In a lengthy article in the Los Angeles Times , staff writer Bob Baker talked with director Kevin Smith about his new film Jersey Girl , which represents a radical departure from Smith's low budget past.

Ron Catapano of Comics Plus in Mount Holly, New Jersey sent us this comment on the scheduling of the Ultimate Daredevil/Elektra trade paperback.

Kenny Penman of Forbidden Planet International in the UK saw the ICv2 2002 Toy Awards, strongly disagreed with our choice of DC Direct as Toy Company of the Year, and offers this impassioned response.

Free Comic Book Day is back on May 3 and it is going to be bigger and better than ever--just one day after the debut of X-Men 2, several thousand comic stores will give away millions of comic books.

We spoke to Gemstone Publishing owner Steve Geppi about his acquisition of the Disney license and his plans for the future in this two-part interview.

The Toy Industry Association has nominated WizKids LLC for the Marketing Campaign of the Year Award based on the campaign for its science fiction collectible miniatures game, MechWarrior: Dark Age .

In a weak finish to a strong year, initial December dollar orders on comics and graphic novels from comic stores to Diamond U.S. were down 7% vs. a strong 2001, with comics down 6% and graphic novels down 13% vs. the year-ago periods.

At the kickoff of the 2002 holiday season, we talked to distributors that sell to pop culture stores in four major categories -- toys, games, anime, and comics/graphic novels.

The Spider-Man video has broken all records for opening weekends in theaters or in stores by generating over $200 million in its release weekend.

Stan Tychinski of Collectible Dreams in Selinsgrove, Pa. has been watching the recent dialogue on in our Talk Back section on Marvel and wanted to send us a positive story about the lengths to which a creator went to make a difference in his store.