Big thanks to everyone who submitted questions, and bigger thanks to everyone who’s stopped in and said a kind word. (Now, where’s my Wikipedia article and book deal?)

Begin Commentary: First of all, if I may toot my own horn, I nailed the “300” logo. Still feel really good about that.

And this is the very first “mailbag”-style comic! I very much enjoyed doing mailbag comics (when the questions were good, or at least usable) because the topic focus provided some challenge. It’s often said that if you put a piece of blank paper in front of someone and say “draw anything” they’ll have no idea what to do at all, and that’s how my comic can feel sometimes. This is also why the “journal” focus is useful in general, because at the very least I have a place to start from.

Anyway, we were talking about the mailbag. I probably was most influenced by Homestar Runner, in particular the Strong Bad emails, but after a while the emails sort of petered out and it was time to move on. Since the end of the mailbag I have to admit I’ve never found a feature that was as much fun as these could be, and I sometimes wonder if I shouldn’t try and bring it back. [December 14, 2011]