The accidental early shipment of New Thunderbolts last week let the cat out of the bag, and some fans had already deduced the big surprise after reading the last issue Amazing Spider-Man (#332), but the New York Post was the first news organization to break the story that Marvel's Spider-Man had revealed the identity of his alter ego (Peter Parker) in issue #2 of Civil War.  At Marvel's Press Conference on Thursday afternoon ostensibly set up to discuss two new tie-in mini-series Civil War: Young Avengers & Runaways and Civil War: X-Men, executive editor Tom Brevoort, who's in charge of riding herd on the various facets of Marvel's Civil War, couldn't help but discuss how his phone and email were going crazy with requests from MSNBC, the BBC, CNN, the New York Times, E-Entertainment, and countless other media organizations.  In the wake of the Post story and the release of Civil War #2 the story of Spider-Man revealing his identity was the number one topic on Yahoo, and easily one of the biggest comic book-related news stories of the year.

But what's happening where the rubber meets the road, in the only venue where all this publicity really matters, the comic book shop?  Based on a quick and unscientific poll of local comic shops conducted by ICv2, Civil War is selling very well indeed.