Sleigh bells ring are you listening? In the lane, something’s glistening, a beautiful sight, we’re happy tonight, because we’ve got some comic book gift suggestions! That’s right guys and geeks, “The Hench” and “The Fac3” have reunited (and it feels so good!) for the sole purpose of giving all of your crazed souls a nice long list of comic books for everyone on your holiday gift list. This one’s going to be hefty, so make sure to pull out that list of folks you’re giving gifts to this holiday season, compare it with our list of all of this year’s top releases, and give Santa a head’s up on what everyone should be getting. Speaking of “should be getting,” should we be getting this list started? Yes. Yes, we should. Also, speaking for “The Face,” I’m pretty sure you could also get these for us. I’m just saying…

The Monolith
Written and created by Jimmy Palmiotti and Justin Gray
Artwork and Cover by Phil Winslade
Introduction by Jim Steranko
Coloring by Chris Chuckry
Lettering by Nick Napolitano & Phil Balsman
Designed by Bill Tortolini
Edited by Joey Cavalieri & Harvey Richards
Image Comics
Release Date: July 25, 2012
Cover Price: $17.99

It’s odd when DC attempts to ground their weird and exciting fictional universe, full of Kryptonians, Lantern Corps, and Ambush Bugs, in some sort of “˜real’ world. How one defines what’s ‘realistic’ is subjective, of course, and has led to approaches like Batman: Year One and Identity Crisis. As you can see, the typical story involves the same line-up of characters in their same fictional locations. There’s a new direction in The Monolith that writers Jimmy Palmiotti and Justin Gray took. They created a new character, based not-so-loosely on the Jewish legend of The Golem, and the action in the book is smack-dab in the actual New York City (with Depression-era history attached to boot!).

So how does this stack up? It’s got some good qualities and some bad. And how is this an actual DC book and not, say, a Vertigo title? Well, it’s subtle and shows up around the edges, but I’ll get to that in a bit.

During the Dark Horse Presents panel today at San Diego Comic-Con 2011 an icon of the world of comics rose from the audience and took the stage to announced that one of his classic graphic novels will be reissued by Dark Horse Comics.

Red Tide was originally published in 1976 and was Steranko’s attempt at bringing true suspense to the world of comics. Steranko explained: “I realized pretty early on that there was this intensity in film that I never got anywhere else. I had this idea that there is a way to make this form {comics} more suspenseful. That’s one of the reasons I did Red Tide.” He further explained how he took this story outside the normal paneled, word ballooned, and captioned formula of comics and tried to utilize some of what makes regular novels successful at building intensity and suspense with words. He showed in a presentation how he broke his pages into thirds with two images and text.

Archaia Entertainment has announced that it will release an illustrated prose novel, Conspiracy of the Planet of the Apes, this Summer.

Archaia, which is currently publishing a new Planet of the Apes comic book series, will release the 176-page hardcover, its first delving into prose books, on July 25, 2011. The book, which is written by Andrew E.C. Gaska from a story by Gaska, Rich Handley, Christian Berntsen, and Erik Matthews, will recount events that took place off-screen in the classic 1968 film Planet of the Apes.

Click the image here above for the larger, full version of the cover.

This past Saturday, I had the privilege of getting invited to the National, also known as the New York Big Apple Con. Held over 3 days, The National is one of the biggest comic conventions held in in New York City and one of the few that still even resembles what a comic convention use to be: a place that showcases comic books. Braving the rain and wind, I did my best impersonation of Jimmy Olsen and took some pictures of my day at the convention. I hope you enjoy looking at these pictures as much as I enjoyed taking them.