Stan Lee will make a guest appearance on the Home Shopping Network this coming Monday, April 23rd at 11:00 PM (Eastern Time). Dynamic Forces is presenting a 'Marvel 40th Anniversary' program, and highlighting forty years of Marvel art with a series of lithographs. Stan will be signing lithographs during the show.

Broccoli Co. Ltd, the second largest distributor of anime and game merchandise in Japan has invested in California-based Digital Manga. Established in 1994, Broccoli opened its first character goods store 'Gamers' in 1996. Currently Broccoli operates 13 retail stores in Japan, and is the second largest retail chain specializing in anime.

Manga Entertainment has confirmed to ICv2 that the versions of the two Evangelion movies that it will release in November will not be edited specially for the U.S. market. AD Vision had cut out some scenes from its Evangelion releases, but Manga maintains that they will be able to present the Japanese versions in their entirety and still keep a '13+' rating.

Sovereign Stone , a fantasy-roleplaying world created by artist Larry Elmore and fleshed out fictionally by the best-selling novelists Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman, is abandoning its current game-playing system in favor of the d20 system, which has been made available to third party creators by Wizards of the Coast.

Canadian card manufacturer Dart Flipcards has landed the license for Shrek, the computer-generated animated comedy from Dreamworks featuring the vocal talents of Mike Meyers, Eddie Murphy, Cameron Diaz and John Lithgow.

Pojo's Pokemon magazine will soon cease monthly publication. Although sources had earlier told ICv2 that the April issue would be the last, the May issue is currently on newsstands, and the June issue, which will be on the stands in early May, will be the last regular monthly issue.

Inkworks has completed its trifecta of summer movie projects by adding Jurassic Park 3 to its stable, which already included two of the season's most anticipated films, The Mummy Returns and Tomb Raider. The Jurassic Park cards will be produced using a new process.

Retailers who have carried Mark Crilley's series of Akiko novels have repeatedly told ICv2 that this is one series of children's books that really sells.

An article by David Kirkpatrick in today's New York Times states that '...the heyday of online book sales has apparently ended.' This observation is based on reports from on-line giant Amazon.com, which sells four times as many books as its nearest on-line competitor.

Ken Tucker reviewed J. Michael Stracynski's first issue of Spider-Man ( Amazing Spider-Man #30) in the April 20th issue of Entertainment Weekly , on newsstands this week. The review, which leads off the 'Books Section' (page 66) is quite favorable and includes a sample panel of art from John Romita, Jr.

The Consumer Electronics Association estimates that manufacturers intend to ship a total of 17 million players to retail establishments in the U.S. this year, which means that the number of DVD players in the U.S could double by the start of 2002.

As ICv2 has reported previously, sales of magazines through the newsstand distribution channel have been declining for the past decade. Now Advertising Age has published an Audit Bureau of Circulation survey of the paid circulation of the top 200 magazines showing more stable circulations over the past six months--only five of the top ten magazines showed declines.