It’s the night before the night before Christmas, which, if I did my math right, makes tomorrow Christmas Eve. Comics shipped as per usual, so as long as your local comic shop isn’t closing early for the holiday, there should be a batch of new books waiting for you tomorrow.

Next week the holiday will get around to messing with the schedule, and new books won’t be buy-able until Friday. So you might want to buy twice as much as usual tomorrow to tide you over; I’m sure your local shop owner will be glad you did.

Here’s some of what you’ll have to choose from…

American Flagg! Vol. 1: Image Comics offers the first seven issues of Howard Chaykin’s seminal creation in this 200-page, $19.99 trade paperback collection.

Army of Darkness: Ash’s Christmas Horror: Writer James Kuhoric and pencil artist Dave Simons teach S-Mart’s most famous employee that there are some fates even worse than working retail during Christmas shopping season: Like the Necronomicon’s idea of holiday spirit(s). This oversized $4.99, 32-page one-shot will be in comics shops a whole 24 hours before the holiday it’s tying into.

Farscape #1: The solicitation for this issue ends with the words “Don’t frelling miss this!” Now I know where that word comes from; I thought it was maybe from Firefly. Anyway, Farscape creator Rockne O’Bannon pulls a Joss Whedon and continues his TV show in comic book form, with the help of Boom Studios. This is the first issue of a four-part series written by O’Bannon and Keith DeCandido and featuring at by Tommy Patterson, picking up “right where the Peacekeepr Wars left off.” If you know what that means, then you’re probably going to want to check this out.

Lillian The Legend: The true story of Lillian Alling, a Russian immigrant who arrives on Ellis Island in the 1920s and then decides to return home, by walking to the Yukon territory and attempting to sail across the Bering Strait, has already been told in fiction and non-fiction. Now it gets the graphic novel treatment, via Kerry Byrne and Conundrum Press.

Mister X: Condemned #1: Dean Motter’s original ‘80s stylized comic about a character who never sleeps in a would-be utopia he himself helped create recently returned in the form of a 380-page archive collection. Tomorrow Motter and Mister X are back with the first issue of a new four-part miniseries from Dark Horse. Three-page preview here.

New Avengers #48: Artist Billy Tan joins Brian Michael Bendis to reveal the new, post-Secret Invasion line-up of the New Avengers team. I believe this makes them the New New New Avengers. And what about the Mighty Avengers? For $3.99, Dan Slott and Khoi Pham will give you an eight-page “important stepping stone to the big shake-up in Mighty Avengers…featuring a new name and identity for one of Marvel’s classic characters!” in a book entitled Secret Invasion: Requiem. The rest of the book will be filled out with re-colored reprints of Tales to Astonish #44 and Avengers #213, the first Wasp story and the “infamous Hank-hitting-Jan story,” respectively.

No Enemy But Peace: Here’s an Iraq War comic with a twist, it’s written by a Sergeant Richard C. Meyer and is being billed as “the first comic produced by Iraq War veterans about the war itself. ” Along with artist Martin Montiel Luna, Meyer tells the real-life story of Sergeant Marco Martinez. More info and a preview can be found here.

No Hero #1: Warren Ellis reunites with his Black Summer collaborator Juan Jose Ryp for a new seven-part Avatar Press series. This Ellis character sure writes an awful lot of books, doesn’t he?

Ultimates 3: Weird. According to Marvel.com, this hardcover collection is called Sex, Lies & DVD, but the Diamond shipping list refers to it as Who Killed Scarlet Witch. Well, whatever you call it, this $25 hardcover collects all five issues of Jeph Loeb and Joe Madureira’s post-Millar/Hitch Ultimates miniseries. You know, the one that nobody liked.

Vigilante #1: Sadly, this isn’t a new series starring the original, singing cowboy with a motorcycle version of Viglante. Rather, it’s a Nightwing spin-off starring the new iteration of the character that appeared in Nightwing during Marv Wolfman’s year-long run on the title. Wolfman’s writing the series, Rick Leonardi’s on art chores and there’s a cover by Walt Simonson. It might be cheesy fun, given that the solicitation copy seems to have come from the back of the box for a VHS tape of a late-’80s action movie. Check it out: “Through the corruption and lawlessness, one man emerges to right the wrongs as only he can. So when a Super Hero conspiracy plot is brought to light, the Vigilante returns to find the traitor and mete out his own brand of justice – with extreme prejudice! ”

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