ACT-I-VATE Secret Origins!
Tales of ACT-I-VATORS before they were famous.

“Me Draw Pretty Some Day”
By Tim Hamilton

Imagine it if you can. Way, way back before Star Wars Prequels, before the internet, back around the time a strange new “fourth network” entity known as the “Fox Television Network” was just a pool of swirling, congealing peptides. It was 1987 and I was a poor artist in Pittsburgh, PA fresh out of a two-year art program looking for work. At this time, the comic book industry was going through a period known as the “Black and White explosion.” There were many small companies popping up and publishing alternatives to Marvel and DC’s mainstream super hero lines.

But that’s another story.

In fact, me getting my first job in comics is another story too. This story is about my very first art job out of school. After Graduation, my roommates and I had no phone, of course no Internet and in fact, no hot water for showers! We took many trips into the job placement office of our school and stunk the place up while we looked through all the terrible art jobs we never heard of while in school. The list included; illustrating the packaging of no-name brand toys, drawing line art for teddy bear coloring books and even testing out new drugs. Yes, drug testing. The woman on the phone at the pharmaceutical company sounded so cute we almost did that for a weekend!
Where were the animation jobs?! Movie and TV set design jobs? Why wouldn’t Marvel Comics hire me??! They must have received my amazing sample packet by now!

In a depressed state, my friends and I often bought as many six packs of Mickey’s Big Mouth as we could afford and drank away our sorrows. It often ended with someone breaking one of our betamax tapes and me throwing up in the bathtub.

Finally though, after months of self-pity, a ray of hope arrived in the job placement office. A charming fellow, who I’ll call “Ted,” came to our school and recruited artists to help him start a new gaming company. This was something we could sink our teeth into! Illustrating Wizards, Trolls and creatures who could take 100 hit points before dying! Ted hired myself, and a few others, with starting salaries of 30,000 a year and promises of a new gaming empire! We immediately went out, got ourselves a six-pack of Mickey’s Big Mouth and celebrated until someone broke my Walkman while I threw up in the bathroom sink.

We should have been suspicious of Ted when, to meet with him, we had to take three buses out to rural Pittsburgh (picture that house where Buffalo Bill lived in Silence of the Lambs). Ted seemed to live with his aging mother who sat silent in the living room watching hit shows like Family Ties and St. Elsewhere while we drew characters like White Dust Wizard and Magical Mushroom Monsters. Of course, after a month or so of illustrating fantasy kingdoms and wondering why Ted always seemed to have the sniffles, it became apparent we were not going to get paid. The school looked into his past for us and found that not everything he said was quite true. No he did NOT play for the Dallas cowboys, help in the creation of the Dungeon and Dragons cartoon show or write a proposed spin off of Cheers called “Carla and Kids.” He flipped out when he found out we had looked into his past. He had his mother write us a terse note informing us he could no longer work for people who did not trust him, and who were unwilling to wait a few years for our first pay checks.



My friend Eric, who did quite a bit of writing for this new gaming company, refused to let Ted get off that easy. With out the Internet mind you, using only telephones and … well, just telephones, he found out that Ted was actually wanted by the F.B.I! Seems he had been running seminars (the kind that people pay to get into) at hotel conference rooms and then skipping town without paying the hotel among other things. Eric set up a meeting with Ted under the guise of wanting to patch things up and give him all the writing he’d done for the new game they had been creating. They were to meet at Eides Comics in downtown Pittsburgh. When Ted came into the store, undercover F.B.I. agents were milling all about the place pretending to be interested in the latest issue of “Watchmen” or “Dark Horse Presents.” Ted was quickly lead off in handcuffs as Eric snapped pictures while customers at Eides went back to continually asking the employees if issue four of Frank Miller’s Dark Knight had arrived yet.



As we sat and raised our collective glasses of Jack Daniels (the lure of Mickey’s Big mouth had worn off) to celebrate a lesson well learned, I talked of Malibu/ Eternity Comics, the new comic company I just found out I was going to work for. I was going to do a book called “The Trouble with Girls,” while classmate and future “Spider-Girl” artist, Pat Olliffe was going to illustrate a book called “Strike Force,” for the same company.



“No more working for undependable people who would not pay!” I exclaimed. “In a few months, after they see my published work, Marvel or DC would be knocking on my door asking me to illustrate Star Brand or Ambush Bug!” You’d think I would have learned my lesson, but that night someone busted our record player as I puked on the bathroom floor slightly to the left of the toilet.

At that moment, some where in New York City, future ACT-I-VATE founder Dean Haspiel and writer Martin Powell approached Malibu/ Eternity comics with an idea called, “The Verdict.”
But that’s a story for another time.

"Is it fair to include an entire collective of comics? When you can't pick just one, I think so. ACT-I-VATE now numbers 42 stories, written and drawn by a number of independent comic book creators, including names like Molly Crabapple, Dean Haspiel, and Dan Goldman. The stories range from a treatise on super-heroics (The Transmigration of ULTRA-Lad!), to psychedelic romance ( Kelly), to the silent film pastiche (Vulcan & Vishnu), and other oddities. If there's a downside, it's that the artists aren't always on a timetable, so many of the best stories have yet to reach a resolution."

Article: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2704,2327109,00.asp

ACT-I-VATE link: http://www.pcmag.com/slideshow_viewer/0,1205,l=230512&s=25306&a=230521&po=7,00.asp?p=y

The first official word on my upcoming project with writer extraordinaire J.M. DeMatteis hit today in the wake of the SDCC. Read his interview about "The Life And Times Of Savior 28" HERE.

If you don't already know about the comics, film & gaming news website, THE COMIC COLLECTIVE, now's a great time to check it out since they've just added the video interview I did with TCC's Bradley Hatfield during this year's New York Comicon. Brad and I talked about my current ACT-I-VATE comic, LOVIATHAN.
Click HERE to see the video.

"Comix aren't just for comix readers anymore."

http://media.libsyn.com/media/wordballoon/WBdeanhaspiel08.mp3

John Siuntres was kind enough to interview me this week over the phone for his excellent comix podcast website, Word Balloon, where I discuss digital comix, my Eisner Award nominated Billy Dogma, Street Code, Next-Door Neighbor, my collaborations with Jonathan Ames on THE ALCOHOLIC, Jeff Parker on X-MEN FIRST CLASS, and my upcoming kids book, MO & JO: FIGHTING TOGETHER FOREVER, with underground comix legend, Jay Lynch, for Francoise Mouly's Toon Books, and much more. The podcast runs 54:25.

For more cool WORD BALLOON interviews: http://www.wordballoon.com/

http://www.newsarama.com/comics/080723-StreetCode.html

A nice, concise interview about the origins of my new webcomic, STREET CODE.

If any of you are young enough (or old enough) to buy Mad Magazine, you’ll find a two-page comic illustrated by me (written by Dick Debartolo) in the August issue (with all the super heroes on the cover) which should be on the stands now.
Here’s a peek:



Tim Hamilton

I did a brief entry over at the First Second blog on the use of the graphic Halo.

Thomas Baehr's The End is Here has been featured on Newsarama! Chris Arrant interviews Thomas Baehr about getting straight A's: Antarctica, American Comics and Act-i-vate! Click here to read for yourself.

Pop Candy's Whitney Matheson has an exclusive preview of my upcoming Zuda webcomix series, STREET CODE, at USA Today:

http://blogs.usatoday.com/popcandy/2008/07/exclusive-previ.html