Sega and Marvel have signed a big pact (although Marvel has been working closely with Activision recently) and GameDaily BIZ talks to Sega about the deal:

BIZ: Did you have to compete with other publishers to get the rights to these other Marvel characters? Obviously Activision has produced a number of games for Marvel, so I would think they would have been interested as well.

SS: Yeah, that’s a great question. If you look back these past couple years, EA’s had a few dances with DC [Comics] with Batman and Superman, and Activision definitely did well with Spidey, and they’ve done X-Men and Fantastic Four, and Vivendi had Hulk, so there’s no doubt that these are competitive negotiations. I can’t speak to who else was at the table; oftentimes, in most cases we have no idea.

We don’t really know who they’re talking to, don’t really know whether Activision says, “Hey we’ve got two already; we’re not really sure if we want more,” or if THQ wants to get into it. I can’t really speak to that with authority, but I do know that these [deals] are always competitive because we’ve been in negotiations with other studios and have not come up with the goods on occasion. Clearly, the industry continues to look at big movies and big licenses, and comic books in particular, as a high target category, but in this instance Sega came out on top.

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MEANWHILE< Telltale Games talks about more Bone games:

Developer Telltale Games has been in the press a lot for its revival of the Sam & Max series, but before that it developed an episodic adventure series based on the hugely successful Bone comic books by Jeff Smith. However, with all efforts focussing on Sam & Max you’d be forgiven for thinking Telltale had given up on Bone – but that’s not the case. “We’ve been really focused on Sam & Max and nailing the episodic model. This has helped the company better understand digital distribution, and we’re in a great position to take advantage of the Bone license, but our teams are very busy right now. As the company grows we will revisit Bone”, the developer told 1UP.