The September/October Mailbag is here, and hoo boy, did you all deliver a boatload of questions. We have a ton from SKTCHD subscribers and Off Panel patrons, so let’s get straight to it, shall we?

I always thought the best way to support a creator is by placing their books on my pull list. Is this true for limited series? I assume the publisher has already committed to the entire series. Also, if the pull list isn’t the best way to show support, what is? – Chris Landvick

Let me say one thing off the top: “Best” is in the eye of the beholder. I’d wager that nearly any creator would say that as long as you’re buying it, that’s all the matters, regardless of the format. You do you! As long as you maintain your passion for the medium, read the way you’d like.

But yes, if we’re talking about maximum impact, the best way to support a single issue title would be to add a title to your pull list before it hits final order cutoff (or the last time comic shops can adjust their orders) in specific — and that’s true for limited series as well. The reason that’s true is because sometimes a miniseries can be successful enough to warrant expansion into an ongoing. A good recent example of that was when Dan Slott and Marcus To’s Spectacular Spider-Man: Brand New Day graduated from being a miniseries to an ongoing. The support was significant enough that it warranted a longer run.

An even better example comes from this week’s episode of Off Panel, as writer G. Willow Wilson joined me to talk about her run on Poison Ivy which started as an eight-page story before becoming a six-issue limited series and is now nearing its 50th issue. Which is wild. That’s the importance of showing support in actionable ways. If you personally believe in a book, like, say, Daniel Warren Johnson’s Chainkata, which has its first issue on final order cutoff the day I’m typing this sentence, adding it to your pull before FOC will at a minimum up your shop’s orders for it by one — and quite often even more. Pre-orders are the number one driver of actual orders, and the more heat a book has behind it, the more extras a shop will order as well.

So, adding a title to your pull list in a timely manner is the most impactful thing a single issue comic fan can do to affect the fate of a title, unless you’re, like, ultra rich and can buy hundreds of thousands of copies of a comic and hand them out to people like candy on Halloween. That would help too. There’s no wrong way to buy a comic, though, as long as you buy it eventually.

Would love to hear what it’s like being a comic fan in Alaska. What’s the comic shop scene like there? And if you grew up there, what was it like in the ’90s? The more granular and specific your Alaskan Comic Tales the better! – Filip V

I suspect it’s not really that different than being a fan anywhere else, especially considering the fact I live in a proper city. Anchorage has 300,000ish people, so it’s not without opportunities, even if it lacks the events and creator population of other similarly sized places.

The comic shop scene itself is and has been dominated by one chain of shops in BOSCO’S, which opened the year I was born and has had as many as three shops (I believe) and as few as one throughout. They currently have two, and it’s great! Are there things that I think could be improved? Sure. But the flagship location — which is legit a two to three minute drive from me — is an incredible one stop shop that has comics, trades, graphic novels, manga, comics for all ages, back issues, board games, tabletop games, collectible card games, sports cards, non-sports cards, and really anything else you could imagine. Throw in regular events, clerks that are friendly and knowledgable, and other fun things, and you have a store that offers its customers a lot of reasons to visit on the regular.

I do wish there were others, though, if only for a bit of stylistic diversity. There have been some over the years, namely one called A1 (or A #1) Comics. But they have almost uniformly been terrible, especially A1 (which seemed genuinely annoyed when someone, anyone, decided to spend money there). Our only other options are bookstores that either carry a lot (national chains like Barnes & Noble) or some (a used bookstore called Title Wave) comics, but it’s rarely a focus. It’d be nice to have something that’s aimed a bit more at readers of comics rather than collectors, because I feel like that could attract a different type of customer. But all in all, I consider myself lucky to have BOSCO’S in my life.

I was born and raised in Anchorage, though, and I’ve been shopping at BOSCO’S since I was probably five or six. The 1990s were a blast there. BOSCO’S was essential to my fandom, whether that was because they allowed me to just sit on the floor and read comics from the stands when I was young (yes I was one of those kids) or because they put together events that made me feel like I was part of a proper comic community. A standout was when they had a celebration of life for Superman after he “died” back in the early 1990s. I went to it and even walked in the, god help me, kazoo powered parade celebrating the character that went throughout the mall. It was a lasting memory in a very good way.

Probably the coolest non-comic shop specific thing we have going in Alaska is my buddy, comic artist Tadd Galusha, puts on a monthly event called Panel Breaks, where aspiring artists and creators join him to talk comics, learn about what it takes to make them, and draw/work together. They occasionally have guests too, including writer/artist Tony Fleecs stopping by last year when he was up here for Arctic Comic Con, and it’s a really cool way to encourage all kinds of creators to get out and meet other comic people. I don’t go that often, but I really appreciate that Tadd does it. It’s very cool!

All in all, though, I think Anchorage is a great place to be a comic fan. It’s no Portland or New York or Austin or whatever, and I’m sure it could be better in any number of ways. But it’s good enough at what it does to inspire me to do what I do. It’s hard to argue that everything we have going on here hasn’t moved the needle for me in a real way.

Is there a genre you enjoy in one medium but either dislike or avoid in another? Such as, I love horror comics, especially Tynion’s stuff, but can’t deal with them as video games or certain films. – Jack Mayo

This comes up later, and it’s not really a genre, but I love basketball as a sport but do not like it in video game form pretty much at all. Besides that, genres translate pretty consistently for me. I love horror movies and games, and I love horror comics. Sci-fi, yep. Comedies, for sure. Dramas, yes, absolutely. Romance, why not. Really, it all comes down to execution for me, so if the execution is there, then I’m all about it.

That said, I thought of one as I typed that out. Sometimes comics try to do musical bits, and frankly, they almost never work for me. I do like a musical film on occasion and do enjoy musical theater from time to time, but we’re talking a 50%+ hit ratio for those and a 5% at best hit ratio in comics. It nearly always feels forced to me. Really, the only time it does work in my mind is when the story features a band, like in Dave Baker and Nicole Goux’s Punk’n Heads. That I support, but very few others.