Marvel President Bill Jemas' defense of his no overprint policy has fed the continuing discussion over the future of the comics business.

While the toy industry, and in particular the action figure category had a terrible year in the mass market in 2000, the segment that targets the adult collector market continued to grow.

Pop culture content sites are in the news as we write this, so we're taking the opportunity to do an update on the category.

Joe Sacco, whose Safe Area Gorazde has received excellent press recently drew four new pages of his special brand of comic reportage for the issue of Time Magazine that is out today -- March 5, 2001. The pages depict Sacco's return to the Middle East for the first time since the 1990s.

Our article last week on comic orders for March ('Top Comics Below 100,000') provoked a lot of reactions -- in fact, the most reactions of any article we've published since we launched a month ago.

A first look at the ICv2 Top Ten Cool lists for January shows a return to more traditional buying patterns after the holiday season. This trend has been reinforced by a change in the Top Ten Cool format here at ICV2.

In a statement released Friday, March 2nd, Marvel President Bill Jemas has reinforced Marvel's decision not to over-print its periodical comics, c alling the past policy of 10-20% overprints, '...a desperate, shortsighted effort to squeeze every last dollar out of every last book.'

In an analysis of March orders to Diamond from comic stores, we've discovered what has long been talked about in general terms -- just how far comic sales have fallen from their once lofty heights.

Fantagraphics Books has announced that the Ghost World film, based on the Daniel Clowes graphic novel, will be released in June, somewhat later than previously announced.

This article contains a chart showing the top 200 comic titles by quantity ordered, based on Diamond's reported index numbers, actual orders obtained from non-Diamond sources, and interpolation of the remaining numbers.