ACT-I-VATE is an American webcomics collective based on an original idea by Dean Haspiel and founded by Haspiel and seven other cartoonists. It started out on the blogging platform Livejournal, but has now moved to its own dedicated website.

The ACT-I-VATE collective features serialized graphic novels from over twenty-five hand-picked professional cartoonists (each of whom generally adds a new episode weekly), and is updated daily. ACT-I-VATE's artists are unpaid, and produce their work without editorial oversight. ACT-I-VATE is also free to view. In addition to the high-quality comics, the site is known for its vocal community of readers and the lengthy discussion threads between artist and reader.

ACT-I-VATE debuted on February 1st, 2006, with eight cartoonists, and added four more members on April 5, 2006. Since then, the collective has added new hand-picked cartoonists at a regular rate to achieve its current membership.

ACT-I-VATE rose to prominence when many of its artists, including Haspiel, Michel Fiffe, Mike Cavallaro, Dan Goldman, and Nick Bertozzi, began to receive publishing deals. Haspiel and Fiffe's three-issue mini-series, Brawl, a "creature romance double feature" featuring Haspiel's "Immortal" (starring Billy Dogma) and Fiffe's "Panorama," which both originated on ACT-I-VATE, was published by Image Comics in the Fall of 2007. Similarly, Parade (with Fireworks), by Mike Cavallaro, began on ACT-I-VATE, was first excerpted in New York Magazine, and later published by Image.

Other ACT-I-VATE members, such as Nikki Cook, Josh Neufeld, and Leland Purvis, are currently working on projects which in large parts came from their ACT-I-VATE work.

References

• Newsarama article on the ACT-I-VATE launch
• Associated Press Story on ACT-I-VATE
• ACT-I-VATE makes PC Mag's Top 100 Undiscovered Websites

External links

• ACT-I-VATE Livejournal Community