I got to meet a couple of people in person that I’d encountered via Twitter and other places: Meg Hunt, who put together the Picture Book Report (and had some great illustrations of Alice in Wonderland) is now a Portland resident and had some of her artwork for sale. Kory Bing is another local artist with some kid-friendly comics and some adults-only comics, and I discovered her last fall when she ran a Kickstarter campaign for her Alice in Wonderland–themed card game, Borogove. Somehow I backing it at the time, so I picked up a copy this weekend (and you can too, right here). I haven’t played it yet, but the artwork is gorgeous and I love Lewis Carroll references. I also said hello to Matt Holm, half of the brother-and-sister duo behind Babymouse and Squish. (I actually met Jennifer last year at Maker Faire, but hadn’t known when I moved back that Matt is also a Portlander.)
Some of my purchases at Stumptown Comics Fest.
Here’s a few of the other things I bought this weekend: some original Americus artwork from Jonathan Hill, along with The Lorian Gendarme Guidebook for Adventuring Standards. Based on the fantasy world of Apathea Ravenchilde (the book-within-a-book of Americus), this is made to look like a role-playing monster manual which in turn looks like a guidebook for newly enlisted fighters. As Hill put it, it was a great excuse to draw a bunch of monsters that didn’t make it into Americus. (The printed version is only available for purchase at cons, but you can download a PDF here.
I also picked up a copy of Zombies vs. Robots Aventure (is that supposed to be “Adventure”? I dunno) by Chris Ryall and various artists from Bridge City Comics, who had a bunch of overstock graphic novels at half off. So far I’ve only read a bit of it, which was melodramatic and over the top. But, hey, it’s got robots and zombies.
Finally, from Sparkplug Comics I picked up two books by Jason Shiga: Bookhunter and Fleep. I’d actually read both of them before online at Shiga’s website, and I remember liking both of them. Bookhunter is about a crack team of bookhunters from the Oakland Public Library tracking down a valuable stolen book — picture Jason Bourne as a librarian. Fleep is a series of strips about a guy who wakes up in a phone booth encased in concrete, and has to figure out a solution before he runs out of oxygen using only the contents of his pocket.
Stan Sakai signing autographs at the Dark Horse Booth.
There were some bigger-name cartoonists there, but I spent most of my time talking to independent artists, people who did webcomics or self-published books. I met Blue Delliquanti who likes making comics about robots, and I flipped through The Chairs’ Hiatus by Matthew Bogart about a woman from a popular band who just wants to be anonymous for a while. The folks at Dill Pickle Club have a zine-style series called Oregon History Comics which tells ten stories, from women’s suffrage to the Black Panthers to the Vanport Flood of 1948. Shing Yin Khor’s Marlowe the Monster is an incredibly adorable webcomic that’s made with photographs of actual sculpted clay monsters. (Just a warning: there are some adult situations, so you may want to preview before showing your kids.)
I said hello to Paul Guinan and Anina Bennett (pictured on page 1), the couple behind the alternate history Boilerplate and Frank Reade (which Jim Kelly reviewed in February). They recently had a gallery show at Powell’s Books displaying a lot of their artwork and photography from the Frank Reade book, and it was pretty cool to see the images from the book at full-size. They also tipped me off about Trek in the Park. It’s sort of like Shakespeare in the park, but, you know, with Star Trek. I hear it’ll be back this August, so I’ll try to catch it then.
