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.

Palisades Marketing announced on Friday that the company has obtained a license to create a thirty-fifth anniversary set of Star Trek six-inch action figures of Captain James T. Kirk and series creator Gene Roddenberry.

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 ').

Max Allen Collins and Richard Piers-Rayner's graphic novel The Road to Perdition never received the attention it deserved in the comic market, but it did raise eyebrows in Hollywood, where this depression-era saga of a hitman's revenge has been developed into a starring vehicle for Tom Hanks.

Today only a surprisingly small percentage of pop culture retailers make much of an effort to sell apparel in their stores, but those that do often enjoy remarkable success. Here's the first in a series of examinations of the methods of retailers who have had great success in selling apparel items.

Orson Welles' audacious first film, Citizen Kane , has often been voted the greatest film of all time, a deserved, though highly arguable distinction -- but there is no arguing the crucial importance of Welles' film on the history of American comic books.

Ain't It Cool News is reporting that a highly placed source at Warner Bros. has indicated that Neil Gaiman will be directing as well as writing the screen adaptation of his Sandman mini-series, Death: The High Cost of Living .

The 'Comics' and 'Toy' categories got very competitive in May with the successful debut of Marvel's revamped X-Men titles and the release of new Simpsons and Tomb Raider toys.

On October 16, Lucasfilm Ltd. and Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment will release the DVD edition of Star Wars: Episode 1 -- The Phantom Menace.

The movie is boffo and the mass market is rocking, but an unscientific survey of some twenty retailers from coast to coast indicates that sales of Shrek toys and trading cards are only 'OK' in pop culture stores.