Today’s a banner day: It marks the seventh anniversary of SKTCHD 2.0’s arrival.

For those that don’t know, SKTCHD 2.0 is the second era for the site, and it launched on May 13th, 2019 which found it adopting a subscription model to hopefully make it sustainable. So far, so good, as SKTCHD has only grown since then, especially when I went full-time with the site and its podcast Off Panel in July of 2025. 1 It’s been a long journey, one filled with a whole lot of writing, interviews, podcasts, and beyond, as the site has continued to evolve 2 as the world has. It’s also resulted in an Eisner Award nomination and a frankly astonishing number of folks subscribing to the site, which means the world to me.

But for newer subscribers and potential ones alike, there’s years of material that’s never been read from the back issue bins of SKTCHD. While everyone gets a weekly reminder of what I’m publishing thanks to the email newsletter for the site, it can be difficult to build awareness in pieces from the past outside my recurring From the Archives spot in said emails. That’s why in honor of this grand anniversary, I thought it’d be a good time to create a highlight reel of some of my favorite and most read/listened to pieces from this era of SKTCHD. If you’re new here, or you’re considering a subscription, this is a great place to start. Heck, even if you’re a veteran, there’s still a lot to discover, and I suspect there’s something for every type of comic fan here.

But before we do, I just wanted to say once again how thankful I am for your support. SKTCHD and Off Panel are, again, my full-time jobs these days. It was a surprising turn but ultimately a welcome one, and it’s only possible because so many of you value my work enough to support it. So, from the bottom of my heart, thank you. And if you’re not subscribed, now’s a good time to get onboard. You can learn more about subscribing right here, but this article — the one you’re reading right now — is open to non-subscribers.

So, without further ado, let’s get to the good stuff, and by that, I mean the best, brightest, and most read and most listened to pieces and podcasts from the seven years of this era for the site.

The Ten Most Read Articles (In No Particular Order)

• “The Funniest Jokes to Me are the Ones I Can’t Explain”: Beetle Moses, the Cartoonist, Talks Beetle Moses, the Webcomic
• “Pizza With All the X-Tras”: The Story Behind the X-Men x Pizza Hut Promotion, 30 Years Later
• “I Find it Fascinating to Have Your Work Live Somewhere New”: Maria Nguyen on the Station Eleven Graphic Novel
• “We Were Growing Something There”: An Oral History of Annihilation and the Resurrection of Marvel Cosmic
• The Design of Absolute DC: Nick Dragotta on Building a Bigger (and Maybe Better) Batman
• Solve Everything: An Oral History of 2015’s Secret Wars and How It Came to Be
• “Completely Great, a Total Pain in the Ass, and Everything In-Between”: Retailers Discuss a Year of Change in Comic Shops
• The Contest of Champions: Which Marvel Comic Won the Year for Every Year of My Life?
• “I Wanted Invincible to Go On Forever”: Robert Kirkman on 20 Years of Invincible
• DC vs. Marvel isn’t Close Right Now

Oral Histories and Retrospectives

• Living in the Shadow of Nextwave: A Look at the Making and Magic of a Comic Book Cult Classic
• Empathy, Footnotes and Family: The Story Behind The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl, Before It Ends
• “The World’s Greatest Heroes! The World’s Greatest Comics!”: How Wednesday Comics Went from a Wild Idea to an All-Time Great
• The Story of Comic Twart and the Power of Finding Your Community
• “Just Do Your Thing”: The Story Behind the Making of Marvel’s Strange Tales Anthologies
• The Story Behind the Perfect Modern Superhero, 25 Years Later
• Marvel Style: A Mini Oral History of 2015’s Secret Wars Tie-In, Infinity Gauntlet
• Long Live the Dream – An Oral History of the Five Years Later Era for the Legion of Super-Heroes
• So Long, Kaijumax, and Thanks for All the Megafauna
• How Jane Foster Became The Mighty Thor
• The Story Behind Top 10, From the Artists Who Helped Define It
• “The Worst Day in Avengers History”: The Story Behind Avengers Disassembled, From Two of Its Architects
• “It Kind of Changed My Life”: The Story of Bone’s Time in Disney Adventures, From the People Who Made It Happen
• “Stilt-Man is Pure Comics”: An Ode to Marvel’s Largest Adult Son, 60 Years into His Reign

Business-y Business Articles

• The Quiet Giant: On Comics and Libraries, and What’s Driving the Growth of this Potent Combination
• On the Power and Potency of Crowdfunding, Both Today and Tomorrow
• “This was a Wake-up Call”: Creators on How 2020 Has Shifted Their Approach to Comics
• Comics Marketing is Dead. Long Live Comics Marketing.
• Finding a New Path – A look at the changing shape of what it means to be a comic creator
• The Age of the Limited Series is Here
• Variant Covers and the Infinite Game
• The Format Boom is On
• Are Micro Lines Proving That Less Can Sometimes Be More?
• The Numbers Game
• “It’s Wildly Unpredictable”: Creators on Navigating an Uncertain Time for Non-Licensed Comics
• So, Your Comic Has Become a Speculator Hit

Giant Interviews

• “Work Smart, Not Hard”: Nic Klein on the Art of Thor
• “I Want to Make Comics Better”: James Tynion IV Discusses His Approach to Comics + His Career
• “I’m Still Trying to Get Better”: Mike Del Mundo on Ten Plus Years of Creating Iconic Covers
• “A Good Balance is Necessary”: Álvaro Martinez Bueno on the Horror and Humanity of The Nice House on the Lake
• The Comics That Made Them with Chip Zdarsky
• “I’m Not Looking for Limits”: Bruno Redondo on the Art of Nightwing
• “This is Where I Want My Style to Go”: Chris Samnee on the Art and Experience of Jonna and the Unpossible Monsters
• On Panel: Joshua Williamson and Kieron Gillen on the Ways of the Event Comic
• “It Was Exactly What I Needed”: Marcos Martín Talks the Art and Process of Friday
• “This is a Very Rare Thing”: Peow’s Patrick Crotty on Designing Those Glorious Scott Pilgrim 20th Anniversary Box Sets
• “It Really is Formulating an Adaptation”: VIZ Editor Holly Fisher on Bringing Manga to Life in English
• “I’ve Made the Right Deals with the Right Demons”: Artist Evan Cagle on Bringing The New Gods to Life
• The Moment with Brian Michael Bendis

Personal Favorites

• Revisitor: The Comfort Food Glory of Hellboy’s “Pancakes”
• The Substance of Style
• The Artist’s Artist – A Profile of Artist Julian Totino Tedesco
• Revisitor: On the World’s Most Perfect Comic, Kate Beaton’s “Nemesis”
• The Art of the Page Turn
• I went to France for a vacation. It was like going to a different world for comics.
• The Power Rangers Artist Tree
• Paradise Found – A look inside Lake Como Comic Art Festival
• “The Classic Ten-Year Overnight Success”: On Peach Momoko’s Long Journey to the Top
• Taking the (Shonen) Jump
• On Alaska Robotics Mini-Con, the Biggest Little Comics Convention Around, and the “Comics Adventure” That Comes With It
• Comic Strips are So Back

Oddball Delights

• Fandom Is: On the Broken, Inescapable Nature of Fandom
• Comics as Memes: An Exploration of the Potent Memeability of Comics
• The Real Story Behind Comic Publisher Names
• The Art of Solicitations
• Bringing Dirtbag Rapture to Life
• Value Over Replacement Batman
• Witness Me! – A look at the life of a CGC witness
• The Immediacy Index
• Krakoa Fashion Week: On the Art and Design of the Latest Hellfire Gala
• “The Way You Read Them Evolves”: Creators on How Making Comics Changes the Experience of Reading Comics
• The Comic Character Name Matrix

The Ten Most Listened to Episodes of Off Panel (In No Particular Order) 3

• Trust the Process with Jonathan Hickman
• The Sound of Comics with Grant Morrison
• The Destination with Brian K. Vaughan
• The Energy with Brian Michael Bendis
• Committed to Beef with Jonathan Hickman
• The Third Dimension with Tom King
• …And Scene with Kieron Gillen
• The Game with James Tynion IV
• Go Big or Go Home with Scott Snyder
• The Box with Jonathan Hickman

My Favorite Episodes of Off Panel (From Memory, and Just Don’t Tell Anyone I Said This)

• Getting Started as an Artist with Jen Bartel
• Quarantime of Our Lives with Brandon Burpee
• Hockey Shit with Ngozi Ukazu
• Welcome to Boneville with Jeff Smith
• Quite Frankly with Frank Quitely
• Hopeful Cynicism with Si Spurrier/Playing the Hits with Si Spurrier 4
• Speed(ball) Run with Graeme McMillan
• Easy Button with Kelly Sue DeConnick
• Bankers Hours’ with John Allison
• Doubles Tennis with David Brothers and Nick Dragotta