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.

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.

It must be close to the trading deadline, because Beau Smith's highly touted 'free agency' only lasted one weekend.

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.

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 ').

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.

Crossgen, the Florida-based comic publisher, announced the signing of artist Karl Moline, who is currently penciling Joss Whedon's Fray.

The first Buffy CCG release, which will be designed using episodes from the first two seasons of the award winning series, will debut late in 2001.

Peter Kuper's Speechless was reviewed in the all-important Sunday Book Review Section of the New York Times on June 24. Elissa Lin Meyers gave Speechless a short but very positive review in the 'Books in Brief' section of the Book Review .

Paramount's Lara Croft: Tomb Raider buried the competition with a strong $48.2 million opening weekend.