September
21 NY show adds guest of honor, directors

Marvel editor in chief Joe Quesada will be guest of honor at the New York Comic-Con, the new trade and consumer comics show planned by Reed Exhibitions for late February. The show also has announced that Dark Horse, the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund and Sci-Fi Channel have signed on as exhibitors, while the Licensing Industry Merchandisers' Association has signed on as a sponsoer. The convention also announced the addition of several key contributors, naming Milton Griepp of ICV2.com as chairman of programming, Terry Chu of FlyByNightDesign.com as head of anime programming, and Steve Rosato of BookExpo America as conference and special events director. Reed Exhibitions is a division of Reed Elsevier, which owns Variety.

GLOBAL MANGA: Viz Media has teamed up with the World Bank to produce a new manga series called "1 World Manga" that will address global issues such as poverty, HIV/AIDS and the environment. The press release says the serious themes will be part of an action and romance story centered around an orphaned teenager who wants to be the best fighter in the world. World Bank will distribute copies of the book to more than 300 libraries around the world and Viz will give proceeds from the sales of the book to various charities.

MARVEL 2006: Some of Marvel's plans for the coming year have trickled out of the retailer summit held recently in Baltimore. Plans include:

• The return of The Eternals, in both a hardcover collection of Jack Kirby's 1970s series and a project related to the group that will be written by Neil Gaiman.
• Next summer's big event will be called "Planet Hulk." The first bits of story will appear this fall in The Incredible Hulk.
• This summer's event, House of M, will lead to titles including Decimation, Generation M, X-Men: Deadly Genesis, Sentinel Squad O.N.E. and X-Men: The 198.
• Joss Whedon and John Cassaday's run on Astonishing X-Men will resume with the first of 13 new issues in February.
• Mark Millar will write a project called 1985, which will use photography and digital art to tell the story of a kid who goes through all the events that occurred in the Marvel Universe in 1985.
• Reprint collections include an X-Men Omnibus collection in time for the release of "X-Men 3," 18 volumes of hardcover Marvel Masterworks and 24 volumes in the Marvel Essentials series. There also will be a digest series of J2.