringing Michael Fiffe in to write this new team book. Fresh, amazing talent with fresh, ready to explore characters. And bonus? Not a single white guy in the book. Organically so. Amazing.
• All New Ghost Rider // At first glance, this seems like a strange pick for me. I don’t generally care for Ghost Rider, but I’ll be damned if I’m not intrigued by the creative team of Felipe Smith and Tradd Moore, which looks to steal a touch of manga influence and ply it to a Tokyo Drift style Ghost Rider. Yes.
• All New Doop // Peter Milligan returns to Doop with David Lafuente in tow. I shouldn’t need to say any more.

James: First of all, Brandon, I’m pretty sure “I shouldn’t need to say more” is a way of deliberately passing the buck. Not even two full sentences about the series? For shame. I’ve now written more sentences shaming you than you did about All New Doop. You’re the worst.

Anyway.

Scott, I’m glad you asked! Whenever there’s some big new initiative from one of the Big Two comics publishers, there’s a lot of complaining and snide jokes made about the superlatives in the title or the numbering conceits (for the record, I legit don’t give a shit if somebody has time to complain about how a new #1.NOW will be hard to file in their longboxes but not to figure out how to resolve that non-problem). Once people get the dumb out of their system, though, there’s one thing we seem to be able to agree upon: that there are a heck of a lot of great series that are coming out of this, and we can all be excited about them.

The one I’m probably most excited about is Ms. Marvel. First off, it’s being written by G. Willow Wilson, who has a really great touch for character work, and whose sensitivity to being a Muslim woman in America should be an invaluable resource to a book that aims to expand Marvel’s focus beyond its straight white male legacy heroes. Then you add an industry superstar Adrian Alphona, whose organic lines and mastery of cartooning-derived body exaggeration makes perfect sense for a character who’s a polymorph, and you get a book that seems like a slam dunk. Plus, for good measure, it’s great to see Captain Marvel getting a companion book and bolstering that area of the universe.

She-Hulk is another book I’m really excited for, especially since I missed out on Dan Slott‘s run in the character a few years ago. Jennifer Walters is a character I’ve always been interested in and then became a genuine fan of through FF, and I’m always a fan of books that combine superheroes and workplace genre pieces. With Matt Murdock packing up and going to San Francisco, it’s a great opportunity to establish Jennifer as a premiere lawyer in Marvel’s New York. And who better to take that on than Javier Pulido, whose issues of Hawkguy have been stunning and filled with vibrant personality, and Charles Soule, a great writer who is also a lawyer? It seems like a team made in heaven.

Brandon already mentioned it, so I could take this opportunity to talk about the new creative teams on books like Fantastic Four or Wolverine and the X-Men, or even the return of Warren Ellis to monthly ongoing superhero comics with Moon Knight alongside Declan Shalvey, or hell, even Loki: Agent of Asgard, but I really am excited beyond measure for the All New Ultimate Marvel Now titles, and chief among them being All New Ultimates. The Ultimate line is still Marvel’s “Consequences are real, no retconning” line where dead characters tend to stay dead in general, and because of that, it was practically Marvel’s guinea pig for the “rolling relaunch.” Editorial realized a few years ago that if you couldn’t, say, reset Spider-Man’s continuity through a deal with the Marvel Devil, you needed to be able to create jumping-on points for new readers or else the attrition would be too much. The new Ultimates series not only features a cast without a single white dude, but that announced cover for it just oozes youthful swagger. It confronts the viewer, almost challenging them not to pick it up. And with a break from any character from the original Ultimates series, it most definitely seems as fresh a start as you can get. Plus, it’s got three of my all-time favourite Ultimate Marvel characters in it, and that’s a great way to get me salivating.

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Scott Williams (@scottowilliams) asks: Thoughts on Marvel’s Amazing Spider-Man announcement?

Brandon: Delight for selfish reasons. Barring one tiny hiccup, I had this all plotted out back when the first issue of Superior Spider-Man hit the shelves. My basic answer to any and all questions pertaining to Peter Parker’s well being for the past year or so have been that Superior Spider-Man would run for 30 issues, and in April, a new Amazing Spider-Man #1 would be on the shelves. Why? Whelp, because the folks who work at Marvel aren’t dummies, you dummy. They have a new Spider-Man movie hitting the shelves on May 2nd, and what better way to capitalize than remove Peter from the table and tout his triumphant return, right when folks will be primed to jump into some Spider-Man comics. Releasing the comic in April assures that it will be on stands come movie release day, and will capitalize on the weird phenomena that is “higher demand for product before a super-hero movie than after”. (Don’t ask me why things work that way - I still can’t understand it.)

That said, it doesn’t look like my bold claim will stick the landing - Superior Spider-Man is set to go to at least issue #31 at this point in time, and may in fact continue beyond alongside the new Amazing book. Because hey, why cancel a book that sells all the copies if, say, you had a good reason to continue it? But I guess we’ll find out more about that soon.

James: Brandon hit the business reasons why this is a smart move, so I won’t even bother trying with those. All I can say is that it’s very much the logical next step in Dan Slott‘s Spider-Plans, and I’m excited to see how it will shake out. Superior‘s launch was accompanied with the “Oh my gosh, is this a new Spidey? What about Pete?” questions hanging over its head, and I like that the announcement of Amazing‘s return is a direct mirror of that. ”That’s Peter, right? How’s he coming back? We saw his consciousness destroyed!” Instead of just an “Oh boy, another dead hero comes back” relaunch, this seems very keyed into the way Slott has written his Spider-Books for years, namely with a mind for serialized story that builds tensions and asks audacious questions over a substantial period of time, and then confronts them. Peter’s fall that launched Superior was based on things that had been building for a hundred issues, so that the actual event itself (and, by association, the launch of Superior) felt earned. It was the thing you saw coming but wanted Peter to find a way out of. Of course, some people were upset about that, but one thing I’ve enjoyed about Superior is how it takes those same events, situations and motivations from the Amazing run and builds off them.

At first, the ease with which Otto Octavius seemed to “fix” Peter’s problems after taking over his life bolstered the audacity of the title and driving character motivation: that Spider-Man’s greatest villain might actually be better at being a hero than he ever was. Gradually, though, the series has been working at creating problems that have become harder and harder for Otto to ignore, and that have developed serious cracks in his heroic facade. The Superior Spider-Man he is now is definitely different from who he was when the series launched, and that creates not only a giant tension every issue, but shows exactly what made Peter so necessary in the first place. Superior has been gradually making the case for why Peter Parker is the superior Spider-Man, but leaving two huge aspects of the narrative remaining:

• How will Peter actually come back?
• How will Peter deal with Otto basically torching his entire personal and professional life?

The relaunch of Amazing Spider-Man is a logical next step for Marvel and for the ongoing Spider-Man story in the comics, and there are enough questions hovering over everything to keep anything from being a foregone conclusion. It’s from a team that I love, Dan Slott and Humberto Ramos. In short, this is exactly the kind of comic that excites me.

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Scott Williams (@scottowilliams) asks: David S. Goyer: good or bad?

Brandon: Good intentions, I think. Not sure about the follow through. He’s a guy who can be a positive influence when paired with someone who is similarly passionate and understands the subject matter (see: Nolan’s Batman movies, his run with Geoff Johns and James Robinson on JSA). That said, boy can that dude go off the rails. The best thing about him, I would say, is that he’s legitimate passionate about the subject matter in every project he takes, it’s just a matter of where and how that passion is directed.

James: Value neutral, maybe tipped a little more toward “good.” On one hand, he’s responsible for the climax to Man of Steel and I didn’t like that at all. On the other hand, he’s done some great work with Christopher Nolan‘s Dark Knight trilogy, co-wrote Dark City and was a creative force behind the Blade movies, which were not only a genuine hoot, but which were some of the first movies that helped launch the wealth of superhero films we have now. He also created Da Vinci’s Demons, which I’ll definitely be checking out if only because guys like Matt Fraction and Jonathan Hickman are writing episodes in the second season. He’s certainly capable of good work, and he’s certainly made some stinkers, too. I think, with the right team and by second-guessing his “Wouldn’t that be coooOOOoool?!” instinct, he can be good, but his track record shows that’s not always what happens.

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Marc (@DasNordlicht91) asks: WWE Network thoughts?

Brandon: Intrigued and excited, if not disappointed that it’s not a thing that will happen in Canada any time soon. Other than that, I think it’s best to turn this over to our resident Chris Sims WWE expert.

James: 99% genuine enthusiasm. I’m not really interested (at least, right now) in some of the new original series that will be launching on it, like Legends’ House, but there are a few things that make it something that I will absolutely subscribe to:

First and primarily, it comes with live streaming of all 12 WWE pay-per-view events. That alone makes it an incredible deal. By the WWE’s estimation, this basically saves $500 off the cost of ordering the pay-per-views, and that’s really exciting, as someone who would watch every single pay-per-view if it wasn’t for the outrageous cost, not even including the extra $12-15 in carrier fees I’m charged if I order a PPV right now. With the $10/month pricing plan, that’s more than 80% cheaper. You can order WrestleMania and SummerSlam and BOOM, the service has paid for itself. Anything more than two PPVs is gravy.

This makes getting every WWE PPV not just affordable, but really enticing to more casual fans, and it’s an interesting gambit by WWE. Instead of taking $50-60 per month from a subset of dedicated fans, the company is clearly aiming to take $10 per month from every dedicated fan and a whole bunch of casual ones, with the goal of turning them into dedicated fans who want to buy Brock Lesnar mugs and CM Punk hoodies and… uh… Daniel Bryan fake beards. Will it work? I can’t say for sure, but they made me, someone who has given them $60 ever, someone who is actually upset that there’s no Canadian launch date announced so I can’t give them twice that amount per year in relative perpetuity.

Beyond this, there are some other reasons why it’s something I’m very eager to get my hands on. It’ll be available on basically any device I can get Netflix on (for the record, my apartment currently clocks in at eight of these devices), meaning that I don’t need to be sitting at home or my friends Tyson & Victoria’s house to watch it. It will include all the regular WWE programming, which means that I no longer have to deal with Sportsnet cutting backstage sketches from NXT every week or delaying it constantly. I’ll be able to watch NXT - and all of it - without having to wonder if it’s going to be on on Thursday or Friday or Saturday, and without a series recording that records every airing of the show because my cable provider doesn’t flag any of them as “new” so a series recording captures repeats, too. In short, it will make it easier to watch a TV show that I greatly enjoy, with almost no headaches. And in addition to all that, there will be over 1,500 hours of old wrestling from the WWE Library available, which means I’ll be able to watch some of the greatest wrestling of all time, basically whenever I want. For me, that’s incredible. I will sign up the day I can.

The remaining 1% is because they haven’t announced a Canadian launch date (the rumour is for late this year or early 2015) and I don’t know if the price/content will be the same as the American version.

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That’s it for the one hundred and twenty-fifth 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.