Senator Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut has introduced a bill, 'The Media Marketing Accountability Act of 2001,' which has ramifications for several sectors of the pop culture marketplace.

In an open letter addressed to 'Friends of Magic' and posted on the Wizards of the Coast website, Richard Garfield, the creator of Magic: The Gathering , announced that he is stepping down to concentrate on personal interests.

4 Kids Entertainment, the company that packaged Pokemon for the U.S. market has licensed Yu-Gi-Oh , the anime series/collectible card game that trumped Pokemon in Japan. A 27-episode television series and an accompanying collectible card game were hugely popular in Japan in 1998.

WizKids, the company that invented the 'collectible miniatures game' with Mage Knight is introducing The Black Powder Rebels Chariot , which will haul a Mage Knight figure around the battlefield, freeing that fighter to devote all its activities to combat.

As more products became available in March stores reported positive sales trends to ICv2. In anime, DVDs took five of the ten spots including the first two, which were occupied by high ticket boxed and collector's set editions. Note that the videos in the top ten were all new releases from very popular series, Gundam Wing, Dragonball Z , and Martian Successor Nadesico.

With the marketplace crowded with more and more collectible card games, Precedence has announced two new product initiatives, both of which are clearly inspired by CCGs but have no cards. Precedence was one of the many game companies to enter the CCG arena in the wake of Magic , and now they're attempting to diversify.

GAMA, the Game Manufacturers Association, is in the midst of a dispute about the bylaws of the organization. Currently retailers pay $50 in dues and are able to elect one member to the board of directors. A recent move to change the bylaws to allow more retailer participation was narrowly rejected.

Just as Marvel has moved its bookstore distribution from LPC to Diamond, ICv2 has learned that Dark Horse is moving from Penguin to LPC for its exclusive bookstore distribution. Though no press release has been issued as of yet, we've been told that the switch will take effect on July 27, 2001. With its extensive backlist of comic trade paperback titles (only DC's is bigger) Dark Horse is a comic industry leader in bookstore sales.

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.

Magazine publisher H& S Media has cancelled its monthly 'unofficial' Pokemon magazine, Pojo's Pokemon , which was selling 500,000 copies per month, primarily via newsstand distribution, at the height of the Pocket Monsters craze.