This weekend a new indy comedy open is several major U.S. cities. FAMILY WEEKEND stare Kristen Chenoweth, Matthew Modine plus producer/co-star Adam Russo who gives us an exclusive look at the new film. Plus there’s a lot more than gold in those hills! Meet Steve Brancato and Amanda Adkins from PROSPECTORS, a new series on The Weather Channel about digging for real riches – and DC’s Bad Guys get their own documentary.
Matt Bomer, star of USA Network’s hit series White Collar, has joined the panel for the World Premiere of Warner Bros. Home Entertainment’s Superman: Unbound this Friday, March 29 at 6:00 p.m. as part of the WonderCon marquee evening event in the Anaheim Convention Center.
As the voice of Superman, Bomer will headline the post-screening panel discussion alongside Castle star Molly Quinn (the voice of Supergirl), producer/director James Tucker (Justice League), screenwriter Bob Goodman (Warehouse 13, Batman: The Dark Knight Returns) and eight-time Emmy Award-winning dialogue director Andrea Romano (Batman: The Dark Knight Returns). Moderator Gary Miereanu will guide the proceedings, offering glimpses into future DC Universe Animated Original Movies, and exclusive prizes for some lucky fans in attendance.
In Superman: Unbound, a destructive force is devastating planets across the galaxy – with Earth next in its sights – and even Superman may not be capable of halting the destruction alone. Based on the Geoff Johns/Gary Frank 2008 DC Comics release “Superman: Brainiac,” the film’s stellar voicecast also includes John Noble (Fringe, The Lord of the Rings films) as Brainiac, and Stana Katic (Castle) as Lois Lane. Produced by Warner Bros. Animation, DC Entertainment and Warner Bros. Home Entertainment, Superman: Unbound will be released on Blu-ray, DVD, OnDemand and For Download on May 7, 2013.
Prior to the premiere, the Superman: Unbound panelists Quinn, Tucker, Goodman and Romano will sign WonderCon-exclusive mini-posters from 3:00-4:00 p.m. at the DC Entertainment booth.
Which is lucky for me, because I have a rather frantic week, and not a lot of original ideas for a column. Sure, I could write about the John Stewart scandal (or non-scandal, depending on which rumor you believe,), but I am late to that party. I could write about some obscure book that deserves more attention, but I am behind in my reading.
My sub-conscious came through for me.
Last night, I had one of my recurring dreams in which I still work for DC. Sometimes in these dreams I no longer work for DC, but sneak into an office and pretend I do. And sometimes, I even wear clothes. I can’t remember which of these scenarios was at play this time, but I remember getting a memo from Jenette Kahn about some new publishing initiative.
In my dream, I ran to my son, the genius writer, about the opportunity this afforded us. We had two ideas worth pursuing.
The first, and more interesting, was a graphic novel about an upper-middle-class teenage white girl in Georgia in the 1980s who is, unbeknownst to her or anyone else, the reincarnation of Mohammed Ali. I don’t think we should let the fact that Ali is still alive get in the way of the fact that this would be awesome.
However, since my subconscious apparently has no literary taste, in my dream I urged we concentrate our attention on an on-going series, The Legion of Jimmy Olsen. It would be like the Legion of Super-Heroes, but set in the present, not the future, and feature all the different characters Jimmy has morphed into over the years. You would have your Turtle Boy, your giant, your caveman Beatle, even your girl.
All at the same time.
I would buy that series in a heartbeat. Wouldn’t you?
The New 52 doesn’t have a lot of Jimmy in it. There isn’t even much Lois Lane. They show up to take pictures or report on some Superman exploit or another, but that’s about it. Grant Morrison had Jimmy doing a bit more, as a friend to Clark.
Even Grant couldn’t work in any Turtle Boy.
As the comics audience has aged, publishers have tried to respond with more mature offerings. They don’t think their readers need a character like Jimmy with whom to identify. Today’s superhero reader, they think, needs stories where the universe is at stake every single issue.
This is a shame, because we could use somewhat less constant cosmic apocalypse, and a bit more whimsy.
No matter that if you live in the midwest there may be snow on the ground, and if there isn’t, there was recently. It is, dammit, spring! What you gonna believe, Skippy – your eyes or the calendar?
And to herald spring, here comes one of my favorite holidays – Easter. You know the story: humanity’s savior gets crucified, chills in a tomb for three days, comes out and starts a religion. If you’re into comparative mythology. you can find that similar things happened to earlier deities, including Adonis, Osiris, and Mithra. The myths, and their attendant holidays, celebrate something real – the emotions,including hope, that we desperate humans experience when the long gloom of winter goes away and life returns to the Earth. Our ancestors tended to give phenomena they didn’t understand names and identities. Maybe that tendency still exists in their descendants.
Do we feel that you can’t keep a good god down?
Then what about comic book characters? They seem to have difficulty staying dead, too. I have personally participated in the demise of four that I can immediately remember, all of whom popped out of the afterlife in one form or another, and they’re only a few entries in a rather long list that includes some of the biggies: Superman, Captain America, Robin the Boy/Teen Wonder version two. And then there are the lesser but still prominent characters, including Cap America’s young pal Bucky, Elektra, and one of my personal favorite supporting cast members, Batman’s butler Alfred. (Full disclosure: Alfred wasn’t really dead, only, you know, deadish. For two years.)
And why do I feel compelled to include a spear-carrier who died and stayed dead? We’re talking Larry Lance, the detective husband of the original Black Canary. We gave him a one panel funeral in Justice League of America, sent his widow off to another universe and sweet love with Green Arrow, and forgot about him. Maybe I’ve given Larry a paragraph as a service to serious trivia freaks.
But Larry wasn’t even a superheroes and superheroes who die are our subject, so back to them. DC Comics has recently killed two prominent costumed good guys and raised a bit of a stink in the doing. The (late) characters are (were?) yet another incarnation of Batman’s youthful sidekick, Robin, and, evidently, John Stewart, the African American Green Lantern. What’s notable about the Robin is that he is (was) the first of his ilk who was Batman’s biological son. John Stewart? The stakes are a bit higher: he was one of the earliest of comics’ superdoers who wasn’t a white guy and for a time, he was pretty much the only Green Lantern in the DC Universe. I’d say that as fictional beings go, he’ll be missed. (The Robin? No idea.)
But will John (and Robin?) stay deceased? Well, they’re not gods, not exactly (though they are first cousins to the mythological deities). Will they return? History may be nodding its head yes, but I’ll content myself with a shrug.
This Monday, REVOLUTION returns to NBC to complete its freshman season. Four months off the air has given Executive Producer Eric Kripke the chance to move the story forward and gives us a lot of answers to the show’s mysteries. Eric, and series star Elizabeth Mitchell, give us a look at what we need to jump back into there series. Meanwhile, DC’s editorial department is shows some turmoil and Neil Gaiman (along with his character ANGELA) are headed to Marvel.
Off to Gertz we went! Gertz was the department store back in the day. When we got there my mother walked right to the toy department and brought me Captain Action and the Batman and Superman costume changes.
At that point I had to wonder, who was this woman and what had she done with my mother.
This was entirely way to good to be true.
As I would find out soon it certainly was.
I found out later that, what was a great Saturday turned crappy, why my mother was so quick to buy me Captain Action, which I just knew, was the last thing I would ever want or need.
My stepdad (who at the time I thought was my real dad; long sad story) told my mother earlier in the day he would not be picking me up to spend the night with him. Those times with my father were all I lived for.
If I had to choose between having Christmas every day and spending one day with my dad, Santa would have lost out.
My mom didn’t tell me that on the bus ride back. Nor did she broach the subject when we got home. She missed the opportunity while I was introducing the good Captain to my GI Joes. Introduction may not be the best word for the Joe exchange.
It was more like an eviction.
I evicted a platoon of Joes from a few of my GI Joe footlockers. The good Captain and his costume changes could not be made to spend his down time in a ghetto toy box. The toy box was where the poor toys lived.
The toys box were the projects in the ghetto. The footlockers were the nice homes, you know, the white neighborhood. Hey, I was a child living in a world where all Black people lived in the projects and all white people lived in nice homes in safe neighborhoods. That’s what the TV told me and TV was everything to a child.
Anywho, my mom never did tell me that my father wasn’t coming over – which was most likely her plan. The toys were a distraction. A distraction that was working until my sister asked me if Robert (That’s what we called my father, not dad or daddy. It’s a black thing you wouldn’t understand) brought me the toys.
Just like that I remembered that I was supposed to spend the night with Robert and realized that he had not picked me up yet.
My mother was then forced to tell me that he was not coming and I started crying like baby.
Then something magical happened, my mortal enemy, my sister Sharon picked up my Captain Action and started taking to me about it. After a few minutes I was proudly explaining what my new toy was showing her the costume changes and schooling her on all the reasons Captain Action was just the greatest thing that ever happened to the world. I’m not sure when I stopped crying or when I forgot Robert was not coming over.
Then, I was an adult.
That what happens in life one moment you are a five-year old with the greatest toy you have ever had the next you are a grown man trying to recapture those moments by becoming a collector of the things from your childhood that brought you that wonder. My Captain Action collection features the Ideal Toy Company original. The Prying Mantis 90’s redo and the current Captain Action Enterprise’s new line.
DC Comics did Captain Action comics back in the day and the good Captain has been returned to the industry those books are in stores now and I hear big plans are planed for comics in the future.
Yes, this article and part one is my love letter to an old friend who has always been in my life. It’s sappy, I’m sappy and I know that.
Twice a week, I teach knitting to people with cancer and caregivers. Most of you probably think of knitting as something serene, a hobby for little old ladies (current and future). However, when I teach, my instructions are filled with images of guns and shooting, stabbing people with knitting needles, and when I make a mistake, I threaten my materials with unspeakably filthy and unnatural acts.
I do this when I teach for a couple of reasons. Most important, it makes the techniques easier to remember. However, for this group in particular, it gives a sense of control. These people have so little control in their lives that it’s great to have control over knitting needles and yarn.
It’s powerful. When you’re staring the possibility of dying in the face, it’s good to have something that makes you feel powerful.
This is a long, roundabout way of getting to the intersection of a couple of trends I see in our beloved graphic story medium. As I wrote last week, the industry has a sad tendency to throw away creative talent when it is deemed to be “old.” There is also a pathetic paucity of work by women, racial minorities, and people whose identify as queer.
Things are slightly better outside of the Big Two (Marvel and DC). but not much. Not really.
This is a problem. It’s a problem in many media (especially broadcast news, but that’s another rant) but it seems to me that comics is one of the worst. It seems like a paradox, but by appealing to a cultural ideal of straight, white young men, comics may be stuck in a closet of marginalization.
We all have impulses and emotions. Many of these are not welcome by the larger society in which we not only live, but rely on for daily support. I think it’s healthy and mature to work out inappropriate feelings with the vicarious experience of entertainment.
Specifically, when we feel angry at our lives and helpless within are mortal bodies, we need power fantasies. Hence, in other mass media, we get not just superhero stories. but police procedurals, sword and sorcery, House and Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
There’s other emotions that are inappropriate to express in our daily, public lives. We don’t show grief or sadness or lust. Men don’t show nurturing. These feelings are for private time, or for working out with art.
There are books and movies for these feelings. Dreary foreign films about death, silly romantic comedies with Katherine Heigl or Kate Hudson. This movie, which is one of the most bleak, self-loathing things I’ve ever seen. Sometimes, I need Carey Mulligan to hate herself so I don’t have to hate myself.
There are some brilliant graphic novels that appeal to these audiences, but they are few and far between.
There is nothing wrong with having a target audience. That’s effective marketing (note: marketing is not the same as editing, or publishing). However, if one plans to have an entertainment conglomerate and see some growth, one needs to occasionally try for other audience segments, or at least other audience moods.
In the meantime, if you see any bald-headed women making socks, watch your ass.
The ballot for the 2013 Harvey Awards is now available. Named in honor of the late Harvey Kurtzman, one of the industry’s most innovative talents, the Harvey Awards recognize outstanding work in comics and sequential art. The 26th Annual Harvey Awards will be presented Saturday, September 7th, 2013 as part of the Baltimore Comic-Con.
For the first time, Harvey Awards nomination ballots may be submitted using an online form. If you are a comics professional, you can vote online at harveyawards.org/2013-nomination-ballot/. This will enable easier and faster methods for the professional community to submit their nominees. Ballots are due for submission by Monday, May 6th, 2013.
Nominations for the Harvey Awards are selected exclusively by creators: those who write, draw, ink, letter, color, design, edit or are otherwise involved in a creative capacity in the comics field. The Harvey Awards are the only industry awards both nominated and selected by the full body of comic book professionals.
In addition to being available on the website, ballots will be sent to all major publishers and distributed at comic conventions. We look forward to your participation and input in this process, and we look forward to seeing you at the Baltimore Comic-Con and the Harvey Awards.
The Harveys would not be possible without the generous sponsors of the Awards. Sponsors for the last year’s 2012 Harvey Awards included The Baltimore Comic-Con; Boom! Studios; Captain Bluehen Comics; Cards, Comics, and Collectibles; ComicMix; ComicWOW!; ComiXology; DC Entertainment; Geppis’s Entertainment Museum; Insight Studios Group; Painted Visions Comics, Cards, & Games; Richmond Comix and Games; Steve Conley’s Bloop; and Write Brothers Inc.
Companies and individuals interested in sponsoring the 2013 Harvey Awards can contact harveys@baltimorecomiccon.com
This year’s Baltimore Comic-Con will be held September 7-8, 2013. The ceremony and banquet for the Harvey Awards will be held Saturday night, September 8th. Additional details about the Harvey Awards and the awards ceremony will be released over the next few months.
With a history of over 26 years, the last 8 in conjunction with the Baltimore Comic-Con, the Harveys recognize outstanding achievements in 22 categories. They are the only industry awards nominated and selected by the full body of comic book professionals. For more information, please visit http://www.harveyawards.org
The Baltimore Comic-Con is celebrating its 14th year of bringing the comic book industry to the Baltimore and Washington D.C. area. With a guest list unequaled in the industry, the Baltimore Comic-Con will be held September 7-8, 2013. For more information, please visit http://www.baltimorecomiccon.com.
DC Comics challenging kids in grades 3-6 to write about a real person they consider a hero. It could be a teacher, a first responder, a bus driver, a relative … even you! The top winner will score a VIP trip for six to Burbank, CA, where they’ll tour the Warner Bros. Animation Studios and DC Entertainment Offices. They’ll also get some awesome prizes to take home. Their real-life hero will get ,500.00 to donate to the real-life charity of his/her choice.
While I was in NYC a couple of weekends ago, I ended up at a Gowanus Studios party out in Brooklyn (as you do), chatting with my friend Reilly Brown and some other excellent comics folks. In the middle of all this (all this being pizza and wine, la-di-la, because I’m too fancy for beer), I learned about Act-i-vate, which some of you may have heard of, but I sure hadn’t.
That’s one of the things I love about comics – even if you’ve been a fan for years, or know quite a bit about it, there’s always so much going on that you’re never going to reach the end of learning new stuff about comics – the art and the industry. (And also, if you’re me at least, the genre being so large means you don’t have to feel like a bad fan for not knowing everything about it; it’s hard!) So despite having interviewedDean Haspiel, who was one of the founding members of Act-i-vate, since he’s moved to other projects now we had not discussed it, and I’d never heard of it.
Simon Fraser remedied that for me at the party (it’s not a real party unless you stop someone in mid-sentence, drag them into an empty studio, and do an impromptu interview, dontchya know) . You might recognize Simon as the co-creator of Nikolai Dante, “a swashbuckling adventure story set amid dynastic intrigue in a future Russia,” or as an artist who’s drawn a number of Judge Dredd stories. He’s also the current “gatekeeper,” so-to-speak, for Act-i-vate, which just celebrated its seventh anniversary, and his enthusiasm for the webcomics collective is contagious. Read on to hear more about this cool group, what they do, and what they have to offer.
Tell me what Act-i-vate is about.
Act-i-vate is a webcomics collective of comic artists producing comics primarily for themselves and for each other. Most of the comic artists who are in Act-i-vate are professionals or semi-professional. We spend much of our time trying to make a living in the industry and working hard to keep ourselves professionally employed, but a lot of the time that means making compromises to publishers, to get the job done; to get work through the doors; to get the paycheck. Which is great. If you can do that, you’re doing well. And it implies you’ve got a great deal of professional ability.
However, Act-i-vate is all about doing your signature work – it’s about the thing you really want to do, that you’ve been suppressing for a long time [so that you can make a living]. As a working professional, you may be doing four pages a week if you’re lucky, or maybe five. If you work in the evening one night a week, you can maybe get an extra page in; and that’s basically the base of Act-i-vate, is that each week – or sometimes people do a couple pages a month – you do a page, and put it up on Act-i-vate, which is a community of artists, and we look at the work and comment on each others’ work.
So you critique it?
We critique it to a certain extent. It’s a social environment, so it’s also an encouraging environment. And it’s also a big deal that even if you’re not getting a paycheck for the work, you know somebody’s waiting for it, someone’s expecting it – that means it actually gets done. Because I know for my own sake, a paycheck is tremendously motivating, but knowing that people I respect are waiting to see my next page is a big deal. So that’s the primary purpose of Act-i-vate, knowing that you’re a part of the community – because a lot of times comic artists, we work in a vacuum, we work in one room somewhere isolated.
And in the seven years since it’s started, Act-i-vate has expanded like crazy. There are over fifty members now. We’ve got members in Britain, we’ve got members in Australia, we’ve got members all over America. It’s getting to enormous size.
How did Act-i-vate start?
It started with Dean Haspiel and Dan Goldman. Dean has moved on to other projects now; he’s not directly involved with Act-i-vate anymore. He wants to do other things, like Trip City, now, which was his next thing after Act-i-vate. But Act-i-vate still exists, and is still growing. We’ve put on about ten members in the last year and a half, and there’s more and more new material going on all the time. Because there’s just such an amazing amount of talent out there, and creators who have something to say, and something they want to do. And they want to do it on their own terms, so they don’t really want to go to a publisher initially. What they can do with Act-i-vate is do the work, and make the work they want it to be, and then, afterwards when it’s completed they take it to the publisher and say, “This is it. Fait accompli!”
So when you say signature work, are you talking about a signature style of art, or more like a creator-owned signature story or piece of work, or both?
It can be anything. That’s the other thing as well, is that a lot of the time you don’t get the chance to experiment with your style. For me, Act-i-vate was all about me writing, because I haven’t really had a chance to write that much. It’s not something I get paid to do. So it was all about me writing a story, which I drew, and I was very happy with it, and by the time it came out (it took me two years to do a hundred page graphic novel), I thought it was a very good calling card for me. I thought, “That’s the kind of thing which is mine, separate.” Because I spent the last fifteen years working on something I created, but it’s owned by a company. It’s corporate. And that basically becomes my calling card, but it’s not owned by me.
So did your comic then come out to the public? Once you got your graphic novel done, did you publish it commercially?
Yes. What happened is that I have a publisher in Britain, 2000 AD, who published Judge Dredd in the 2000 AD anthology; and I’d been working for them for fifteen, twenty years. So they basically said, “We really like what you’ve done on Act-i-vate. We could publish this as well.” So they published it in one of their magazines.
Did it have some commercial success?
It did very well. The fanbase really liked it, and I got paid for it, which is excellent. And the letterer and the colorist got paid, so that’s really nice for me, because I want everybody to get something out of this, apart from just doing the work. And from there, they [2000 AD] said, “Okay, do you want to do more?” And I said, “Yes!” So right now I’m trying to find, in between my other jobs, time to get back on to the sequel of that story; because I’m doing a trilogy of stories based on these characters. The first is called Lilly MacKenzie and the Mines of Charybdis. And the one I’m working on now is called Lilly MacKenzie and the Treasure of Paros.
Sounds good! Now, when you say the letterist and the colorist got paid, are those people you picked up after you had developed it on your own?
Well, I have a very close working relationship with my colorist, Gary Caldwell, who’s wonderful. He’s tremendous; he does all my work in 2000 AD. We have a very close relationship; we fire stuff back and forth all the time. We kind of don’t have to speak to each other that much to know what we want. So Gary very generously agreed to color the thing for free, right from the start, when it was being done on Act-i-vate, and when money eventually came along, I said, “He’s got 25% of it, that’s what he owns.” Any money I get from this, he gets 25%, and that’s worked out very well for all of us.
The letterer came on when it was printed, because I lettered it originally and my lettering is kind of crap. A guy called Simon Bowland, who does lettering for 2000 AD, did a beautiful job re-lettering it. He then graciously let me use his lettering for my edition of it – I’ve done a little self-published edition of it and I’m looking for an American publisher for the collected trilogy when that eventually comes out. But I’m not going to rush that. I’m going to do my second part as I feel comfortable doing it, and then I’ll approach somebody and see if they’re interested in a third part.
As a professional versus a newer artist, are you welcomed if you’re not as known, or is it mostly when you have some professional credentials already? How does that work?
It’s all based on the quality of the work. If you come to me and I’ve never heard of your name and I see something that’s brilliant, that really knocks my socks off; then yes, absolutely [you are welcomed].
So is it a moderated community?
It’s entirely moderated. I mean, basically, you’ve got to get past me. I’m the gatekeeper. We used to have a more democratic process; we used to vote on things. But that became so conflicted and so complicated.
It is a professional community. We keep the standard very high, which means that we don’t accept very many people, but the standard of things that people have submitted is incredibly high, frankly. This is New York, and there’s so much talent around. And it’s people who really want to do something of their own, and they want to do it among people they respect. That’s a big deal, I mean, I feel tremendously enthused by the fact that the people who are working on Act-i-vate are so good, and they’re doing such different things. Some of it, if you go on the site, you can’t easily see as commercial; but it’s got its own thing going on there. They’re really trying something different and new and exciting.
I think the market will catch up with this. Right now the American comic market is in this tremendous period of expansion. It’s very low-level and there’s kind of not much money in it, but there’s tremendous amounts of material being generated the last couple of years. It’s very, very exciting. And I think the material on Act-i-vate is finding its audience online, and it will find its audience in print; it will find its audience in different media and other ways, and that’s great.
As someone who’s been around Act-i-vate for some time, have you seen others get something commercial through their work on Act-i-vate? Can you give examples?
Oh yes. Kevin Colden – his book Fishtown was done on Act-i-vate. He actually applied for a Xeric Grant to do the book as a small press thing, and he got offered it; but he said, “I would rather put it on Act-i-vate.” Which is a big measure of faith to us. And he put it on Act-i-vate and he got a lot of attention for it – it’s about a real event which happened in Philadelphia. And he then took it to IDW and IDW made a beautiful book of it. And he got nominated for an Eisner Award for that.
Roger Langridge has a comic on Act-i-vate, and that went to one of the publishers. There’s also Warren Pleece. He’s one of the Pleece brothers, who, when I was starting out in comics in Britain, were basically our Hernandez brothers; Warren and Gary Pleece. They just put out a compilation of their old work, The Great Unwashed, through Escape Books in America. It’s a fantastic book. It’s so…it’s like listening to that Kinks song. It’s got that kind of weird downbeat aesthetic, like The Smiths or something, and that’s very characteristic of them. And they do this beautiful story on Act-i-vate called Montague Terrace, which is also like that – and that’s coming out through Jonathan Cape in London this year.
We have Darryl Cunningham, who has become something of a celebrity recently. He’s done Psychiatric Tales, Books 1 & 2; he actually works in a psychiatric hospital, and Psychiatric Tales is really good, fascinating stuff. Darryl’s thing is basically that people don’t really understand what a lot of these mental illnesses are, and how they function or manifest themselves. He spends a lot of time with these people, so he basically took it upon himself to explain a lot of these common mental illnesses. And he did it in such an elegant way; because Darryl’s a beautiful cartoonist. It came out through Blank Slate in the UK and Bloomsbury in the US.
He’s done a new book called Science Tales, through Abrams, which is all about debunking science myths. So like the fake moon landing and all of that. There was a really horrible story a while back about a guy called Andrew Wakefield, who basically said that the measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine caused autism, which was quite shocking; and he was promoting this theory and scared a lot of parents from vaccinating their children. A lot of celebrities got involved, like Jenny McCarthy, and she started promoting this, and she’s still promoting it, even though Wakefield has been discredited entirely, and medical journals have basically come out and said, “this is absolute nonsense, it’s complete charlatanry.” But he was basically using it to promote himself. As a result now, some kids are not getting vaccinated for these things, which is very, very serious. If kids get these diseases when they’re children, it can affect the rest of their lives. Darryl did a story about that, which is brilliant. And he’s basically dealing with all the big mythologies.
He’s doing a story about Ayn Rand right now, on his website; he’s a great debunker. Ayn Rand is fascinating; I think he came down on the side that he felt sorry for her, because she had such a horrible life, and it was just depressing. She was obviously an uncompromising character; for the era, it’s remarkable that such a person as that existed.
What would your advice be for an artist who wants to be involved in Act-i-vate, and do you have some advice you’d like to share with the people who are still looking to become professionals, or more recognized as such?
At Act-i-vate we’re interested in seeing anything that’s unique and individual. We tend not to go for the more established genres like fantasy and science fiction; and not superheroes, because that’s well-represented. The other thing about Act-i-vate is that this is our thing, and we’re very happy with it, and we sometimes get new members, and that’s fine; but [running a webcomics collective is] relatively easy to do. I mean, we’ve survived for seven years. It doesn’t cost much to make a webcomics collective. All it really requires is a bit of effort, and a bit of going out there and finding people. And if you have an idea and you have something you want to do – we encourage people not just to apply to Act-i-vate, but set up their own collectives.
I think we all have our own points of view, and Act-i-vate has a very specific point of view of its own, and I think we’d like to see more people coming out with their own things, and different things. The more we have the better; the stronger the community of independent webcomics is. We haven’t really concentrated on making money out of Act-i-vate; because that’s not really what we do. We’re not a publisher; but we encourage; we’re trying to help our authors to get their work done. Because a lot of these things don’t make that much money. There’s money in digital comics to a certain degree, but it’s microscopic in comparison to what a good print book can get. I think what we’re trying to do is encourage good-quality work. When that happens, hopefully the audiences will come find it. Which I think is happening.
For example, we have a really good comic recently called Pregnant Butch, which is about a lesbian couple having a baby, which is hysterical; it’s so good. It’s by A.K. Summers, out in Rhode Island, and this is her first comic. She’s fabulous; she has such a great sense of humor, and such an innovative way of storytelling. And she’s not afraid of the darkness and the fear; because it can be terrifying, what’s happening. The fun thing, what I love, is the fact that she found an entirely new audience for her work and she had people commenting on her story who had never come to Act-i-vate before. She had established people who are interested in the subject, and also people who came in from outside who had never considered reading a comic about pregnant lesbians. And the fact is, it’s such a wonderful comic, it didn’t matter.
So to sum up, Act-i-vate is for people who want to, not just “get into the market and make money,” but who want to do their own thing, get encouragement on their work and comments, and have a community.
Yes. It’s about doing good comics. We’re all about good comics. I mean, there are lots of other aspects of comics and making a living and so forth, which we can help with, and we’re always available as colleagues to help with that.
Most of that tends to orbit around this studio complex here; there are a lot of Act-i-vate people in here. Act-i-vate is based in New York, and it tends to be Brooklyn-centric. But we reach out; we’re trying to get as wide a reach as possible. I’d like to get people from the West Coast, as well. We’ve got some people in D.C. Sam & Lilah is one of our strips on Act-i-vate, and the writer of that is in D.C. That’s Jim Dougan, who’s a big DC United fan and I think has had some press with them. So we’ve got people from all over, and we want to continue with that.
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Thanks very much to Simon for this great interview! I have to confess that since learning about the site, I’ve spent more than a few minutes (eep!) reading some of the comics, and they really are excellent. So check out Act-i-vate for some new reading material, and if you’re a creator looking to get some support, encouragement, and comments from other pros as you work on your own project, consider getting in touch with Simon and submitting some work!
