P. Margolin of Compleat Comics on Maui, Hawaii, was prompted by Marvell COO Bill Jemas' recent open letter to retailers and Marvel's handling of its next Must Haves to send us this comment.

Dark Horse Comics announced its comic series based on the rock band Kiss at last year's San Diego Comicon without a lot of fanfare. After all, Image's Kiss: The Psycho Circus comic had sort of just faded away and expectations for Dark Horse's book were not very high. Well a year later, Gene Simmons, the tongue-wielding bassist and driving force behind Kiss licensing, will be back at San Diego, and he will be touting Dark Horse's number one comic for July.

Chris Pollichemi of Altered States Game and Hobby in Syracuse, New York has a different slant on the Yu-Gi-Oh shortage in hobby stores. He feels Upper Deck is making the right moves, but doesn't think much of the game, or some of its purchasers.

Yu-Gi-Oh is a hot topic with retailers because they can see that this CCG could be a top seller in the hobby if only enough product were available. Gail Burt of Metropolis Comics contrasts M:TG with Pokemon and has some advice for Upper Deck if they want to make Yu-Gi-Oh a perennial seller.

An ICv2 release. ICv2, with the support of sponsors Dark Horse Comics and Diamond Comic Distributors, is launching its 'Better Than Ever' promotion,

Subway Restaurants, in conjunction with the Cartoon Network and DC Comics, is launching a Justice League promotion this week.

The Spider-Man film has continued its stellar performance at the box office, posting all-time record grosses of $11 million on Monday and $10 million on Tuesday

Marvel's recent announcement of exclusive deals with Joseph Michael Stracynski (JMS) and Kevin Smith could be seen as a response to DC Comics forging similarly exclusive deals with Brian Azzarello, Warren Ellis, and Mike Carey.

The Topps Company has trading cards for three of the top movie projects for 2002, Spider-Man , Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones , and Lord of the Rings: The Two To wers.

We took a look at the archives of Internal Correspondence , the print predecessor of ICv2, for the stories that were dominating the pop culture products industry fifteen years ago.