Portland, Oregon's sixth annual Stumptown Comics Fest, held April 18 and 19, was a raging success by almost all accounts. Around 700 people turned up in the first two hours of Saturday alone, and the halls of the Lloyd Center Doubletree were bustling and noisy for almost the entire weekend. According to organizer Shannon Stewart, attendance was at 2500, up from 2100 last year. Most of Portland's enormous cartooning scene was there in one capacity or another, as well a lot of cartoonists from the rest of the country, many of whom seemed to be mulling over the idea of moving there.
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A be-turbaned Jeff Parker presides at the Stumptown Trophy Awards. |
Most of the larger Pacific Northwest comics publishers had tables and signings—Dark Horse played host to creators including Achewood's Chris Onstad, a newly minted Portland transplant. Next to them, Larry Marder had his own table, where he was signing his Dark Horse collection, Beanworld: Wahoolazuma! Oni, Top Shelf and Fantagraphics all staked out positions on the walls of the show room, too. There were long lines for Comic Book Legal Defense Fund-hosted signings by Jeff Smith and Craig Thompson; the latter also presented a slideshow detailing his process for working on his long-anticipated Habibi. A few mainstream creators were on hand, as well—Gail Simone was signing her essay collection You'll All Be Sorry! and Joe Quinones was showing off pages from his forthcoming Green Lantern serial in Wednesday Comics.
But the focus of Stumptown is on very small boutique publishers (like Little Otsu, which debuted Lilli Carré's Nine Ways to Disappear), and especially self-published cartoonists and webcomics artists. The buzz book of the weekend was arguably Erika Moen's DAR: A Super Girly Top Secret Comic Diary, a collection of her webcomic which sold over 100 copies over the weekend. Moen shared a table with Lucy Knisley, who also sold a pile of her Simon & Schuster-published French Milk and her new self-published color collection Pretty Little Book; the Moen/Knisley team debuted the collaboration, Drawn to You, and a much-gawked-at oversized poster called "Sexytimes." (The most buzzed-about not-yet-published project was probably Farel Dalrymple's The Wrenchies.)
Dylan Meconis debuted the print collection of her old vampires-in-the-French-Revolution webcomic Bite Me!, promoted with bumper stickers reading "Real Vampires Don't Fricking Sparkle." Meredith Gran had the first copies of the third Octopus Pie collection, An Interstate Oasis, and also sold her final copies of the first volume. Special guest Carla Speed McNeil brought five new mini-comics, including a few detailing her approach to character design--which was also the subject of her well-attended panel on Saturday. Another special guest, C. Spike Trotman, won both the Best Writing and Best Art categories of the Stumptown Trophy Awards for her Templar, Arizona books, and led her team to victory at the "comic art battle" held Saturday night at local fixture Cosmic Monkey Comics. Stumptown's founder, Indigo Kelleigh, has retired from organizing the convention, but he was at a table of his own, promoting his new Tintin-inspired web strip "The Adventures of Ellie Connelly."
Derek Kirk Kim offered copies of his forthcoming First Second collaboration with Gene Yang, The Eternal Smile, as prizes for a Stumptown bingo game he'd constructed (sample squares: "any comic with the word 'monkey' on the cover," "a photo of someone with more than 4 visible piercings," "a photo of Craig Thompson getting his photo taken"). The minicomics nexus of the show was Sparkplug's table, which featured new projects by Jesse Reklaw, Vanessa Davis and Elijah Brubaker, as well as a free anthology called Bird Hurdler, all of whose contributors (including Andrice Arp, Zack Soto and Farel Dalrymple) were at the show. Elsewhere, Sarah Oleksyk offered a free preview of the fourth chapter of Ivy, and Liz Baillie was selling a minicomic containing the first chapter of her new project Freewheel.
Portland is very proud of its quirks, and some of the most memorable aspects of Stumptown are unique to it as a festival. Besides the usual panels and spotlights, one room was devoted to workshops, including a collaborative "instant graphic novel" project and a Dr. Sketchy's Burlesque Life Drawing session. There were organized portfolio reviews by professional artists, writers and editors all day both Saturday and Sunday—not for job auditions, but to offer developing cartoonists expert critiques. And Stumptown volunteers gave free "art tours" of featured guests' tables, and even handed out cups of cold water to thirsty attendees and artists.