This article contains a chart showing the top 300 comic titles ordered from Diamond North America based on Diamond's reported title indexes and external title data, and interpolation of the remaining numbers.

New accounting rules, big dot-com write-offs, and a slowing ad sales market couldn't stop Viacom, Disney, and MGM from posting impressive financial results under what should be considered trying conditions. Is entertainment countercyclical?

As more products became available in March stores reported positive sales trends to ICv2. In anime, DVDs took five of the ten spots including the first two, which were occupied by high ticket boxed and collector's set editions. Note that the videos in the top ten were all new releases from very popular series, Gundam Wing, Dragonball Z , and Martian Successor Nadesico.

This is a message from GAMA President Rick Loomis to the GAMA membership explaining the results on the recent vote regarding full member voting for retailer members. We reprint it here to provide background for the dispute and the direction the organization is taking to attempt to resolve it.

At today's Marvel news conference, Marvel President Bill Jemas announced the renewal of Marvel's agreement with Diamond Comic Distributors to continue Diamond's exclusive distribution of Marvel titles in the direct market. In addition, the two companies agreed that Diamond would also represent Marvel's trade paperbacks in the traditional bookstore marketplace.

Marvel's 2000 Annual Report is now available, and there's information on a number of key issues for pop culture retailers , among them the importance of direct sales to pop culture stores to Marvel's publishing operations and business as a whole. Marvel's direct sales are critical to its publishing, but publishing remains a small part of the overall picture for Marvel since it was folded into Toy Biz 1998.

List of the many makers of POTA merchandise in conjunction with the Tim Burton movie.

Not every retailer has the same opportunity to succeed with 'kids comics' as the three profiled in this story, but many can utilize at least some of the stratagems employed so effectively by these storeowners. One theme that is consistent with all three retailers is that they provide one area of their store as an enclave for younger readers.

Since 1990, newsstand sales of the hundred top selling magazines in the U.S. have declined by 40%. Certainly the proliferation of new titles is partially responsible for the decline in the sales of individual magazines, but doesn't completely explain the fact that the average sell-through for all magazines has plummeted to just 36%.

Orders for the top comics took an upward tick in April, reflecting the typical seasonal direction now that the doldrums of first quarter are behind us. Ultimate X-Men #5 even came in above 100,000 in estimated comic store orders, the only title to do so in the last two months.

This article contains a chart showing the top 300 comic titles ordered from Diamond North America based on Diamond's reported title indexes and external title data, and interpolation of the remaining numbers.

Company profile for Bandai Entertainment, Inc., manufacturer of popular Japanese anime videos and DVDs.