Welcome to the Geeks of Doom Holiday Geek Gift Guide 2011: Art Prints edition!

With the popularity of Geek-related art prints on the rise, now’s the time to jump on board and get your hands on some art related to your favorite movie, tv, comics, or video game series.

Be sure to continue on below now to check out the 2011 Art Print guide now!

Marvel has been releasing preview images this week to announce the next big story for one of their flagship titles, Fantastic Four, and specifically the return the of currently left-for-dead Human Torch.

The images started on Monday with a simple “4” over a picture of the Earth, possibly signally a return of the original line up. We got a bit of a change up with Tuesday’s image, which showed the current team, complete with Spider-Man, in their Future Foundation uniforms. Wednesday brought us the big one though, with a big beautiful image of the original team, complete with Johnny Storm. Wednesday’s teaser was drawn by Marvel Chief Creative Officer Joe Quesada. The only words in the announcement were a simple “Coming November 2011.”

A few years ago, you couldn’t go into a bookstore without running into an aisle of kids in the manga section, and odds are, they were reading a series published by TokyoPop. Unfortunately, the last few years have not been kind to the company, and TokyoPop has announced this week that they are closing their North American publishing division as of May 31, 2011. They will maintain their film and television operations, as well as their European offices. The news was first reported on The Beat and the Anime News Network and then TokyoPop CEO and founder Stu Levy also confirmed the move on the company’s webpage.

TokyoPop was one of the major publishers of manga boom of the early and mid 2000s. Over its lifetime, the company has released hundreds of volumes of manga, video game and anime soundtracks, magazines, and DVDs. Even more surprising is the timing of the move, as it comes just before the release of the first film produced by TokyoPop, Priest. Priest is based on a Korean Manhwa by Min-Woo Hyung, and was released in the U.S. by TokyoPop, and is reaching the big screen on May 13th, and stars Paul Bettany. Apparently, even the potential money the movie could have made would not have been able to change this decision.

We’re well into the first month of DC Comics new initiative to lower (or maintain) prices across the board on all of their regular monthly titles without sacrificing the quality of stories [Read DC Comics Drops Price On Comics To $2.99].

But in addition to sharing the $2.99 price point, most regular titles have something else in common: white backgrounds.

Not only does it make the artwork “pop,” but it dominated the new comics wall at my local shop, causing me to consider picking up a few new titles to my mostly Marvel hold file.

If you want to see what I mean, check out the thumbnails embedded below courtesy of DC’s official blog The Source. Also, let us know which new titles you added this month from DC in our comments section.

A new film based on the comic book super-hero Black Panther is in development by Marvel Studios.

Black Panther is the alter identity of T’Challa, king of the African nation of Wakanda, who made his debut in Fantastic Four #52 and later starred in a solo title that is credited as being the first to feature a black super-hero as the lead.

Marvel has tapped documentary film maker Mark Bailey to pen the new movie, which may give some sort of indication about the overall tone we’re likely to see on the big screen.

One notable element present in Black Panther comics has been the ability for the fictitious African nation to juggle its political relationships with other countries who would like trade deals of Wakanda’s most valuable resource — a nearly indestructible metal called Vibranium. It would be interesting to see a District 9-style telling of Black Panther as opposed to the standard super-hero movie that has become all too common in the last decade.