It’s the Friday before Christmas, and I’m flying from Anchorage, Alaska to Dallas, Texas. That’s giving me more than a little free time to deal with, so why don’t we spend that answering subscriber and patron questions in another Mailbag Q&A?

How are you doing David? – Stephen Adkison

Currently? Pretty good! I’m on a plane eating some mixed nuts and having a Coca Cola while I answer these questions as my wife watches Deadpool & Wolverine next to me. I strangely love all forms of travel? Flight wouldn’t be my top choice — rail travel is where it’s at, especially considering how much I dislike turbulence (which has been abundant so far in this flight) — but I love airports and the feelings that come with going to and from. So, pretty good!

Overall, though, I’m ready for 2024 to be over. I appreciate you asking this question, Stephen, because it’s been a pretty rough year. I’ve dealt with an array of health problems that came out of nowhere (a non-exhaustive list includes the troubles with my permanently dislocated arm that I wrote about in the SKTCHD newsletter, the curious case of dealing with the ramifications of being bit by a wild shrew, and a brief cancer scare), some unbelievably high costs related to those things and other unexpected turns, and a perpetual feeling of there being far too much to do. That’s led to me dialing some of those things back, but this stretch in Texas will be the first time in I don’t know how long that I have few responsibilities. I cannot wait, because I am so far beyond burned out that I am approaching levels I’ve only considered hypothetical before. Throw in the *gestures at the entire world but mostly the United States* and it’s a lot.

So, let’s call it mixed. 2024 has been mixed. But I am hopeful this trip helps.

In your end of year awards and lists, there are a lot of books that aren’t featured throughout the year in your weekly “The Pull” column. (I’m thinking of the OGNs, international titles, small press releases, etc.) How are you discovering and tracking those titles? Do you have an eye on them throughout the year, or do those tend to fall into the end of year binge in prep for the lists? – Cameron Chittock

Thank you for asking this, Cameron! I am honestly surprised it’s never come up before. The truth is that my lists in The Pull have a heavy lean towards single issues because it’s reflective of what I know I am going to buy in any given week. That’s not a surprise, of course. But it speaks to the column’s focus and what I am able to keep up with rather than everything I might consider reading during a given year. More than that, it’s built on what I am aware of in the moment, and there are far too many comics to keep track of everything. There will always be a bevy of books that simply slip by me.

So, how am I discovering those titles? All kinds of ways! My favorite comic this year, Hirayasumi, was discovered when ShortBox Comics Fair’s Zainab Akhtar posted an Instagram Story with her copy of its first volume. My second favorite, Guillaume Singelin’s Frontier, came to my attention when artist David Lopez noted how much he loved that cartoonist when I interviewed him. My third favorite, Nights, was just one of those titles I kept seeing come up, with I want to say Rickey Purdin from Marvel’s post about it on Instagram finally pushing me over the edge. While certain places (namely, lists other people and entities create of their favorite/best comics of (insert period here)) are consistently helpful, it’s mostly just random chance that leads me towards certain comics. Or — maybe more accurately — it’s trusting people’s judgment when I know they have similar taste to me. So, in short: Word of mouth.

How do I track them? A lot of it is based on “do I impulse read this comic?” but I do create a spreadsheet throughout the year of my favorite reads and comics/graphic novels I know I want to read before the year is up. That document is where I stash the names of those high potential releases if I don’t immediately read them.

I do keep an eye on these types of titles all year. But the bulk of my reading for this category of comic happens between August and December, with this year’s effort being the first time I actually started in August. I used to start in September, but that is just too tight of a turnaround. It results in an unhinged amount of reading in far too short of a period, one that’s just not palatable to me anymore. So, I binge read, but my goal is to start this year’s reading even earlier so it’s more like reading one or two books a week rather than one (or even sometimes two) a day. Will I do that? No clue. I hope so. My current process is really too much.

My overall recommendation, though, is to find people who have a) similar taste or b) interesting taste and try out their recs if they intrigue. Beyond the folks I mentioned (and other random recs I could never predict), two big ones for me this year were Comic Book Herald’s Dave Buesing and the New York Public Library’s Best New Comics for Adults list. Buesing’s super helpful because he’s always updating readers on his favorites and he reads everything. We have extremely different taste, so not everything works for me. But his reading certainly expands my horizons. And the NYPL’s lists always intrigue, and typically highlight a wide variety of books (that’s where I found the manga series Marriage Toxin, for example). The key is being open to new comics, because they are plentiful, and figuring out whose interests and taste jives with you. That leads to unpredictable results, but they are always useful!

Oh: And go to the library/use Hoopla. That helps keep the costs down for the infinity comics you’re going to read if you’re trying to do one of these lists right.

This is maybe more of an Off Panel question, but I suppose it could apply to your written interviews as well. If you’re comfortable sharing, I’d love a little insight into how you go about selecting guests and preparing for particular interviews. I’m consistently impressed by both the tenor and substance of those episodes/pieces and would love to know how you go about structuring conversations, whether you have overarching themes you’re shooting for, and just what your process looks like more generally. – Robby Earle

These are related subjects but massively different ones, so I am going to split them up. Selecting guests is a lot harder than you might think. The reality is I get probably between 10 and 30 entreaties a week from people who want to set up an interview or for me to review something, and that’s probably underestimating that number. And that’s just people who are actively promoting something. This can include creators and PR/marketing people, but the end result either way is a whole lot of people want to come on the show. This number does not include the folks I am naturally interested in talking to for one reason or another.

The problem is whatever value there is to Off Panel is largely derived from a) my enthusiasm for the subject and b) my knowledge of it. That’s part of the reason I rarely do promotional interviews. I have to have a way into the conversation that isn’t just, “Let’s talk about comic x that’s arriving on (insert day here).” So, my goal is to find someone that I want to talk about for reasons beyond selling something.

Maybe that’s because I love their comic or am just very excited about it. Maybe it’s because they have an interesting angle to them, like what happened with the IDW editors Jake Williams and Nicolas Niño, whom I met at SDCC and found to be interesting because of their jobs, their position as coworkers and roommates, and as younger folks who elected to work in comics. Maybe it’s because I have an observation about them I want to dig into, like when I had Skottie Young on to basically talk about the fact he isn’t drawing comics anymore, essentially.

I had someone in comics once tell me that they think I make a mistake by only talking to people whose work I enjoy in some way, shape, or form. But it’s important to note that I am terrible at faking interest. Off Panel would suck if I had to grind through interviews to promote things I am not interested in in the slightest. Don’t get me wrong, I try to find ways in for everything. But sometimes it doesn’t work, and I have to keep things focused anyways simply because there just aren’t enough episodes to interview everyone who is interested in coming on the show.

So, let’s talk about the other side. I have several layers of preparation. It typically starts with me either emailing myself or starting a Word document with every possible idea I have in mind to talk to this person about. From there, I’ll read a bunch of old interviews — sadly, I almost never listen to and/or watch old interviews, because they’re just too time consuming from a prep standpoint, and they’re less easy to get a read on in a hurry — of that person and put together research by looking through their varying social and web presences and news stories about them online.

From there, I drop everything into a Word document if that doesn’t already exist, and before I begin formalizing things, I’ll create a structure I build around. Structure is a big thing for me as an interviewer. My goal is to path the conversation from open to close so it flows in a natural way, at least in theory. That’ll come in the form of section headers, with distinct regions created for each conversation, but recurring ones being simple ones like “Intro” and “Background.” Then I’ll organize each of the ideas I came up with and the standout topics I came across in my research into those different sections, do a whole bunch of massaging, and then boom. I have my structure.

The final document before the interview is typically five to seven pages long. Here’s the funniest part of the whole thing, though. All that prep is for naught. I usually abandon my structure at some point in each interview, and it typically happens pretty early on. That’s when I give into conversational flow and just roll with things. The nice thing is all that prep I did puts me in a position to pepper elements into the conversation that I knew I wanted to cover, and I can still keep my rough structure to make the interview logical from a pathing standpoint. But I like to think the order side of my preparation allows me to thrive with the chaos side of the actual interviews.

You and Steve Anderson mentioned that DC and Marvel are cyclical where if one’s on the upswing the other is on the downswing. Going back to the 60’s, who would you say was the better publisher for each decade? – Mike Ianuzo

Oh boy. To be honest, Mike, I don’t think I’m well-read enough in each decade to say for sure one way or another. But I’ll do my best. I will say, though, that “better publisher” for me does not mean greater sales, or at least not always. In this exercise, I am leaning towards quality.

• 1960s: Marvel. Qualitatively I’m not sure, but this was the decade Marvel was born and the decade it became a sensation. It has to be them.
• 1970s: Pass. This is far and away my weakest decade for reading. I just can’t.
• 1980s: UGH WHAT A HARD PICK. Do you choose the wide range of quality from Marvel or the extreme upside of DC? Ultimately, I had to pick DC. Watchmen, The Dark Knight Returns, Batman: Year One, Crisis on Infinite Earths, and Alan Moore’s varying contributions that aren’t Watchmen (namely, his two iconic Superman stories for me) alone make them hard to pass on. Marvel’s probably better on average. But aiming for average is boring. We’re aiming for the stars here.
• 1990s: I’m going to say DC, even though the sales numbers would disagree. That was a decade of style for Marvel. DC had a lot of interesting depth, and I rep hard for Mark Waid’s Flash and Flash adjacent work, Kingdom Come, Grant Morrison and Howard Porter’s JLA, Hitman, and even oddballs like Major Bummer and Tom Peyer and Rags Morales’ Hourman. Throw in Vertigo and it’s not even close.
• 2000s: Marvel is a slam dunk lock. This is Marvel’s strongest decade. I will accept no debate here.
• 2010s: This is kind of a weird decade overall, but despite the massive energy surrounding DC’s two relaunches in The New 52 and Rebirth, Marvel’s the pick here. They had, like, 73 relaunches, but more than that, they had an incredible array of great comics in the form of everything Jonathan Hickman did, Matt Fraction and David Aja’s Hawkeye, The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl, The Vision, Jason Aaron’s larger Thor run, and so much more. It wasn’t a great decade for Marvel as a cohesive unit outside of Hickman’s work, but there was a lot of quality there.
• 2020s: Obviously the jury is still out because it’s early, but I’m tempted to give it to neither because they’ve both been so messy. That said, I’ll give it to DC if only because its extreme art lean the past couple years and how Black Label has opened them up to some super interesting takes.