Stumptown Comics Fest is Portland's celebration of indie comics and creators. It's a convention style setup, with rows and rows of tables each run by a comic book writer or artist or publishing press. The style of the books and creations featured are, like all art forms, vastly different from each other and genuinely unique. I went last year, my first year attending, and fell madly and completely in love with the event. I spent hours wandering, slowly taking in what every table and artist had to offer, and $200 later I left the fest with a glow, affectionately clutching my treasures to my chest. I'd been looking forward to this year's event for months now, being sure I had the day off of work and the spending money set aside. I attended the event on Saturday and I've decided to share my findings with you all in detail.
I started reading comic books back in 1999. Well, that's partially true. I started reading Archie comic books back in the 80's. Every week I spent my allowance on at least one Archie Digest and would proceed to read it half a dozen times, memorizing each panel to the point where reading the story played more like a cartoon on TV than a book I was reading. But after I entered high school my reading preferences changed, and while I still occasionally read from my stacks of Archie comics, I no longer sought out new books or expanded my interest in the comics genre. It wasn't until 1999 that I met a girl who introduced me to Warren Ellis's Transmetropolitan, and then to Garth Ennis's Preacher, it was then that I fell head over heels into the comic book world again. And so I started to explore what that world had to offer to adults, and my findings were surprising. Creative and intricate story lines, excellent writing, gorgeous art, vibrant colors, let's just say that I started to read quite a lot of comic books after that. I gravitated more toward the indie comics or at least to the comics that didn't focus on the typical Marvel or DC world of Superheros, and there I comfortably stayed for many many years. It wasn't until just these past few years that comic book writer Gail Simone lured me into her world with her indie creation Welcome to Tranquility which floated me over to her other title about a group of second rate villains, Secret Six. Then shortly thereafter she took up the Wonder Woman title therefore making me curious as to what I may be missing from this fantastic writer if I continued to avoid the mainstream superhero stuff. So I started reading Wonder Woman which snowballed a little into her Birds of Prey run which led me to some Huntress titles and now I'm reaching even further into the pot and digging around for some Black Canary/Green Arrow runs. Like I said, snowballed.
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