Greetings from Stumptown!

Right now, my brain is Comics! Comics! Comics! Some of that is having been at Stumptown Comics Fest this weekend, but there’s also the MOOC and some other stuff going on. However, for the other stuff, there will be more to say next week than this week, so this week will focus on the Comics Fest and a couple of epiphanies I had there.

I believe most of my regular readers are not really into comics, so perhaps a good starting point is to give you some idea of what attending the fest is like. I know I haven’t settled on a regular schedule yet, but I will be reviewing more comics and at some point you may just decide it’s worth looking into.

The first thing I need to do is give kudos to the organizers for a fantastic job. I remember when it was just a bunch of tables set up in one conference room, and as much as it has grown and improved, everything seemed to run amazingly smoothly. That didn’t happen by accident. They put in a lot of hard work, they arranged for more volunteers, and more time than they needed for starting out, and for the time I was there, everything seemed to work really well. (I got there at 9:00 AM Saturday, and left around 1:30 PM.)

I think some of that quality has to be responsible for the great turnout of exhibitors. Yes, locally we have an embarrassment of riches, but there were people who traveled to be here too, and there were some pretty prestigious names, and clearly they believe in the value of this fest.

We start at entering the Oregon Convention Center, easily accessible by MAX, Streetcar, and Bus 6. The center is vast. I was glad that I was at the volunteer orientation the night before to kind of get the feel of it. There were several other events going on that day, including the Gathering of the Guilds (workers in glass, metal, beads, wood, and weaving), a ceramics exhibit (I guess they don’t have a guild), and a dance thing that I think was a multi-age competition, but I am not sure. Fortunately, there were signs all over, with both posters for individual events, and signs for the center point out where various conference rooms and meeting rooms would be.

Tickets could be purchased in advance, but if not it had to be done at the venue box office. This did confuse some people, and it was sort of a pain because the box office was on a different level than the fest, but you could kind of see where you needed to go, and hey, when I was a kid, riding escalators was a treat. Printing your tickets at home could be seen as more convenient, but most people seemed to feel the regular tickets with the Dark Horse lanyard were cooler, and I tend to agree.

Now that you are ticketed and ready to go, you will see that the fest takes up both sides of the area. On one side, behind the Information/Registration booth, are the conference rooms, where the panels and workshops happen. There were amazing options. You could find information on the business aspects, history, storytelling, and drawing workshops, as well as the ever important portfolio evaluations.

I attended Wonder Woman in Bondage, which I guess was more psychological in nature, but I thought it would be most useful while I finish up this Gender through Comics class. Honestly, I should have planned more time and attended more. Some of them sounded really great. However, I’ve been kind of overdoing it lately (which I will probably get into more Wednesday.) However, this was my first workshop, and I sort of increase my participation each year, so maybe next year.

Across from the conference rooms you had the exhibition hall. The thing you need to understand here is that if I counted right, there were over 200 exhibitors, and yet lines, moved, navigation was easy, and the space was used really well. Stumptown isn’t glamorous like San Diego. There were no movie or television stars there. These are artists and writers and vendors. I believe the most famous person there was Bill Willingham (Fables).

There is also less of the pageantry. There were some costumes. I think I saw 7 adults in costume, and probably twice that many kids. Comic-themed t-shirts were more common. However, some of that could have been timing, and some of them I just may not have realized they were costumes. Like the couple with red and yellow face paint, or the woman with black lace wings, or the Na’vi, I was pretty sure those were costumes.

Now, with the guy in army fatigues, or the natty 30’s style vest and hat, or the girl in polka dot sundress and blue hair, those could be characters or that could just be Portland. People totally dress like that here. One my way home I passed a clown walking near Pioneer Courthouse Square. That’s not the Comics Fest; that’s just Portland.

The point is, there are things the Stumptown is, and things that it isn’t, but I really like what it is:  well-done, comics-centric, friendly, and layered like matryoshka. The more you open it up, the more you find.