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.

Your questions can be about comics. I mean, this is a comics site. You can ask us about comics, we’re not gonna stop you. What kind of monsters do you think we are? We like comics just like you do, so if you want to know about why Doctor Doom is so cool, then bring it on! But maybe you want to know about other things. The film and televisual arts! The culinary arts! The sexual arts! Do we know about all these things? Maybe! We’ll certainly pretend to as we shore up our knowledge through wikipedia and YouPorn, all in the service of giving you the most up-to-date information on blumpkins around.

You’re welcome, internet.

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Jay (@jayrunham) asks: Who is the best drunk comic book character?

James: Unsurprisingly, I have given this a significant amount of thought. The most famous comic book drunk (different from the best drunk comic book character) is Tony Stark, and I would highly recommend Matt Fraction and Salvador Larroca‘s run on Invincible Iron Man for the thoughtful way it tackled alcoholism and the persistent, ongoing process of staying clean and healthy. It’s remarkable.

After that, it’s going to sound a little weird talking about a drunk character in a positive way, but, well, I’m doing it. And the answer there is shockingly simple: Snowy, from Tintin:

I’m not kidding when I say that an adorable drunk dog is a significant subplot of Tintin in Tibet, and I love it.

Brandon: My favourite problematic drunk would be Captain Haddock from the same Tintin comics. If they count (because they were in the Thrilling Adventure Hour graphic novel), Frank and Sadie Doyle would be my favourite drunks in comics. They are, in fact, my favourite drunks of all time.

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J (@misslazyj) asks: Is it ever advised to trust a big butt and a smile?

James: Are you a cop? You have to tell me if you’re a cop.

Brandon: Is butts something the teenagers are into these days? Is this some kind of sexual maguffin? I’m scared and alone.

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Ramin (@persepolian) asks, or, rather, told James, in a Twitter conversation, at which point James stopped replying: Superman sucks.

James: Disagree. One hundred percent disagree. Just a wild guess, because this pops up frequently when people talk about classically “good guy” superheroes: it’s because he’s so powerful, so nice, that he seems boring because he always does the right thing. And not only do I think this idea is dead wrong, but I think this idea is one of the most poisonous ideas in all of comics, in all of movies, in all of culture. I firmly reject the idea that being good means you’re uninteresting, that there can’t be good, gripping stories told with a character like that. It is, simply, a matter of good writing. Superman is really powerful? You can put him up against an equal power (or a superior one, or a different one, like magic). You can put him up against a superior mind, craft a seemingly unwinnable situation, a more deadly deathtrap. Someone doesn’t do that? That’s not Superman’s fault. That’s the writer’s.

The thing, it’s easy to solve a problem in superhero media with killing. For Superman, Batman or Spider-Man, it would be phenomenally easy for them to kill. Spider-Man is agile, super-strong and can stick to walls; it would be easy to be an assassin, but instead he protects life, because one time he didn’t and it cost him. Batman trained his whole life learning deadly arts, but decides every single day of his fictional life not to. He makes the difficult choice to find a different way. A better way. Superman is a living, breathing atomic weapon. He could rule us all, or decide that he knows what’s best and we would all be helpless to stop him. But he doesn’t. As Grant Morrison said, “He’s a good guy. He loves us. He will not stop in defending us. How beautiful is that?… He’ll never let you down.”

That’s not boring to me. In the best stories, Superman is faced with impossible odds and impossible choices, just like every other hero. He has to think his way out of the problem, just like everybody else, and lives among us as our equal. He wants us to be better, and that’s the core of his dilemma: he can do anything in the world, except make himself unnecessary. But he never gives up.

That goes back to another thing Morrison said, right after he calls Superman “us, in our dreams,” itself a pretty amazing quote:

“Somewhere, in our darkest night, we made up the story of a man who will never let us down.”

I find that endlessly invigorating. I love the idea that Superman could do anything, and what he wants to do is help us be better. There’s enough cynicism in media, and a symptom of that is finding goodness boring. That’s on us.

Brandon: Superman isn’t a bad character, so much as he’s a challenging character to write. As James explained above, there’s a lot to love about the character, but his inherent power and goodness make it very easy to be lazy about it. The best Superman stories challenge him in interesting ways, and still allow him to hold onto his principles. It’s what makes him Superman: he has all the powers to do great evil, but chooses to use those powers to make the morally correct decision, even when one is not readily evident.

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Scott (@scottowilliams) asks: How have you destabilized the patriarchy today?

James: I haven’t left my house, but I’ve still tried to listen to women around me, without questioning their validity or anger at the unfairness of the world. I’m also sharing this video where Neil deGrasse Tyson shuts down the idea that women (and people of colour) aren’t in STEM fields because of their genetics.

Brandon: Uhm whelp, nothing yet today, but there was the Gender Is Not A Genre event I helped put on at the shop earlier in the week, and I’m currently in the midst of getting some gender issues stuff up on the site. Small potatoes, but making even the smallest bit of noise is better than silence.

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Scott continues: If you were a pro-wrestler and authorized to license a real song for your theme a la CM Punk, which would you use?

James: First, Scott, that definition of “real” songs is prejudiced against hardworking Jims Johnson.

Second, the answer is very clearly “Democracy,” by Leonard Cohen, which would fit in my character of a foreign heel telling America that I’m the answer to all their prayers:

Brandon: I would probably go with Batman SFX by Adam Warrock.

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Scott wraps up: How great is Sloan’s 2011 album The Double Cross? How great is Sloan in general?

James: It’s really great. How many bands put out killer, vital albums 20 years into their career? Not that many. That speaks to the strength of the band themselves, who started as a post-Grunge band in the vein of Nirvana and quickly reinvented themselves as masters of power pop, from its twinkling highs to it’s crunching, bass-heavy lows. They’ve been a soundtrack to my life; it’s impossible to think of certain jobs, vacations or friends without songs like “Money City Maniacs,” “Losing California,” “Everything You’ve Done Wrong” or “Unkind” coming to mind. At this point, they’re a part of me.

Brandon: Do I know this band? I feel as though I should know this band. They’re the ones who walked 50,000 miles, yes? Canada? Yes?

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That’s it for the one hundred and thirty-eighth 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.