The British website Empire On Line is reporting that Oscar-winning actor Nicholas Cage will star as Johnny Blaze in a movie version of the Ghost Rider comic. The film will be directed by Steven Norrington, who brought Marvel's Blade to the big screen.

North American comic shop orders increased in the aggregate again for July, with the total dollars up around 10% from June.

Orders by comic shops (Diamond U.S. customers) for the Top 300 Comics shipping in July.

Jemas explained: 'The short answer is there is no change in policy from our no overprints policy. DC has taken a hard and fast position that they are the house of reorders, and we've sort of taken the house of ideas positioning and we're just going to see how those positions play out in the marketplace.'

The 'Comics' and 'Toy' categories got very competitive in May with the successful debut of Marvel's revamped X-Men titles and the release of new Simpsons and Tomb Raider toys.

Comic orders from North American comic shops strengthened in June, with increased sales at all levels of the chart reflecting the retailer confidence associated with the kick-off of the summer selling season and a seemingly strong underlying sales trend.

Marvel Comics has signed an 'expansive' three-year licensing agreement with Diamond Select Toys, a sister company of Diamond Comic Distributors.

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.

Marvel has entered into an agreement with Dimension Films, a subdivision of Miramax, to develop a film based on the relatively short-lived 1980s comic Cloak and Dagger .

Trends that we have seen during the first quarter, such as the increasing dominance of the DVD format, the overall sales importance of high ticket items, and the continuing reign of CCGs are even more apparent in the April numbers.