Overcoming an early spate of bad reviews, The Mummy Returns started the summer movie season off with a bang last weekend by bringing in $70.1 million, the largest non-holiday opening in box office history.

All of Marvel's X-books except Ultimate took substantial jumps in sales between April and May, reflecting new creative teams...

This article contains a chart showing the top 300 comic titles ordered from Diamond North America based on Diamond's reported title indexes and external title data, and interpolation of the remaining numbers.

At today's Marvel news conference, Marvel President Bill Jemas announced the renewal of Marvel's agreement with Diamond Comic Distributors to continue Diamond's exclusive distribution of Marvel titles in the direct market. In addition, the two companies agreed that Diamond would also represent Marvel's trade paperbacks in the traditional bookstore marketplace.

Marvel has announced that X-Force #116 , the first issue written by Peter Milligan and illustrated by Mike Allred, will not carry the Comics Code Authority's seal of approval. This is the first time that this has happened since way back in the 1970s when a Stan Lee-penned issue of Spider-Man took on the issue of drugs.

Stan Lee will make a guest appearance on the Home Shopping Network this coming Monday, April 23rd at 11:00 PM (Eastern Time). Dynamic Forces is presenting a 'Marvel 40th Anniversary' program, and highlighting forty years of Marvel art with a series of lithographs. Stan will be signing lithographs during the show.

Ken Tucker reviewed J. Michael Stracynski's first issue of Spider-Man ( Amazing Spider-Man #30) in the April 20th issue of Entertainment Weekly , on newsstands this week. The review, which leads off the 'Books Section' (page 66) is quite favorable and includes a sample panel of art from John Romita, Jr.

Since 1990, newsstand sales of the hundred top selling magazines in the U.S. have declined by 40%. Certainly the proliferation of new titles is partially responsible for the decline in the sales of individual magazines, but doesn't completely explain the fact that the average sell-through for all magazines has plummeted to just 36%.

Orders for the top comics took an upward tick in April, reflecting the typical seasonal direction now that the doldrums of first quarter are behind us. Ultimate X-Men #5 even came in above 100,000 in estimated comic store orders, the only title to do so in the last two months.

This article contains a chart showing the top 300 comic titles ordered from Diamond North America based on Diamond's reported title indexes and external title data, and interpolation of the remaining numbers.