Here are a few of the tidbits from presentations of major comic publishers at the Diamond/Alliance Retailer Summit held in Las Vegas last week.

When Diamond and Alliance opened the floor for questions from retailers during a luncheon event at the Retailer Summit in Las Vegas this week, it only took a few minutes before the topic of Diamond's proposed change to a Thursday release day for new comic shipments was raised, and once it was raised little else was discussed for the remainder of the Q&A session.

On October 15, David Bogart will join the staff at Marvel Comics as a Managing Editor. Maureen McTigue will assume Bogart's position as Editor-in-Chief of Harris Comics.

Marvel Comics is preparing trade paperback collections of the G.I. Joe and Transformers comics that it published in the 1980s, and Dark Horse will reprint the Star Wars comics that Marvel published in the 1970s and 80s.

At Diamond Comic Distributor's Las Vegas Retailer Summit, Marvel Editor-in-Chief Joe Quesada announced that the publisher was going to reprint the hugely popular Origin #1 before the entire series is collected in a trade paperback

For the first time this month, we've applied our analysis methodology to calculating the initial orders to Diamond U.S. for graphic novels ordered for shipment in October 2001.

MGM has announced that two titles of interest to pop culture retailers will be released on DVD on January 4, 2002 -- The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai and Mad Max .

Comic orders were up again in October, kicking off the fourth quarter with the best dollar month this year to date. Total dollars for October were up over 11% compared to September, which was an unusually strong month when compared to normal seasonal trends.

In Part III of this far-ranging interview, the person in charge of DC's business operation talks about its option to buy Diamond, the public dialogue with Marvel, circulation estimates, media tie-ins, the prospect for radical change at DC, and DC's growing toy and statue business.

In Part I of this far-ranging interview, the person in charge of DC's business operation talks about how his background in the business, the organization of DC's top management, the comic market size and trends, the state of DC, and the comics code.