This week my first Marvel project, a short story for the Uncanny X-Men First Class Giant Size Special, ships this week! So get on down to your local comics shop on Wednesday and pick up this Marvel one-shot!
MOCCA! Act-i-vate!
Mocca is this weekend and Act-i-vate will be representin'! At table 311, you'll be able to find among a cornucopia of coolness, the entire Act-i-vate Primer available for your perusal. We've assembled a binder of the contents of the much anticipated new book so come on by the table, chat with Act-i-vators and take a flip through our new book coming in October 2009!
I'll be hanging out at the table throughout the weekend so please say, "hi!".
Even more Mocca info including signing schedules after the jump!
Comics come home again to New York City this weekend with the annual Museum of Comics and Cartoon Art Festival 2009, and ACT-I-VATE will be there!
MoCCA Festival 2009 will be held June 6th & 7th at the 69th Regiment Armory at Lexington Avenue and 25th Street in New York City. The Village Voice calls the MoCCA Festival "the best small-press nexus (anywhere!)" Now BIGGER than ever! An incredible weekend of comic and cartoon art exhibitors, panels, lectures, sketches, autographs, and more! Wired Magazine online calls ACT-I-VATE, "The premiere webcomics collective"!
Visit table 311 to meet the cartoonists of ACT-I-VATE. A wide variety of books by AIV'ers will be available for sale, including BRAWL (Dean Haspiel and Michel Fiffe), FREDDIE & ME (Mike Dawson), A HOUSE DIVIDED (Leland Purvis), SHOOTING WAR (Dan Goldman), THE SALON (Nick Bertozzi), SHUTTERBUG FOLLIES (Jason Little), THE VAGABONDS (Josh Neufeld), JERSEY GODS (Joe Infurnari), NIKOLAI DANTE (Simon Fraser), THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAVIOR 28 (Mike Cavallaro), and more!
Also, get a glimpse at a special upcoming ACT-I-VATE project!
Current scheduled appearances are as follows, with more being added:
SATURDAY:
12 pm - 1pm JAH FURRY, AIV's "Minister of Hype" kicks things off, joined by TIM HAMILTON (Pet Sitter, Floating Elephant) 1pm - 2 pm MIKE CAVALLARO (Parade (with fireworks), Loviathan) & NATHAN SHREIBER (Power Out) 2 pm - 3 pm MOLLY CRABAPPLE (Backstage, and this year's MOCCA poster artist) 3 pm - 4 pm DAN GOLDMAN (Kelly) & KEVIN COLDEN (Fishtown) 4 pm - 5 pm JENNIFER HAYDEN (Underwire) and JIM DOUGAN (Sam & Lilah)
SUNDAY
11-12 pm NATHAN SHREIBER (Power Out) 12 pm -1 pm MIKE CAVALLARO (Parade (with fireworks), Loviathan) & TIM HAMILTON (Pet Sitter, Floating Elephant) 1 pm - 2 pm JIM DOUGAN (Sam & Lilah) 2 pm - 3 pm JENNIFER HAYDEN (Underwire) 3 pm - 4 pm JAH FURRY
THOMAS BAEHR (The End Is Here) will be manning his own table (#215), so be sure to visit him as well.
Where? 69th Regiment Armory 68 Lexington Avenue, between 25th and 26th Streets
When? June 6th and 7th, 11am-6pm
Cost? $10 per day $15 per weekend MoCCA Members: $10 per weekend
Website: www.moccany.org
Be sure to check out http://WWW.ACT-I-VATE.COM -- where everyday is Free Comic Book Day!
Tales From The Great War Part 3 Coming Soon!
Earth 2100
Over the last few months I've had the privilege of working with the post-production team at GuerrillaFx to create animated Graphic Novel elements for a very special television project called Earth 2100 for ABC News. Illustrations by yours truly as well as those of my studiomate, George O'Connor and Deep6ers, Tim Hamilton and Leland Purvis were all used to create these animations. This two hour television event uses these illustrated segments to put a human face to the predictions made by experts about the changes to our civilization and our planet over the course of this century.
Click the image above to see a news piece about the Earth 2100. The special airs June 2nd at 9pm on ABC.
Act-i-vate Primer Sneak Peek!
I just finished my 12 page story entitled, "Memoirs of the Kid Immortal!" for the upcoming Act-i-vate Primer and to celebrate, I'm sharing this cheeky sneaky peeky! Click the above image for a full size look. For more such previews, stay tooned! I'll be posting more as we get closer to the release date.
OUTED! The Act-i-vate Primer!
JK Parkin of Robot 6 posted this announcement regarding the upcoming Act-i-vate print venture, The Act-i-vate Primer! The official announcement of this project was made at our recent event at Bergen St. Comics on Free Comic Book Day but I suspect JK had other sources…
I seem to remember reading something about a potential anthology of work from the webcomics collective ACT-I-VATE, but I don’t think I’ve seen a formal announcement yet — unless an Amazon.com listing is considered an announcement.
In any event, it looks like IDW is putting out the ACT-I-VATE Primer in the fall. The book is due Oct. 29, and the site lists the contributors as Dean Haspiel, Nick Bertozzi, Michael Cavallaro, Mike Dawson, Simon Fraser, Michel Fiffe, Tim Hamilton, Ulises Farinas, Leland Purvis, Joe Infurnari, Roger Langridge, Molly Crabapple, John Leavitt, Pedro Camargo and Jim Dougan.
Haspiel, it appears, will have a new Billy Dogma story in it (which is, I bet, where we’ll see this), while Langridge says he’s doing a “Mugwhump” story set before the current strip started. According to Amazon, all the material will be new: “The ACT-I-VATE PRIMER is a PRINT EXCLUSIVE anthology by many of the Act-I-Vate creators none of the material in this book will appear on the Act-I-Vate website for at least one year from publication date.”
So now that it's out there swimming in the digital ether, I thought I'd post a little preview of one of my pages from said book:
This 12 page story is a prelude to the Act-i-vate story and is a memoir of Victor 'The Kid Immortal' Kronos. We see his rise and ultimate fall as a brutal Battle Brawler and, of course, as…ULTRA-lad!
Publishers Weekly Talks Webcomics with SMITH Magazine!
“Smith is known for high quality work and for getting the work published,” said Smith literary agent ICM's Kate Lee, “and publishers that do graphics know this.” Shooting War, the first webcomic published on Smith, was published by Grand Central Publishing in November 2007 and A.D.: New Orleans After the Deluge by Josh Neufeld will be released by Pantheon on August 18th. Current projects being serialized on Smith are Next Door Neighbor, an anthology of next-door neighbor stories edited by Dean Haspiel, and Graphic Therapy, an autobiographical graphic series by Emily Steinberg.
Publishers Weekly posted an interesting piece about webcomics this week. In it they talk about the many ways SMITH Magazine has used webcomics to tell unique personal stories. SMITH magazine success stories, Shooting War and A.D. New Orleans After the Deluge provide context for the site's current projects including Next Door Neighbor. They even acknowledge Alexis Sottile's and my recent Eisner nomination for Vs. Click here to read the article.
Graphic NYC Profiles Joe Infurnari
Graphic NYC, the blog profiling New York City's graphic novelists, has posted their profile on yours truly. The post features more stunning photography from my recent shoot with Seth Kushner. It also has a brilliant and insightful essay by comics historian and journalist, Chris Irving. Working with both of these gentlemen has been a delight and I'm so thankful to have had this opportunity. Here's just a taste:
Daring to be Different with Joe Infurnari:
“I just figured that you’re not going to get anywhere by doing something that everybody else is doing or doing something like everybody else; so do something that’s retarded enough that nobody would dare,” Joe Infurnari says from his drawing table. “The challenge is to make something that sounds nuts actually work. If you can do that then you have something.”