chris brown is clearly deranged

Doctor Doom's Weekly Top Ten: "Lefty Brown was nothing if not predictable. Witness his Wednesday's Top Ten, now made to fit my purposes. Behold, Doctor Doom's Top Ten! ... #4. Demo Even Doctor Doom requires entertainment, and those peasants Brian Wood and Becky Cloonan have produced an amazing series. Once I have taken over the world and AiT/Planet Lar, they will be forced to continue to create Demo, beyond its 12 issue finite life. This Doom Commands!

There's a port on a western bay and it serves a hundred ships a day; lonely sailors pass the time away and talk about their homes

Steve Pheley writes up a little sumpthin-sumpthin on Proof of Concept in his blog gutterninja: "It's a fun book, and the variety of story bits within means that just about anybody is likely to find something they like."

Which is usually just the opposite anyone ever says about anthology books, so we've got that going for us.

Chestnuts roasting on an open fire; Jack Frost nipping at your nose

It's that time of year, again, and everyone asks me what I want for the holidays. While I appreciate the sentiment, all I want for the holidays is for you to buy AiT/Planet Lar books and give them to your friends.

Here at AiT/Planet Lar, our motto is "Making Comics Better." So if your mom needs a new garden hose or your dad is wanting an ink cartridge for his Parker Duofold International, you should probably get them one of those for a gift. But if the folks on your gift-list are readers, we have just the thing for holiday treats:

If you're shopping for kids or an all-ages kind of reader, you can't go wrong with the ethereal fairy-tale/love story of Ursula, the scrappy misadventures of Electric Girl, the if-Harry-Potter-was-a-girl adventures of Jax Epoch and the Quicken Forbidden, or the alternate-dimension what-if-the-Spainairds-never-left-America brouhaha that is Colonia.

If you're shopping for an action-adventure fan or even for Jerry Bruckheimer himself, you can't go wrong with the if-Captain-Kirk-was-drunk shenanigans of Switchblade Honey, or the giant robot action of Giant Robot Warriors. If you thought Armageddon would be the second-best movie ever made if Redford and Hoffman wore spacesuits in All The President's Men, then the Astronauts in Trouble series is for you. If you like MTV and Grand Theft Auto, you can't go wrong with The Couriers volumes one, two, and three. If you like MTV and Grand Theft Auto but also know who Noam Chomsky is, you should check out Channel Zero and Channel Zero: Jennie One.

Superhero fans would love the skewering of capes-convention with Planet of the Capes or the Twilight Zone-esque treatment of "other" in Wizard Magazine's "Indy of the Year" Demo or the everyman drama played out in Hench.

Students of the form of comics would benefit from a copy of Warren Ellis' observations in Come in Alone, the self-publishing self-help in True Facts, or even the design peek into Channel Zero that Public Domain provides.

Your uncle who likes Band of Brothers would probably dig White Death and Badlands, too, you know.

And that's just scratching the surface. Feel free to surf around on the "Worthwhile Reading" pull-down, and go to your local store armed with order codes or to your favorite online emporium and finish your shopping in one stop. Happy Holidays!

They were rushing down that freeway, messed around and got lost

Christopher Reid from How Not To Draw Manga name-checks the Scurv in Newsarama's Holiday Gift Guide II.

...and let's hope you didn't miss King of All Comics Kieron Dwyer grabbing you by the ears and yelling Merry Christmas at you.