The current issue of Time Magazine online contains a review by Andrew D. Arnold of the latest issue of American Splendor published by Dark Horse.

In an interview with ICv2, a spokesperson for the CMAA was very surprised to hear about Marvel's talk of pulling out of the association, especially since all the publishers had agreed to a meeting on Thursday, May 11th

ICv2 has obtained a photograph of the Deluxe Collector's Edition of the Akira DVD. The simple, but elegant design features the Japanese characters for the title scrawled over the English title. The vibrant red color and the dynamism of the rendering of the Japanese characters demonstrates how the art of calligraphy allows the artist to express emotion.

The 'Harvey' awards, named in honor of famed creator Harvey Kurtzman, have found a new home at the Pittsburgh Comicon. This year's awards were fairly evenly distributed with artist Chris Ware gaining the most recognition with three awards including 'Best Continuing Series' for Acme Library.

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.

AIA, a new game company, is preparing an Akira videogame for the Sony Playstation 2. The Akira game will be out in August, just a few weeks after the release of the remastered Akira video and DVD. Other Akira merchandise includes the McFarlane Toys second series of Anime toys, shipping in September, and the Dark Horse manga series.

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.

At today's Marvel news conference, Marvel President Bill Jemas announced the renewal of Marvel's agreement with Diamond Comic Distributors to continue Diamond's exclusive distribution of Marvel titles in the direct market. In addition, the two companies agreed that Diamond would also represent Marvel's trade paperbacks in the traditional bookstore marketplace.

The latest word from Pioneer about the release of the newly remastered Akira on DVD and VHS concerns the collector's edition of the DVD, which will come in a super cool collector's tin. Only 75,000 tins will be produced. After they are gone, Pioneer will go back to conventional jewel box packaging.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer , the most critically acclaimed show on the WB network, will be heading to archrival UPN next fall. Buffy is important to specialty retailers since the show represents one of the strongest TV licenses of the past five years