At this year’s Mocca Art Festival, I’ll be spending time at the Act-i-vate table, F27, and while I’m there I’ll be signing copies of The Act-i-vate Primer as well as selling two limited edition posters. Each poster (13″x19″) sells for $20 or $35 for both. Buy any book at the Act-i-vate table and a poster goes for $15! Each poster is signed and includes a sketch.

I am donating this piece of original art on eBay with all proceeds going to the Clinton Bush Haiti Fund. Please bid high and bid often. Your donation will not only get you this one of a kind original, it may just save a life. Thank you. Here’s the link:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=260541180641

This is only one auction of many that are participating in a larger initiative called Heroes 4 Haiti. All around the world, comics artists are donating their work for auction on eBay so if you’re not interested in this drawing, please consider any one of the other works listed in the comments section at Heroes 4 Haiti!

In his NY Times holiday guide to graphic novel gift giving, George Gene Gustines has included The Act-i-vate Primer! Here’s what he had to say,

Adam McGovern has written yet another astute and discerning review over at ComicCritique.com! This time he doles out the praise in his usual eloquent reportage. Here’s a quote:

Peering into the faux-yellowed, off-register murk of Infurnari’s ULTRA-lad! we find a forgotten pulp potboiler concealing a serious graphic novel – concerning an amoral Captain Marvel-esque eternal child-hero inside a series of unworthy adult personalities – that flies toward the scary tension of superlatives without ideals.

That’s all he devotes to my story, but what a grand prose it is! Adam is truly a reviewer without peer and he is by far one of the most intelligent readers of comics I know. He closes his piece with this:

The range of interests, level of storytelling and sheer wealth of style are staggering. I haven’t been this anxious to curl up with a colorful collection of the medium’s possibilities since The Great Comic Book Heroes in nineteen-seventy-never-mind. The golden age of comics gets its restart here.

Comic Critique scores the Primer a 4.5 out of 5! To read the rest of this review, click here.

Zane Austin Grant has written a thoughtful and considered review of the Act-i-vate Primer over at PopMatters.com. He has lots of great things to say about a lot of the stories in the book but here’s what he had to say about “Memoirs of the ‘Kid Immortal” by yours truly:

Another standout story is Joe Infurnari’s Memoirs of the ‘Kid Immortal’, for example, which follows a defeated wrestler on an occult conquest to become a champion.  The art for the story is made to look like a golden age comic you might have found in a junk bin.  The page is faded and the edges are worn, but the story itself transforms the dramatic language of early adventure comics into a sad poetics that matches the main characters disappointment perfectly.

There’s lots more to this review and he gives the book an 8 out of 10! I encourage you all to read the whole thing here.

Thanks, Zane!

Brooklyn preeminent independent bookstore, Book Court, will be hosting a unique and exciting event this week, The Act-i-vate Salon! What makes it oh so fancy (hence the ‘Salon’) is that members of the Act-i-vate collective will be doing dramatic readings of some of their stories in The Act-i-vate Primer. It’s a comics anthology meets performance art plus free alcohol and book signing extravaganza. Whoa, whoa there, Nelly! Don’t rush off just yet, the event happens next Thursday, October 29th! Check out the poster above or the this blog post for even more tantalizing tidbits!

David Lee over at Cosmic Comix wrote a nice piece about our little collective’s anthology. Here’s an excerpt:

There were 16 stories within this collection and, like all anthologies, there are some stories that really worked, some that showed promise, but there weren’t any that failed. What makes Act-i-vate so strong is the fact that these are all established creators. Act-i-vate is a place for previously published writers and artists to try new things. Some of the highlights were:

(A) “When Lilly Met Cosmo” by Simon Fraser. This is a straight forward science fiction serial and probably the most conventional of all the stories. Our heroine Lilly is traveling to deep space where she will be one of the few women among a large group of men. Along the way she encounters some strange goings on and a man who seems to know her, but she doesn’t recognize him! This is a very polished story that quickly introduces the characters and a couple of subplots. But that’s to be expected from Fraser. He’s been working with 2000AD for a very long time and is a great writer/artist.

(B) “The Boy who came to Stay” by Roger Langridge. Langridge is by far the biggest name on the book because he most recently re-launched the Muppets for BOOM! He’s not new to the business and is one of the best cartoonists out there. This story involves Mugwhup the Great who Langridge has been writing for yours. It’s the same high quality humor that one expects from Langridge

(C) “Memoirs of Kid Immortal” by Joe Infurnari, which is a story about the quest for power and fame. It also made sure that there is a price to pay for such things. I’m not familiar with Infurnari but he turned in a great short story. He also set the pages up to look like an old comic book which was a nice touch.

There are too many good stories in this book to talk about all of them individually, but “Veils” by Mike Cavallaro, “Bring me the Heart of Billy Dogma” by Dean Haspiel (the one risqué story), “Motro” by Ulises Farinas, and “Persimmon Cup” by Nick Bertozzi were all very, very strong. Finally, all the stories are different. Some are science fiction, some are superheroes, some are just people dealing with weird situations but the diversity of the art and subject matter makes the book enjoyable.

Read the entire review here. Thanks so much David!

Thanks, Louis!

Here it is in its entirety:

The ACT-I-VATE Primer is now available from IDW Publishing in a beautiful, densely-packed hardbound volume. The Primer is an anthology of never-before-read comics by the creators who can be found at act-i-vate.com, the “webcomix collective.” IDW’s online preview of the book is easy to read and shows the vast diversity contained in the pages. I was explicitly told that while these same strips and characters have a presence online, the stories in the book cannot be found in 1s and 0s, only on paper. I’ll be getting this one added to my pull list, but if you’re interested you can find it online or ask your preferred bookseller.