Yes, dears. It’s holiday time. Christmas is in ten days, and Hanukkah in six. And since I know you all were wondering what to get us here at Blog@, we figured we’d give you our lists.

No, seriously, we thought this would be fun to share our wish-lists, the little things that we want and haven’t gotten for ourselves. So I’ll start this all off here with the following:

James Jean Fables Covers. Fables is one of the best series on the stands, with consistently great work by many, many talented artists. But James Jean’s cover work is beyond beautiful. It’s simply magical, blending characters we know and love from hundreds of years of folklore into modern settings that still evoke the timelessness of our cultural myths.

So a collection of Jean’s covers for Fables, in a gorgeous oversize hardcover, is just going to stoke all my desires for James Jean-art tattoos. Except I won’t want to touch it for fear of getting fingerprints on its gorgeous pages. The only reason I don’t own this already is, well, I’m broke. Which leads me to…

The Absolute Sandman, volumes 3 and 4. I’ve got the first two of these, and they are similarly on a shelf where I only touch them when I’ve washed my hands first. I’ve still got the trades for reading copies, but no Sandman junkie’s collection is complete without the whole shebang, complete with extras.

So what do you get for the girl who has everything? The biggest, best collection of her favorite comic ever, the one responsible for her being here for your reading pleasure in the first place.

Phonogram: Rue Britannia. I can’t believe this snuck by me. I picked up Phonogram 2: The Singles Club this week and fell head over heels for a new rock’n'roll fantasy world just enough like mine to make it sweetly compelling. So naturally I need to read this book, find out where it all began, right?

Hellboy. The first trade, though if you want to give me more, I’ll accept gleefully. I’d enjoyed the Hellboy movies, and read an issue or two of B.P.R.D. that I got through a friend, but haven’t gotten around to really delving into the comics.

But after recommendations from Blog@ readers, I picked up Hellboy: The Wild Hunt #1 and was hooked. So now I need to start from the beginning. You understand.

Buffy! I can’t believe I didn’t obsessively follow this back in the day, but it came out my senior year of high school and then I was in college, and, well, busy. Y’know, school and all. And other things besides.

But I’ve been slowly borrowing-and-Netflixing my way through it and I just can’t get enough. It would make my life a whole lot easier (and more enjoyable, and more packed with schoolgirl-giggles and feminist-action-hero sass) if I had all of it, in a pretty box to sit on top of my TV.

If you really loved me, you’d get me Angel and the Buffy comics too.

The Dark Knight DVD. I mean really, who doesn’t. But I have to give this some love because I do in fact like superheroes, despite not reading and writing about many of them, and I adored Heath Ledger’s Joker. In fact, my Twitter response to this movie was, “Heath Ledger is the best actor since Marlon Brando. And he died before we could figure that out.”

You didn’t think you’d get this far without a mention of Local, did you? No, you don’t get away that easily. You get to hear once again that this is the best thing I’ve read all year, comic or otherwise, the best comic I think I’ve read since Sandman (though probably not even a comparison it’s fair to make), and one that everyone should be reading. Plus, the hardcover is big and pretty and packed with all the extras from the comics.

So why don’t I own it yet? Because once again, I’m broke, and I have all the issues (of course). Still, I need the big pretty hardcover version. Need, I tell you. I also need art from Ryan Kelly for my walls. I hear he does commissions…
In all seriousness, I do think commissions and sketches, not to mention comics, make excellent holiday gifts, especially in hard times. Comic shops are some of the last surviving small businesses in a big-box culture, and comic writers and artists need you to vote with your dollars to keep them going. Many of the dollars I’ve spent this season so far have been on art from comic artists, and trades for people who haven’t read a particular series yet. And of course, I got my holiday cards from Monica Gallagher.

Thanks for reading, happy holidays, and don’t forget to share what you want to give and receive this season!

This entry was posted on Monday, December 15th, 2008 at 12:24 pm and is filed under Comic Books, Events, Graphic Novels, Movies, News & Views, Pop Culture. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.