Members of web comic community ACT-I-VATE met at NYCC!
By David Paggi
Posted 4/18/2008
The members of the web comic community ACT-I-VATE meet to discuss the creation of ACT-I-VATE itself and the benefits of producing web comics on Friday afternoon. Dan Goldman artist of Shooting War and ACT-I-VATE's own Kelly moderated the panel, which included Dean Haspiel, Molly Crabapple, Paul Maybury and others.
Goldman related how ACT-I-VATE started with a bunch of friends sitting around working on comics and talking shop. "The idea that we were all doing comics and all blogging, it made sense to sit down and cross wires into a machine, and that's what ACT-I-VATE is."
"It started organically with people sitting around my house," said Haspiel. "There was a word that kept repeating itself over and over again: activate. Me ad Michel Fiffe, whenever we recognized a certain sensibility that we liked we would kind o high five and say, ‘activate'." Haspiel got everyone together on the basis of offering material for free. He revamped an old character of his named Billy Dogma that he had never really used before and asked the other members to create something new as well. "We were trying to life the veil between creation and creator and reader and make a community of it." With the help of the comic blogosphere, Haspiel hyped the launch of the new Livejournal ACT-I-VATE community, which initially featured eight free comics.
The panelists discussed the benefit of immediate feedback from the online community and how serializing strips online for free doesn't mercenarily mean that you'll never reap any financial benefits. "You're engendering loyalty and people will want to buy something later one when it's made into a nice pretty package," said Haspiel, citing his comic Brawl with Fiffe. Goldman also pointed out how Michael Cavallaro's Parade With Fireworks, another ACT-I-VATE comic that was picked up by Image, is nominated for an Eisner this year.
Goldman also announced that the collective have also recently launched ACT-I-VATE.com to replace the Livejournal. "Instead of the Livejournal platform, you can go to the site and see everything and everyone at one glance with simple clicks and reading everything in a very clean, simple interface." Goldman remarked that although it had been a goal from the get go to launch ACT-I-VATE's own site, they wanted to wait until they had enough material to really fill it up.
The panel went on to talk more about the benefits of doing web comics. "When you're doing a graphic novel, everybody knows it takes a long time," said Paul Maybury, artist of the recent Aqualeung from Image and Party Bear at ACT-I-VATE. "When you're working in print there's not a lot of time to go back and give love to the pages that maybe were you a year ago but just aren't up to the standards of what you want to be when it finally comes out. I think with ACT-I-VATE it gives you a chance to do something for a long run but you're under no pressure or obligation to ever put it out. You can go back and recolor things, nobody will ever know. I've rewritten dialogue. I redraw the first half of Party Bear. It's an organic graphic novel. It's constantly changing. "
