Ask Chris

Q: What Halloween-y monster fits into the second-most different narrative roles, behind Dracula? -- @crookedknight A: First things first, you are right to put Dracula at the top of the list. I've been through this before, but for anyone just joining us who hasn't heard me go through it for five or six hours, Dracula is the best. He's been around long enough and often enough that everyone pretty much knows what his deal is just from hearing the name, and you can drop him into any story in virtually any role. He can be a villain, an uneasy ally, a shadowy figure manipulating things from behind the scenes, and even, occasionally, a globetrotting protagonist battling things even worse than he is. He can be bloodthirsty fiend, sophisticated devil, reluctant hero, or all of the above. But given all that, it there's one choice for the spooky silver medal that seems so obvious that I was surprised I got this question. It has to be Frankenstein. Right?

Q: What's the best Halloween story starring a superhero that doesn't really fit Halloween? -- @krinsbez A: As much as the two genres have been historically opposed to each other, there are an awful lot of superheroes that have pretty strong ties to horror. Characters like Batman, for example, have spookiness built right into the concept from the very beginning, right down to the devil-horns and the dark cape, whih are meant to terrorize a superstitious, cowardly lot of criminals. But when you get further away from horror elements, when you look at the characters that are rooted in sci-fi or pure superheroics, and you drop them into a spooky story, then you can get a pretty great story just on the virtue of taking someone out of their element. So turn down the lights and let's talk about Halloween in the Fortress of Solitude.

Q: Are there any superheroes who can't be improved by making them also a werewolf? -- @daveexmachina A: My friends, I am being 100% real with you when I say that questions like this are exactly why I started writing this column in the first place. So let's see here. If you go back and look at my work over the past ten years, it's probably going to be pretty clear that when it comes to your classic Halloween monsters, werewolves don't really do much for me. I am and will always be a Dracula man, but I can't deny that throwing in some extra hair, a couple of claws, and an uncontrollable monthly blood lust is something that could make pretty much any character in comics a whole lot more interesting. Which, now that I think of it, is probably why it's actually happened way more than you might remember.

Q: What do you think are the ingredients of a successful evil-opposite type villain? -- @Rheiret A: If you've been reading the things I write about comics for a while, then you probably already know that on the list of plot elements that I'm a complete sucker for, Evil Opposites are right near the top. I love 'em almost every time they show up, and one of the big reasons why is that there actually aren't a whole lot of ingredients. They're one of the simplest concepts to introduce, sometimes to the point of just straight up flipping around the colors on the good guy's outfit and then having them declare loudly and often that they really, really hate the hero. It's that simple, and when it's done right, it can also be one of the most effective ways to introduce a long-running arch-nemesis.

Q: Why do people feel a need to keep inventing new love interests for pretty much every major superhero? -- @krinsbez A: I'm not saying that I am a person who has no OTPs --- ever since I was a kid, I've felt pretty strongly about Peter Parker and Mary Jane, or Superman and Lois, or Batman and the very concept of justice --- but I'm also not opposed to creating a new love interest for an established character. I mean, there are definitely cases where it's done poorly and where a new character is introduced at the expense of one that already exists, but that's not a problem with significant others so much as it is with new characters in general --- the same thing happens to villains whenever new Bigger Bads show up and prove how dangerous they are by thrashing an existing bad guy. But really, I'm not sure the question should be why the creation of a new love interest happens as often as it does. It a lot more surprising that it doesn't happen more often.

Q: What in the world is so great about Achewood? I've tried it a couple times , and it's always seemed average at best. -- @DylanJBurnett A: Believe it or not, Dylan, there was a time when I was just like you. Much as I love it now, Chris Onstad's Achewood didn't click with me the first time I read it, or the second. Or the third or fourth, for that matter, and every time one of my friends would respond to a joke about Airwolf or the Smiths with a link to the strip, I'd wonder why anyone liked this comic about the weird dog running around in his underwear. Then one day it just clicked. It might have been when I finally realized that Ray was a cat who was running around in his underwear, and it might've been when I finally sat down to read a complete story, but it all fell into place, and I came away firmly standing behind the idea that The Great Outdoor Fight is the single best comic of the 21st century.

Q: How do you feel about Superman: The Animated Series? A faithful adaptation that distills the Superman mythos the same way as Batman: TAS? -- @Trilby64 A: Superman: The Animated Series is great, which is one of the reasons that it's so weird that nobody ever really talks about how great it is. Even here at ComicsAlliance, when I was looking for things to dive into for an in-depth episode guide, it never even came up for consideration --- but to be honest, a lot of that was because there's not a whole lot to make fun of in that series. It synthesized one of the best versions of Superman ever brought to any medium, and it did it with an incredible style that was well done on pretty much every level. There's just one big problem: It's not Batman.

Q: Someone asked me this one, so now you have to do it: who, in your "head" "canon," do you consider to be the necessary members of the Bat-family? - Benito Cereno, via Tumblr A: Finally! I've been waiting for like five years for someone to ask me a question that would allow me to go into a needlessly in-depth explanation of how some part of Batman worked, and now, after all these years, it has happened for the very first time. As for this particular question, it's an interesting one, and if you'd like to see Benito's answer to it, it's up on his Tumblr. If you do go look at the list, though, you'll see the problem in trying to answer it. After 75 years of collecting sidekicks, butlers, teammates and assorted hangers-on, Batman has a whole lot of people in his extended family. And if I had my way, I'd keep 'em all.

Q: Do you think it's possible for the Legion of Super-Heroes to work today, or are the trappings too corny? -- @jdkrach A: My first instinct on this one is to say yes, and not just because the Legion was, for a long time, one of my absolute favorite comics. The entire superhero genre is, after all, full of corny ideas that have become timeless, right down to the fact that the entire thing is built around the idea of a very nice man who came from space and fools everyone into thinking that he's a very nice man from Kansas by wearing a pair of glasses. But the Legion represents an entirely different question. It's not just the optimism of a bright future and names like "Lightning Lad" that can come off as corny, it's the entire universe that allowed them to exist in the first place --- and for a team that's been rebooted more times than just about anyone else, they sure do seem to have a hard time keeping up.

Q: Why does Jimmy Olsen work so well as Superman's Pal when Snapper Carr doesn't work as the Justice League's? -- @luckyrevenant A: I honestly hadn't considered it until I saw this question, but the more I think about it, the more I realize that you're right. Snapper Carr, the finger-snapping teenage mascot of the Justice League from back when it actually wasn't that unusual for the Justice League to have things like teenage mascots, really is the direct descendant of Jimmy Olsen --- at least from a character standpoint. They fill that same role, the kid who gets to hang out with all your favorite superheroes so that you too can imagine yourself hanging with Batman and Superman. And yet, while Jimmy ranks at #3 in my illustrious and immutable list of the greatest comic book characters of all time, Snapper is one of the most ignored and forgotten characters of the entire Silver Age.