On the eve of the U.S.'s largest comic festival, with some 50,000 fans and industry types set to descend on San Diego for Comic-Con International this coming weekend, the L.A. Times published a lengthy feature article by Glenn Gaslin.

Universal will release the soundtrack album from Kevin Smith's Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back on August 7th. The film itself, which tells the story of two hapless smalltime pot dealers, who become the heroes of an independent comic book that provides the basis for a big-budget movie, will debut on August 22nd.

Dark Horse Comics announced that it has secured American and European distribution rights to two new high-end collectible figures based on characters from the highly popular Lone Wolf & Cub manga series.

Stephen S. 'Beau' Smith a familiar face (and voice) to pop culture retailers is leaving Todd McFarlane Productions/McFarlane Toys after serving in a number of capacities over the past eight years.

Art Asylum unveiled its collection of four action figures from the multiple Academy Award-winning film Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon .

ICv2 has learned that Dark Horse Comics has just acquired the license to publish the entire 23-volume Astro Boy manga series, which was published in Japan as Tetsuwan Atomu (literally ' Mighty Atom ').

For Part II of our series on successful retailing of apparel in pop culture stores, ICv2 talked with Warp II of Edmonton, Alberta.

With two weeks left until Tim Burton's refashioning of Planet of the Apes opens, ICv2 conducted an unscientific survey on the sales of POTA merchandise by contacting some twenty retailers from coast to coast.

There is no doubt that manga's influence on American comics appears to be growing. Witness two stories that appeared on Newsarama this week. Michael Doran broke the story of Marvel's plan for an eight-title Marvel ' Mangaverse ' event planned for January, 2002, while Matt Brady detailed plans at DC Comics to use manga artist Kia Asamiya (Silent Moebius, Dark Angel) for a series of Titans covers.

The July issue of Diamond Previews includes a shared exclusive (with the Electronics Boutique chain) of Radioactive Man and Fallout Boy figures from the comic-savvy Simpsons TV series (and, of course the Bongo Comics series).