Portland Event of the Week: 4/24

Stumptown Comics Fest!!

I will be going to the Comics Fest this Saturday, and I wanted to let everyone else know about it: It’s Saturday and Sunday at the Lloyd Center Doubletree, and it’s only $6.

Here’s the “About”:

The Stumptown Comics Fest was started almost on a whim in 2004 by a small group of Portland-area cartoonists lamenting the lack of local convention-style outlets. While there were certainly other comic book shows in town, there weren’t any that gave much attention to the artists themselves. The dream was to design a festival with the creators as its focus, rather than dealers and work-for-hire publishers.

Using local resources, the first Fest was pulled together in just 4 months, thanks to the largely volunteer group at its nexus. It was hosted on a rainy June 6th afternoon by the Old Church, a non-profit organization whose goal is to preserve, well, an old church. The church was the beneficiary of the raffle held at the festival. All 22 exhibitor tables sold out for a full house (most of them being shared by several creators).

Cartoonists came from not only from here in Portland, but from all over the country as well – from as far out as San Francisco, Seattle, and even Detroit, Michigan, and all of the exhibitors in attendance reported it to be an excellent experience. Even with little time to promote the show, the Fest still saw a respectable attendance of 150 comics fans, and garnered favorable press from the local arts weeklies. We were also host to the second ever Comic Art Battle, put together by Portland expatriat Ezra Claytan Daniels.

The second Stumptown Comics Fest, in 2005, moved to a larger venue. The 5800+ square foot Smith Memorial Ballroom on PSU campus (also home to the 3-day Portland Zine Symposium) held over 80 tables, almost four times as many as were at the previous Fest. We also nearly quadrupled the number of exhibitors, and played host to over triple the number of attendees.

Attendance continues to increase substantially with each show. To accomodate, 2006 brought the Fest across the river to bigger and better spaces, first at the Oregon Convention Center, and subsquently settling at the Lloyd Center Doubletree, where the show remains through 2010.

Our goal is, as ever, to take over the world with comics. Help us, won’t you?

Site: http://www.stumptowncomics.com/

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Level the Playing Field with E-Formats

One thing I really like about the emerging e-book technology is that it is encouraging smaller publishers to be a little more innovative. Ooligan Press, for example, now has websites and blogs for several of their books. One of the books, Classroom Publishing, even has a blog where teachers are encouraged to post their latest projects and ideas – making the blog a great resource for other teachers. Therefore, when you buy Classroom Publishing, you are getting more than a book. You are getting a conversation with many teachers from all over the United States.

The same is true for digital comic books, that new ideas are going to emerge and allow smaller companies an edge if they can adapt faster than larger. I’m really proud that Portland is such a hub for comic books, with Bowler Hat Comics, Oni Press, Topshelf, and Dark Horse (yes, I realize Dark Horse isn’t very small) right around the corner. And I know they are adapting to the increasingly digital formats out there. Reading Jim Fallone’s “Digital Comics: Level the Playing Field Part II,” I was really struck by how much opportunity there is to be creative. I like the optimistic tone of the article, and the idea that new technology is a good thing.

Speaking of digital comics, though, as excited as I am about them, I recently talked to several comic buffs who aren’t impressed. Just out of college, both men agreed that the new iPad app could be cool, but that the iPad was too expensive for a lot of comic book readers – especially when they could read e-comics on their computers. And they admitted that they don’t really even like comics online, because they prefer the traditional format offered in the old ink and paper editions. Comics should be taller than they are wide, apparently, and that’s not true of laptops. Plus, the work that the artists, inkers, and colorists put into a comic is much more apparent on paper. So it looks like, even though there is an opportunity for comic book publishers to bring new ideas to the table, they’ll have to be really good ideas to catch some of this skeptical audience.

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