In what Marvel COO Bill Jemas referred to as 'by far the largest and best electronic game deal in the history of Marvel,' the 'House of Ideas' has licensed Vu Games, a subsidiary of Vivendi Universal to create a worldwide, multi-lingual, massively multi-player on-line game based on Marvel's universe of more than 4,700 characters.

In spite of the obvious success that comic book-based films have had in Hollywood over the past year, and despite the fact that fellow AOL/Time Warner company DC Comics has an enormous roster of characters, Warner Brothers has been unable to pull the trigger and squeeze off another round in the battle of cinematic superheroes.

The Spider-Man film spurred increased sales of Spider-Man merchandise, a track record that will easily justify additional outreach efforts synchronized with the wallcrawler's video release on Nov.2.

The robust sales patterns that have characterized the Spider-Man-influenced summer of 2002 continued to make their mark on ICv2's Top Ten List for July. Even more than usual, big ticket items tended to dominate the lists this month.

Although three actors from Mutant X were signing at the Inkworks booth in San Diego, and we thought we were being told with a nod and a wink that Inkworks had the license (and reported it as fact for about 16 hours on Thursday), it turns out it was just a nod and a wink--don't look for Mutant X trading cards any time soon.

Sony will release a special 2-disc DVD edition of the $400 million Spider-Man blockbuster on Friday, November 1.

Variety reported today that Warner Bros. Pictures has tapped Wolfgang Petersen ( Das Boot , Air Force One ) to direct Batman vs. Superman , which Warners envisions as the studio's tentpole picture for the summer of 2004.

Dark Horse Comics announced its comic series based on the rock band Kiss at last year's San Diego Comicon without a lot of fanfare. After all, Image's Kiss: The Psycho Circus comic had sort of just faded away and expectations for Dark Horse's book were not very high. Well a year later, Gene Simmons, the tongue-wielding bassist and driving force behind Kiss licensing, will be back at San Diego, and he will be touting Dark Horse's number one comic for July.

Inkworks has acquired the rights to produce a set of trading cards based on The Osbournes .

Estimated quantities for initial orders on comics shipping in July 2002 from pop culture stores ordering from Diamond US.