Strong month-over-month trends as well as the anecdotal evidence from retailers are confirmed by an 8% year-over-year improvement between November 2000 and November 2001 dollar orders to Diamond North America from pop culture stores.

Comic and graphic novel orders were up month-to-month again in November, continuing a strong second half for North American comic sales with the largest dollar orders of the year to date.

Hasbro announced its third quarter earnings this week, and the news was better than expected. On sales that were down to $893 million from $1.1 billion a year ago, the company earned $50.6 million, compared to $13.8 million in 2000.

Diamond Comics VP Operations Cindy Fournier has announced that new comic release day will remain Wednesday for the foreseeable future.

When asked by ICv2 about Diamond's proposed change of the comic delivery date from Wednesday to Thursday, Marvel President Bill Jemas replied forthrightly, 'We don't like it.'

The second printing of 150,000 books will be identical to the first printing with the exception of a 'second printing' notation in the indicia.

Neil Gaiman took part in today's Marvel press conference, at which Editor-in-chief Joe Quesada announced that Marvel would publish a six-issue mini-series written by Gaiman.

San Francisco-based publisher AiT/Planet Lar has signed an exclusive book distribution deal with the LPC group, which already represents Dark Horse, Image, Tokyopop, Oni, and Comics One.

Diamond Comic Distributors' comic market share figures for September show DC closing the gap between it and leader Marvel by about 4% of share when reorders and other shipment impacts are included.

The new printing of Heroes--Marvel's hit September 11 tribute/benefit book -- will be available from Diamond Comic Distributors on October 26th. That means most retailers can expect restocks with their regular comic shipments on October 31st.