Marvel has announced that it will hold a retailer conference on Monday, October 1 at the China Club, a 16,000 square foot nightclub located at 268 W. 47th Street in New York City.  Marvel will announce details of the meeting at a press conference scheduled for Wednesday (check ICv2 tomorrow for complete details).  Although Wizard, Dynamic Forces, Diamond Select, and Image will reportedly make presentations to the assembled retailers, several major publishers including DC, Dark Horse, and CrossGen have declined to attend.  Stung by the cancellation of Diamond's Baltimore Retailer Summit (see 'Diamond/Alliance Cancel Retailer Summit'), Marvel has pushed hard to hold some sort of East Coast retailer event as its way of trying to get back to business.  Citing travel difficulties, lack of planning time, and equality of control, the other major comic publishers have declined with varying degrees of bitterness, opening up a major rift in an industry that was hardly collegial in the first place (see 'Dueling Majors').  For an extensive examination of this behind-the-scenes dispute see the article on Comicon Splash page by Charles Brownstein.