Well, well, well, looks like it’s time again for the biggest shopping day of the year! Time to go fight your way through wall-to-wall crowds at the mall, while stores offer insulting “doorbuster” sales that require you to get up at dark-thirty so they can squeeze another few pennies out of you. And don’t you just love shopping mall parking on the day after Thanksgiving? You know why they call it “Black Friday,” right? Because it’s EEEEVIL.

But I’m here to offer you an alternative: comics! There are lots of comics and comic-related gifts you can find for the comics fan in your life, or for the person who you want to turn on to comics. So we’re going to spend a few weeks looking through our Holiday Gift Bag to find some good presents that won’t require anything more stressful than a trip to your friendly neighborhood comics shop.

Today, let’s start things off with Daytripper by Fábio Moon and Gabriel Bá.

If you’ve read this site for a while, you know that this was my very favorite comic series from last year. It wasn’t available in trade paperback last Christmas, but it is now. And here’s why you should consider gifting it to someone else.

This isn’t a traditional comic story. There are no superheroes or villains, no great battle between good and evil, and the only fights are short, brutal, and generally deadly, just like real life. It’s not really a story about mundane life either — though the main character and everyone he knows are perfectly normal people, there are a few traces of magical realism. It’s definitely not a linear story. We follow our hero from the age of 32 to 21 to 28 to 41 to 11 and older and younger and older. But every chapter ends the same way.

Our hero is a Brazilian named Brás de Oliva Domingos. He’s the son of a famous writer, and he has dreams of becoming a writer himself. For now, he’s employed at a newspaper writing obituaries while working on his own novel. He’s got coworkers, a best friend, a prickly relationship with his father, and everything’s going about the way things do. And at the end, Brás dies.

No, not at the end of the entire story. Brás dies at the end of the first chapter.

And then at the end of the second chapter. And the third.

Brás doesn’t have superpowers. He just seems to die on days that are significant and important to him. The day of his first kiss, the day he meets his wife for the first time, the day his son is born, the day he spends writing obits for dozens of people dead in a plane crash.

You can call it miracles, alternate universes, metaphors, whatever you want. Because the deaths aren’t ultimately any more important than anyone else’s death. We all have death to look forward to, or to dread — we all get to die, from the top 1% to the schmuck at the bottom of the 99% rung.

What’s important is how we get there, right?

And how Brás gets there is what keeps you turning the pages of this story. His life, his family, his friends, his lovers, his trials and triumphs, from the entire stretch of his history, from childhood to old age. I wasn’t able to get enough of this, and I think you’d love it, too.

In a way, I’m still a little surprised it didn’t get more acclaim. It’s pretty much the best comic work that Moon and Bá have done — and both of them have done lots of brilliant work prior to this. The series won an Eisner Award, a Harvey, and an Eagle, and I’ve never heard anyone say a cross word about it. DC never published this as a hardcover, just a regular paperback — and this was definitely good enough for a hardcover. Still, DC’s loss is your gain — you can buy it for less than $20.

Daytripper by Fábio Moon and Gabriel Bá. Go pick it up.

We have time for one more look into our Holiday Gift Bag, full of some of my recommendations for comics fans and people who want to be comic fans. Today, we’re going with an old favorite around here: Marvel’s Essentials and DC’s Showcase Presents.

I’ve recommended these every year, because they’re some of the very best, easiest gifts you can get for someone who loves comics. What are they? These are very thick collections of old comics — usually over 500 pages long, black and white printing, on inexpensive paper. They’re sometimes called “phone books,” ’cause they’re about as thick as a big city phone directory. They sell ‘em for cheap, too — between $15-20 each. Some people complain that the paper’s too cheap, or they want comics in color — but then they couldn’t afford to make these so affordable, and that’s a trade-off you should feel pretty comfortable making.

These collections can be divided between early works, like the first appearances of the Flash, Thor, the Justice League, or Spider-Man, and rarities that haven’t previously been collected because they’re not in high demand, like “Howard the Duck,” “Batgirl,” “Killraven,” or “The Metal Men.” There’s a huge variety of comics offered this way — superhero comics, war comics, Westerns, horror, sci-fi, fantasy, and more. You get major characters and minor characters, and some of the greatest artists and writers in comics history.

The economy is still weaker’n spit, and lots of folks are on the lookout for gifts that won’t cost ’em an arm and a leg. These are perfect for that — they’re amazingly affordable, and they’re stuffed full of enough comics to keep any comics fan happily reading for weeks. And you don’t even have to get these on special order — most comics shops and large bookstores are going to have a ton of these on hand, so you can stop in, shell out a little cash, and walk off with an easy last-minute stocking stuffer. The comics fan on your list gets some classic stories they’d never get to read otherwise, and you get a nice little break for your pocketbook, too.

Marvel’s Essentials and DC’s Showcase Presents. Go pick some up.

And hey, looking for some of my older recommendations? Just click on the button down at the bottom of this post that says “Holiday Gift Bag” — it’ll take you to all of my previous posts on this subject.

More gift recommendations for the holidays? Wow, you guys sure are demanding. Okay, fine, here’s another one, just for you: Nextwave by Warren Ellis and Stuart Immonen!

I love this comic book so very, very much. It was originally published by Marvel in a 12-issue miniseries in 2006-07, and is now available in two trade paperbacks or a much more awesome Ultimate Collection.

The backstory: Nextwave is a team of superheroes working for H.A.T.E. (Highest Anti-Terrorism Effort) and charged with battling a number of Unusual Weapons of Mass Destruction, like Fin Fang Foom, the Mindless Ones, and the Ultra Samurai Battle Drone. But H.A.T.E. isn’t really what it seems to be — in fact, H.A.T.E. is actually funded by the Beyond Corporation, which used to be known as S.I.L.E.N.T., a large terrorist group, and the entire purpose of H.A.T.E. is to create more Unusual Weapons of Mass Destruction. Nextwave isn’t real happy about this, so they steal a flying machine called the Shockwave Rider and go on the run, pursued by the frequently suicidal Dirk Anger, Director of H.A.T.E, and his hordes of minions, like the broccoli men, the attack koalas, the Homicide Crabs, and Forbush Man.

If this sounds completely insane, you catch on quick.

The members of Nextwave include:

• Monica Rambeau: Formerly known as Captain Marvel, Photon, and Pulsar. Former Avenger. Straight-arrow leader of the team. Can convert her body into any form of electromagnetic energy.
• Aaron Stack: Formerly known as Machine Man. Has extendo-limbs and all kinds of entertainingly pointy weapons he can extend from his body. Hates the fleshy ones. His robot brain needs beer.
• Elsa Bloodstone: Formerly known as Elsa Bloodstone. Monster hunter. Handy with a gun. Handy with pretty much any weapon, really. Vehemently British. Has high-heeled boots and very important hair.
• Tabitha Smith: Formerly known as Time Bomb, Boomer, Boom Boom, and Meltdown. Former member of X-Force. Possesses the mutant powers of blowing things up and stealing all your stuff. Not the smartest cookie in the cookie jar.
• The Captain: Formerly known as Captain Power, Captain Ron, Captain L. Ron, Captain Universe, Captain Ultra, Captain Avenger, Captain Avalon, Captain Marvel, Captain Kerosene, and Captain @#*!, a name so foul that it caused Captain America himself to beat him up, jam a bar of soap in his mouth, and throw him in a dumpster. Totally generic superstrength-and-flight powers. Really kinda sucks at superhero stuff.

Ladies and gentlemen, this is the most awesome comic in history. Yes, I know I’ve said that a lot and will probably say it again, but I mean it this time. This is the most awesome comic in history.

This is not just because of all the explosions. This is not just because of Dirk Anger and his mad rants. This is not just because of Dread Rorkannu, Lord of the Dank Dimension, who likes cash and the SuicideGirls. This is not just because the team beats up a cop. This is a series that includes everything from naked ninjas to Wolverine monkeys to dancing Mindless Ones to the funniest guest appearance from Fin Fang Foom ever.

It has fight scenes like this:

Yes, those really are Elvis MODOKs. Yes, they really are shooting cheeseburgers at superheroes. Yes, Warren Ellis is a mad genius.

The Ultimate Collection will run you about $35. That’s a bit high, maybe, but anyone who loves awesome comics will definitely thank you for shelling out the extra bucks.

Nextwave by Warren Ellis and Stuart Immonen. Go pick it up.

Man, I still got stuff I want to recommend for your gift list, and time’s starting to get short. So today, let’s look at the infinite awesome that is Supergirl: Cosmic Adventures in the 8th Grade by Landry Q. Walker and Eric Jones.

You may remember I reviewed the individual issues of this series when it originally came out in 2008-09. I loved it then, and if you didn’t get a chance to read it then, it’s definitely worth the bucks to pick up the trade paperback.

What we’ve got here is an all-ages comic starring the best version of Supergirl ever. She’s still Superman’s cousin (this time from a part of Krypton that got zapped into another dimension when the planet exploded), but this time she’s a gangly, awkward pre-teen with a lot of enthusiasm and imagination, almost as much self-doubt, a poor grasp of her powers, and an even-worse grasp of life on Planet Earth.

Superman doesn’t really know what to do with her, so he gives her a secret identity and enrolls her in junior high. And she, like almost all junior high students, doesn’t like junior high at all. It doesn’t help that she’s the class freak — always asking weird questions about everyday life based on what she knows from futuristic Krypton — but she soon acquires a rival who’s really her much more popular imperfect clone, as well as a best friend who could turn out to be her worst enemy.

Author Landry Q. Walker and artist Eric Jones really turned out a brilliant comic book with this one. The art is whimsical, emotional, and frequently madcap — the writing matches it, maybe even goes beyond. Supergirl’s character is just plain fantastic — charismatic, goofy, awkward in that way that only teenagers can be — and when things get tough, she’s as likely to turn to her wildly creative imagination — often to her daydreams of herself as the hyper-competent and beloved “Moon Supergirl” — as she is to use her superpowers.

I think this would make a great gift for younger readers, both male and female — but it’d be especially appreciated by girls. Supergirl is a lot of fun — she’s frustrated by all the pointless junior high nonsense she has to put up with, but she also wants to be loved and adored by everyone — she reminds me of several girls I knew when I was close to that age. She’s got tons of moxie (Do the kids today still say “moxie”? Actually, did any kids every say “moxie”?) and charisma, and for all her clumsiness, she makes a great role model.

And the great thing about a lot of all-ages comics nowadays is that they’re often very accessible to adult readers, too. This comic is no exception — the dialogue is smart, the characterizations are excellent, the humor is entirely wonderful.

The book is available for about $13, and I’d recommend it for kids and adults — tons of humor, tons of excellent stories, tons of Kryptonite-powered awesomeness.

Supergirl: Cosmic Adventures in the 8th Grade by Landry Q. Walker and Eric Jones. Go pick it up.

It’s always a little tempting to limit my gift recommendations here to books that will appeal to current comics fans. But it’s also good to point out some comics that lots of comics readers already have, but new readers might not — after all, the best way to improve the health of the comics industry is to bring in a few new readers, right? So if you’ve got a new comics reader on your gift list, you might consider introducing them to The Sandman.

Sandman is the comics masterwork of Neil Gaiman. He started it back in 1989, with a revolving stable of artists, plus Dave McKean taking care of, as far as I can recall, every single one of the covers. It started off as a horror series and quickly drifted into fantasy.

Our main character (though he wasn’t present in every issue and was sometimes present only as a minor side character) was the Sandman — also known as Morpheus, the King of Stories, or Dream. He’s a pale, grim, morose, mostly unemotional guy with a very big job — he is, for lack of a better term, the god of story-telling and the ruler of the dreamworld. Many of the stories are set in modern times, but there are many flashbacks to other periods in history and even a few flash-sideways to other, stranger worlds.

Morpheus is part of a small family called the Endless — cosmically powerful, they far surpass your average god, but they’re even more dysfunctional than any mundane family. His siblings include devious Desire, pitiful Despair, loopy Delirium, somber Destiny, the absent Destruction, and sensible, loveable Death. Morpheus meets more than his fair share of guest stars during the series, including William Shakespeare, Emperor Norton, Marco Polo, Augustus Caesar, Cain and Abel, and even a few superheroes.

There are comics out there that are more highly regarded — “Watchmen,” “The Dark Knight Returns,” and others — but this is a series I go back and re-read much more often than those. The richness of the storytelling, the emotional pull of the plotlines, the feverish glow of pure, glorious imagination — all make the Sandman stories something amazing and unique.

These are also very definitely comics for grownups. There’s some nudity, some cussin’, some sex, plenty of violence, and, as they say, adult themes a-plenty. There may be kids out there that can handle this stuff just fine — and at the same time, there may be adults out there who’ll completely freak out about it. I’ll expect y’all to know the difference when you’re handing out these gifts, okay? But I know for a fact that lots and lots of readers think this series is transcendently awesome.

I spent years aware of Sandman, but unwilling to shell out the dough to read ’em. I finally figured, what the hey, I’ll grab the first volume and see how I like it. And I liked it a lot. I think I ended up getting all the rest of the ten volumes after just two or three months. That ended up being pretty expensive, but I’ve never once regretted buying them and reading them.

Like I said, this is available in trade paperbacks in ten different volumes — getting the whole series can get a bit pricey, so you may want to start out with the first collection, “Preludes and Nocturnes.” It’s a great beginning to one of the greatest comic book series ever.

The Sandman by Neil Gaiman. Go pick it up.

I’ve got some more gift recommendations for you. Not quite a comics recommendation this time — you may remember a few weeks back when I pointed out Ed Emberley’s drawing books for younger artists-to-be? Well, think of this as some art books for slightly older kids — Jay Stephens’ drawing books.

Stephens put these out a few years back — titled Heroes!, Monsters!, and Robots! Each one is exactly what it sounds like — instructions and inspirations for drawing superheroes, monsters, and robots in Jay Stephens’ signature style.

So who’s Jay Stephens anyway? If y’all are at all familiar with Cartoon Network, you may have seen a show he did there called “The Secret Saturdays,” with a strong retro-heroic feel to it and a very obvious influence from the classic “Jonny Quest” cartoons. The art here has a lot of that same style to it. It’s not especially realistic art, but it’s a lot of fun to look at.

There are a few step-by-step guides to drawing some specific characters, but the most of these books are devoted to showing young artists how to draw the elements of their characters — a page focusing on how to draw a head, then how to draw different kinds of eyes, noses, mouths, ears, how to draw legs and arms, etc.

And throughout all this, Stephens keeps asking his young readers “What kind of nose will your hero have?”  “How will your robot get around?”  “Will your monster have fingers or claws or tentacles or something else?” In other words, he gets kids to use their imaginations, and to try to think of ways to create their own characters, not just copy the ones in the books.

When it comes down to specifics, Stephens demonstrates how he draws individual characters, always describing what he’s doing with simple shapes — a fist made of rectangles, hair made of zigzags, chainmail armor made of dozens of tiny circles. It’s a nice method to encourage budding artists — it shows them that drawing may look complicated, but it can be boiled down to making simple shapes that fit together in interesting ways.

Having said that, it may not be a good book for complete beginners — Stephens draws with the expectation that the kids reading along have at least a basic understanding of things like perspective, shading, coloring, and general anatomy. That can be pretty difficult for amateurs and even some intermediate artists, but this book does give them many of the tools they may need — as long as they’ve got some other art books to flesh out those concepts and techniques.

Got a kid on your shopping list who enjoys art, superheroes, monsters, and robots? I know, I know, what kid doesn’t, right? Well, get these books for them — it’ll give ’em a few drawing tips and give ’em a lot of exercise of their imaginations. Robots! is only available in hardcover and runs about $12 or less. Heroes! and Monsters! are both in softcover, and they’ve got a price tag of only six bucks.

Heroes!, Monsters!, and Robots! by Jay Stephens. Go pick ’em up.

EDIT: Wanna see more of Stephens’ work? Check out “Oh, Brother!“, the comic he does with Bob Weber, Jr. It’s full of more great examples of Stephens’ art in a traditional gag comic strip. Great stuff…

Well, what’ve we got here? Looks like it’s the biggest shopping day of the year, and you can look forward to fighting your way through a few thousand people at the malls and the discount stores, wearing the soles off your shoes walking through jam-packed parking lots, and hitting your fellow shoppers with purses and warhammers and car fenders and walruses and whatnot!

“Oh, help me!” I hear you cry. “Help me, Comic Book Blogger Guy! Help me find the perfect gift for family! Also, where did I park my car?”

Well, sounds to me like it’s time to kick off this year’s “Holiday Gift Bag” series — over the next few weeks, I’m going to offer you some ideas and recommendations for holiday gifts you can give the comics fan in your life. So if you’re tired of getting crushed and pushed around at the mall, head on over to your friendly neighborhood comic shop instead!

We’re going to start out with Richard Stark’s Parker: The Outfit, adapted and illustrated by Darwyn Cooke.

You may remember I’ve already reviewed the first volume of this series, “Parker: The Hunter,” and even reviewed the pre-release preview, “The Man with the Getaway Face.” Well, this is finally the second book in Cooke’s “Parker” series, and it’s heckuva good.

To sum things up, this is superstar artist Darwyn Cooke’s adaptation of the “Parker” hardboiled crime novels by Donald Westlake (writing as Richard Stark). Our lead character is a guy named Parker, who is a criminal who specializes in pulling heists. He’s a mostly unsympathetic guy — cold, grim, unsmiling, merciless. He doesn’t like to kill people, but he’ll do it if he has to, and he won’t even feel bad about it.

After getting plastic surgery to disguise his appearance, Parker’s living the easy life, but a disgruntled associate has clued the Mob in on where to find him. After taking care of that loose end, Parker ain’t happy about it. He’s tired of the Mob breathing down his neck, and he wants to do two things — take out the syndicate leader who’s got it in for him, and hurt the Mob in their pocketbook so they’ll know to lay off him. So after telling a bunch of his heist-artist pals that they should start robbing some Mob-owned businesses, he sets his sights on Bronson, the head of the East Coast syndicate.

This book is just a beautiful piece of craftsmanship. Ain’t nothing like the thrill of opening a book and finding that it’s all put together with black ink and blue ink on creamy off-white paper. You won’t have to hide this in your back office with all the ratty comic TPBs — this needs to go in the bookshelf at the front of the house, with all the fancy books you want to use to impress people.

If you love hard-boiled crime fiction, this was made for you. Parker’s a hard, mean customer, and I’d guesstimate there are eight different heists pulled off in just 150 pages. That’s a lot of crime, boyo. I also loved the great mix of characters — besides Parker, you’ve got charismatic jokester Grofeld, doomed weasel Skim, Monopoly-hating crime boss Bronson, cheery hooker-turned-motel-owner Madge, thrill-seeking Bett Harlow, and bunches more, some never named. This is good stuff all the way through.

If you’re familiar with Cooke’s art, you know you’re getting good stuff — a lot of influence from the more noir-based Warner Bros. animation, with his own unique twists on the formula. Lots and lots of period detail for the ’60s. Cooke loves the ’50s and ’60s, and he loves period details both small and large. You’ll come out of this feeling like you just read a comic created in the ’60s.

Possibly the coolest part of this book is the section where we learn about all the independent crooks who’ve started knocking over Mob operations — each heist is told in a different format. The first with a pure text tale seemingly ripped out of a sleazy true-crime magazine, another in a simple gag-cartoon style, another looking like it came straight out of an economics text book. It gives Cooke lots of opportunities to show off his artistic and cartooning chops, and it’s way entertaining for the reader besides.

“Richard Stark’s Parker: The Outfit” by Richard Stark and Darwyn Cooke. It’s just 25 bucks. Go pick it up.

Time for one more look into our gift recommendations for comics fans and people who want to be comic fans. Today, we’re going with an old favorite around here…

Let’s talk about Marvel’s Essentials and DC’s Showcase Presents. I’ve recommended these every single year, because they’re some of the very best, easiest gifts you can get for someone who loves comics. What are they? These are very thick collections of old comics — usually over 500 pages long, black and white printing, on inexpensive paper. They sell ’em for cheap, too — between $15-20 each. That’s cheaper’n spit, man, especially for huge books like these.

These collections can be divided between early works, like the first appearances of Green Lantern, the Avengers, the Legion of Super-Heroes, or Spider-Man, and rarities that haven’t previously been collected because they’re not in high demand, like “Moon Knight,” “The Creeper,” “Dazzler,” or “Dial H for Hero.” There’s a huge variety of comics offered this way — superhero comics, war comics, Westerns, horror, sci-fi, fantasy, and more. You get major characters and minor characters, and some of the greatest artists and writers in comics history.

The economy is still pretty rotten, and lots of folks need to be able to get good gifts for not a lot of money. These are perfect for that — they’re amazingly affordable, and they’re stuffed full of enough comics to keep any fan reading along for weeks. You don’t even have to get these on special order — most comics shops and large bookstores are going to have a ton of these on hand, so you can stop in, shell out a little cash, and walk off with an easy last-minute stocking stuffer. The comics fan on your list gets some classic stories they’d never get to read otherwise, and you get a nice little break for your pocketbook, too.

Marvel’s Essentials and DC’s Showcase Presents. Go pick some up.

I know I’ve got a fair number of readers who aren’t that familiar with comics, and they may be wondering what they could buy their comics-reading friends and family for holiday gifts. OR they may be looking for a good comic that they can read themselves. Let’s take another look into the gift recommendations…

Today, we’re talking Yotsuba&! by Kiyohiko Azuma. As you might guess from the artwork, this is a Japanese comic book — what is usually called manga (as opposed to anime, which is a Japanese animated cartoon). You’re probably wondering about that funky “&!” at the end of the title — think of it as shorthand for “Yotsuba and (something)!” as every episode of this story is about Yotsuba discovering something and getting excited about it.

Yotsuba is our main character in this one. She’s a six-year-old girl living in a new city with her adopted father, Koiwai. Yotsuba is fantastically enthusiastic and energetic about everything. She loves to draw, even though she’s not very good at it. She loves to swim, even though no one else she knows is very good at it. She loves cicadas, frogs, flowers, fireworks, farms, and festivals. She’s fascinated by all the things you were fascinated with when you were six, if only you could remember what they all were.

Her friends include the family next door, the Ayeses, who are generally bewildered by Yotsuba, but more than willing to be dragged along with her antics and adventures. And there’s Jumbo, her dad’s best friend, who is just a shade under seven feet tall. None of them are as adorably loony as Yotsuba, but they’re all pretty completely cracked.

This is a slice-of-life comedy series. There are no giant robots, tentacle monsters, no evil diaries, no demons, no orange-clad ninja twerps. There’s just Yotsuba and her friends being adorable and awesome. I find something to laugh out loud at in every book, something to smile about in every chapter, and something that’s wonderfully fun on every page. I know, I know, the cynical thing to do is to say it’s just silly kid stuff. But there are no cynics when it comes to this book — I don’t know anyone who hasn’t read it who doesn’t end up loving it.

There are seven or eight volumes of this book out on the shelves now, but here are the first three to get you started. Each one will only cost you about $10, and these days, that’s just ridiculously affordable. If you get it, remember that to Western readers, Japanese manga reads backwards — you start out reading the back of the book and move on to the front, and the panels are meant to be read from right to left, instead of left to right. It can be a little confusing at first, but it’s easy to get adjusted.

Yotsuba&! by Kiyohiko Azuma. Go pick it up.

Another edition of “Holiday Gift Bag” already? Yeah, I’m running a bit behind, so I decided to pick up the pace a little to get some more gift recommendations done. Today, we’re going to look at Champions Online.

This is going to be a bit of an unusual recommendation for me, because I don’t own this game and haven’t played it. My computer is old enough that it probably wouldn’t be able to run it. Plus, I’ve still got my ongoing addiction of rival superhero MMO “City of Heroes,” and haven’t bought any new computer games in years.

Nevertheless, Champions Online looks pretty good. Like I said, it’s a superhero MMORPG — in fact, it was developed by Cryptic Studios, which originally designed “City of Heroes.” In the game, you play a superhero or a supervillain taking on a wide variety of opponents in Millennium City or other locations, including the Stronghold superprison, the undersea Lemuria City, the icy-cold Burial Butte, Canada, Monster Island, Snake Gulch, and more.

Because this is a superhero game, a lot of work has been done to create cool powers. Unlike “City of Heroes” — and actually, most other games — Champions doesn’t have character classes or archetypes. Any character can take any power they want and customize it almost any way they want.

One of Champions’ spotlight features is the custom nemesis. At a certain point in your superhero/villain career, you’ll be able to create your very own archnemesis, who will periodically ambush you, leave clues to new schemes, and generally serve as the Joker to your Batman, the Sabretooth to your Wolverine, the Doctor Bong to your Howard the Duck…

Longtime players of the Champions pen-and-paper roleplaying game will probably recognize some characters who will show up as NPCs, allies, or enemies, including Defender, Ironclad, Sapphire, Menton, Grond, Armadillo, Doctor Destroyer, and even Foxbat. Yes, Foxbat! Everyone loves Foxbat!

Because Champions Online is an MMO, there is going to be a monthly $15 subscription rate to play the game on top of the cost of the game itself. That fifteen bucks isn’t a whole lot, but keep it in mind if you’re buying the game as a gift — you’ll want to make sure your gift recipient can afford to keep playing the game if they enjoy it.

Champions Online. Go pick it up.