Google announced yesterday, in a post on its official blog, that it would be releasing a brand-new theme pack for its iGoogle service. The news came on the same day as the 40th anniversary of Comic-CON, a non-profit organization in charge of organizing the annual Comic-CON Comics Convention.

Famous heroes like Superman, Ironman, Batman, Hellboy or The Hulk can now be added to any iGoogle profile page. Comic fanatics have a broad range of characters and stories to choose from, not only Hollywood action heroes. Different comic styles and authors are honored with several themes.

From DC Comics to Marvel, from Dark Horse and Tokyopop to Fantagraphics, all have several of their most famous characters appearing in different layouts. iGoogle has all the styles, from Japanese manga and simple sketches to modern, vectorized graphics that have lately invaded comic books.

We can see popular personas like Popeye, Garfield, Dilbert and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles grace the Google logo with their presence. It's a long and overdue homage to the world of comics that gave so many memories.

Popular comic artists like Jim Lee, Dan Clowes, Rumiko Takahashi and Lewis Trondheim have contributed personally to this release with unique artwork for some of the themes.

Also as a tribute to the fantastic world of comic books and their creators, yesterday, Google's search engine main page featured a re-designed logo with several DC Comics superheroes. The creator of the customized logo was veteran artist and recent winner of the Harvey Awards Jim Lee, former employee at DC Comics and Marvel, and founder of WildStorm Comics and Image Comics.

"I'm excited to have been chosen to help launch this wonderful project," Jim Lee said. "But I'm more elated, both as a professional and as a fan, that so many different types of comics have been chosen to be part of the iGoogle comics themes launch [...] I think the breadth of choices available demonstrates the amazing diversity and the fundamental vitality of the stories comics can tell."

A preview of all 50 comics themes can be found here.