It’s your friendly annual reminder to go out and visit your friendly neighborhood comic shop and pick up some free comics.

Free Comic Book Day is an annual event that takes place the first Saturday in May (May 7, 2011) to help generate – or regenerate – interest in comic books.

A lot of the big comic companies release titles for the day and, depending on your shop, you can often find a few decent indies as well. Some even dump out those quarter boxes simply to get them out of the store. (But please, please, please do not think that every comic in the store is free).

A lot of Spider-Man fans were impressed with Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions and so was Activision.

The publisher has announced that Beenox, which worked on Shattered Dimensions, will develop the webslinger’s upcoming titles. To reinvigorate a franchise that Activision CEO Bobby Kotick once admitted his company had screwed up, Beenox called on four different Spideys. The game’s story whisked you through four separate, dare I say “Shattered,” dimensions for wall crawlers with unique play styles.

Siliconera is reporting that Marvel Comics has filed a Secret Wars trademark that would apply to everything from video games to action figures. This is leading to speculation that Marvel might mine the landmark storyline for a new game.

Guitar manufacturer Peavey is at CES this week to promote their Marvel Universe guitars, which are standard electric guitars painted with a popular Marvel character.

This year, Hallmark’s main video game themed ornament is Prince Dastan from Disney’s Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. Measuring 4 in. tall and retailing for $14.95 (ornament # QXD2152), it features the likeness of a leaping Jake Gyllenhaal as “The Prince.” The film is also being released on DVD, Blu-ray and Digital Download September 14, 2010.

The other ornament, which I have yet to see in a store, is the Tron Lightcycle ornament (#QXD1153), also based on a upcoming Disney film (Tron: Legacy, December 17, 2010). This one is priced $16.95, is 4.5 in. wide and lights up (so it requires batteries, which are often included in Hallmark’s fancier ornaments). This definitely looks to be the more impressive of this year’s two game-related ornaments.

Spider-Man games have fallen on hard times recently, but Shattered Dimensions could breathe new life into Activision’s well-worn franchise. Getting to play as four separate Spider-Men is intriguing and one of the reasons expectations for this Beenox offering are running high. Beenox Creative Director Thomas Wilson is so enamored with the 2099 and Noir wallcrawlers, he’d like to do an entire game on one of them.

After months of teasing the four separate universes that we’ll play in, Activision has revealed the fourth and final universe from Spider-Man:Shattered Dimensions. It is the “Ultimate” Universe from Marvel’s popular Ultimate line of books. The Ultimate books were designed to allow new readers to pick up Marvel titles without getting bogged down by years of history. Thus Ultimate Spider-Man and his Amazing counterpart, on the surface, are not all that different…

There’s a lot of buzz building about Spider-Man:Shattered Dimensions and it is the perfect game to show off at San Diego Comic Con 2010. It takes four separate versions of the wall-crawler through four different dimensions, three of which have been revealed. The last one, I’m told, is coming really soon. There are always a bunch of villains ready to punch Spidey’s face in and we now know Juggernaut is coming to the pan-dimensional party.

It was not that long ago that Activision CEO Bobby Kotick gave a brutally honest assessment of his company’s recent Spider-Man games.

With such a lucrative license you know Activision is going to keep trying and its latest attempt does sound promising.

Spider-Man:Shattered Dimensions will take the webslinger into four different universes with unique powers and super villains in each. So far Activision has revealed the “Amazing” and “Noir” universes, along with their respective villains.

When the CEO of the biggest company in gaming talks, people listen. And if those people are gamers, many of them spit some sort of venom in response. Kotick’s quotes, however, are not famous for this level of unbridled honesty. In fact, it’s rare you hear any executive be this upfront about the quality (or lack thereof) in its games.

The controversial executive said that the company has dropped the ball with the lucrative Spider-Man license…