Diamond Book Distributors announced the hiring of Doug White as a Sales Manager. White comes to Diamond from Holtzbrinck Publishers, the company that markets Wizards of the Coast's role-playing games and books to the traditional bookstores.

Ground Zero is a two-store multi-category pop culture retailer in Mobile, Alabama that carries comics, games, DVDs, magazines, miniatures, some toys, and some board games.

Retailer Ilan Strasser of Fat Moose Comics & Games in Whippany, New Jersey sent us this comment on his feelings about the year since the 9-11 attacks.

Alan Vu opened his 1000 square foot store Animax in Memphis in 1997. Specializing in anime, Animax has become a fixture in a city better known for blues and barbecue. We talked to Vu about how he handles this biggest of anime properties.

Two other game companies have also reduced staff recently. Interactive Imagination has gone through a 'restructuring,' and, living up to its name, Cheapass Games has laid off its sales and marketing staff,...

Wizards of the Coast has eliminated 60 employees as part of a company-wide reorganization. While t he layoffs are quite wide-spread (ranging from senior VPs to game designers with considerable experience including Jeff Grubb and J.D. Wiker), the number of positions eliminated represents only 6% of WOTC's approximately 1000 employees.

In its first two weeks of release the MechWarrior: Dark Age Collectible Miniatures Game has sold more than 500,000 Booster Packs and 100,000 Starter Sets .

Gutsoon! Entertainment, the U.S. sister company to the Japan-based Coamix Group, has signed a distribution agreement with Diamond Comic Distributors. Diamond will distribute the weekly manga anthology Raijin , Gutsoon's flagship publishing property as well as Fujin , the weekly update on anime and videogames.

Louis Porter, Jr. based his role-playing game, Haven: City of Violence, on contemporary crime comics like Frank Miller's Sin City and James O'Barr's The Crow , as well as on the Hong Kong action films of John Woo.

Outpost 2000 is a pop culture store that specializes in both comic and games, located in Minneapolis suburb Brooklyn Park. ICv2 talked with Outpost 2000's Jeff Prentiss about the store's highly successful in-store gaming program.