These are estimates of the sales by Diamond U.S. to comic specialty stores during June 2003.

Bernie 'Burn' Sterner of Hermkes Roman-Boutique (Comic and Fantasy Bookstore) in Wurzburg, Germany saw Rich (Dreamland) Biedrzycki's comments on the scale of the Harry Potter phenomenon and issued this rejoinder.

ICv2 has received multiple reports of the X-Men 2 movie adaptation trade paperback being released to bookstores before reaching comic stores serviced by Diamond.

William James Cuffe of All the Fun Stuff in Katy, Texas saw the news of the new Marvel terms and sent in this overview of Marvel's recent history.

Batman continued its rise for the fourth consecutive issue, with the Jeph Loeb/Jim Lee creative team powering sell-outs in comic shops.

Bookseller T.W. Adair of Barnes and Noble Lincoln Triangle in New York City prefers X-Men 2 as the anchor event for FCBD 2003, but also sees potential for The Hulk .

Initial raw orders to Diamond US from pop culture stores were lower on 16 of the top 25 titles in May than they were in April . Six titles were up, and three were new. Of the six that were up, two were Spider-Man and two were Batman titles.

Marvel has announced final details of its May Insert program, which will encompass every comic the publisher will release that month to sample the additional readers that are expected to pick up comics as a result of the Spider-Man movie.

Both the top-selling comic and the top-selling graphic novel ordered by pop culture retailers for April are for properties initially popular in the US in the 1980s.

DC's Dark Knight Strikes Again was the top-selling comic for the third consecutive month, according to orders placed with Diamond US from pop culture stores. The initial raw order was over 171,000 copies, which was around 10% over initial orders on #2, and nearly as high as the initial orders on #1.