Happy Halloween! It’s a bit of a lighter load this month in the ol’ Mailbag Q&A, but the good news is, the questions I received were super fun to answer. So, let’s dig into this month’s slate of questions and answers in the October Mailbag!

After the conventional wisdom was that horror comics didn’t sell, we now have (I think) 3 different horror anthology comics and tons of horror ongoings. Is there a genre you would like to see get a big comics push and surge in popularity? – Stephen Adkison

It’s funny, the topic of horror anthologies has come up quite a bit lately, including a couple mailbags ago. While I’m still not sure horror is doing well enough to warrant the sheer number of anthologies, ongoings, and publisher committing to the genre, it’s interesting to see it and I hope it’s working well.

Let’s talk about the second half of your question first, though. Which genres would like to see have a surge in popularity? All of them! All of them all the time! While that’s not really answer to what you’re really asking, I do need to emphasize that up front. I want all of them to surge.

But to really answer your question, I think it’s pretty clear that at this point in time no one knows exactly what will work in this market. Once upon a time, horror and anthologies were both unlikely sellers. Now? They’re doing well enough that everyone is trying them. So, my extremely outside-the-box answer is I’d like to see the direct market try out some real slice of life comics, and I want to see all publishers do it. Spider-Man gets a slice of life comic! The Teen Titans get a slice of life comic! B.P.R.D. gets a slice of life comic set before everything became too crazy! You name it, I want to see it.

The funny thing is, I’d argue some of the lasting works in the past 25 years of the direct market are in fact slice of life comics already. Bendis and Bagley’s Ultimate Spider-Man? Slice of life! Ms. Marvel? Slice of life! Fraction and Aja’s Hawkeye? Slice of life! Runaways, Young Avengers, Giant Days, The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl, Gotham Academy, parts of Invincible, Scott Pilgrim, Nights…I could keep going on, but I think some of the best comics from that space are actually at least in part slice of life (or hang out comics, as I like to put it at times). But I bet if you ask retailers they’d say that slice of life doesn’t work. I’m not sure that’s true! I’d like to see a commitment to that genre in a way we rarely do. Give me an Ultimate or Absolute-like line at Marvel or DC that’s just hang out comics! Give me some cool creator-owned books that are just focused on cool characters living life and occasionally do spectacular things!

That’s what I’d love to see, and I bet it would do better than you might think.

With the recent edition of DC’s The Outsiders wrapping up, and transitioning the Planetary-inspired (and Planetary-continuing) story into a potential new version of The Authority, just in time for DC All In, it got me thinking: given the right creative team, is there a DC or Marvel super team that you’d want to be given another chance or even be approached from a slightly different angle? – Russel Harder

The New Gods from Ram V and Evan Cagle is another great example of this, one that finds a creative team trying to reinvigorate an idea. Honestly, I think you could make a case for any number of super teams. Even something like The Avengers feels like it needs a refresh. But that’s not going to happen, because The Avengers do The Avengers things. Instead, I’m going to bring back something that’s kind of a cheat, but whatever, I answer how I want, Russel!

My answer is Avengers Academy. The idea of training the next generation of heroes makes a ton of sense at all times for Marvel, and it gives a young heroes series the structure these titles are so often missing. When it’s just young people doing regular superhero team stuff, it feels like the concept suffers because it always has to lean into the big fight scenes, which are rarely the strengths of these types of books. So, create a new team of heroes, give them a team of teachers like they had in Avengers Academy, but maybe refresh it all for the modern age. You’ll need a good team to make that happen, so what about Ngozi Ukazu writing and Luigi Formisano drawing it with Francesco Segala coloring and Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou lettering? I fully support this great idea!

What is the single most underrated Big Two book being published right now? – Hayden Dunlap

As I told Hayden when he sent me this email, this is very much an eye of the beholder type question. Depending on who you ask, any number of comics might be underrated, overrated, or properly rated. So, it’s difficult to come up with a silver bullet answer here. But I will say this: I think it’s very difficult to find true gems on the periphery these days. That’s especially true at Marvel, where there’s a sizable gap between what’s working and what isn’t, in my mind.

But you aren’t asking for excuses as to why this is a hard question. You’re asking for an answer. And yet, instead of an answer I am going to give you two. One for each. One is a comic that’s broadly considered to be quite good but isn’t doing anywhere near as well as it should in terms of sales. That’s Fantastic Four, a comic that might be Marvel’s best, and yet largely moves like a mid-tier book. Much of that is the FF of it all, as it’s been a bit since they were one of the biggest guns at the House of Ideas. But this run from Ryan North, Ivan Fiorelli, Carlos Gomez, and Iban Coello is exceptional and deserves broader love even if it has serious support behind it.

The other is more of a book on the periphery, even if it has an elite creative team. That’s the just concluded Zatanna: Bring Down the House, a comic that delivered throughout its run. That largely comes down to Mariko Tamaki, Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou, and particularly Javier Rodriguez being incredible at what they do. But it somehow is greater than the sum of its parts, with it being a fun, smart, and inventive read throughout. It’s no surprise that a Black Label series starring Zatanna isn’t a massive hit, but it’s the type of comic and team that deserves more love than it gets. So, that’s my pick, even though I’d wager plenty of people would say both the titles I mentioned are properly rated overall.

Which creators would you recruit for Skybound’s Universal Monsters: The Wolf Man, The Mummy, and The Invisible Man? – Ian_A

This is a really interesting thought exercise, and one that’s a real challenge when it comes to defining the approach if only because Skybound’s been so eclectic in how it has cast these books so far. First they brought in a creative team that was on a break from a very successful book, then they brought in two parts of a creative studio to shepherd a title that only one of them wrote, and now they have a cartoonist writing and drawing a series. That means really anything is on the table. But instead of going random, why don’t we exactly emulate the formula they’ve laid out here?

For The Wolf Man, let’s bring in the Somna team of Tula Lotay and Becky Cloonan, with Lotay drawing the parts of the story the comparatively regular life parts of the story and Cloonan handling the more horrific parts, particularly anything involving the lead in actual Wolf Man form. For The Mummy, I have to go with my first instinct even though I know this would be way, way different than what Skybound has done so far: Andrew MacLean. I don’t know why but it just feels right. Whatever that story would be, I think it’d be considerably more interesting with MacLean leading the way. That leaves the studio part, which is a bit more difficult, especially considering the whole invisibility thing. I’m actually going to go into Cloonan’s studio for this one, though, and I’m going to pick Eric Powell as the writer and Caitlin Yarsky as the artist. I think they’d bring a good energy to this, with Yarsky being a good fit for the era and storytelling you’d need for this story.