Portland: Stumptown.

Stumptown Comicfest was nice and small, taking place in a cozy convention center room instead of the more sprawling sort of affair I imagined.

I managed to talk to Aaron Diaz of Dresden Codak fame without making too much of an ass of myself. I ended up buying a print and talking to him about his upcoming shirt sales. At one point he said "I'm hoping to eventually go fulltime on the comic and be able to put out a new strip more than once a month.", to which I nodded knowingly.

There was a fairly good feminist presence at the con, too, which was encouraging. I talked to the people at the Bitch magazine exhibit for a bit, and they pointed me at the Girl-Wonder.org exhibit. (Girls Read Comics, which I've linked to before, is hosted on their site.) They had a sketchbook out that they were encouraging people to sketch in, and so I took a few minutes to sketch Professor McMoosington in a disco pose. "You must sign it!" they said, so I did. "And you should put your webcomic url on it!", so I did that too. I found the act of sketching and talking about my comic to these people rather terrifying - I'm fairly comfortable with the comic in the context of my usual social circle, but it was rather humbling knowing I was surrounded by more established comic artists.

In other news, Portland's eastside is just as soul-crushing as Seattle's eastside. What is it about traveling east over a body of water that makes people say "We must build acres of soulless corporate park here!"? Fortunately it is a quick MAX ride back to civilization. Now I am sitting in a warm Irish pub drying out from the rain and listening to three Irish gentlemen talking heatedly about religion.

Portland: Stumptown.

Stumptown Comicfest was nice and small, taking place in a cozy convention center room instead of the more sprawling sort of affair I imagined.

I managed to talk to Aaron Diaz of Dresden Codak fame without making too much of an ass of myself. I ended up buying a print and talking to him about his upcoming shirt sales. At one point he said "I'm hoping to eventually go fulltime on the comic and be able to put out a new strip more than once a month.", to which I nodded knowingly.

There was a fairly good feminist presence at the con, too, which was encouraging. I talked to the people at the Bitch magazine exhibit for a bit, and they pointed me at the Girl-Wonder.org exhibit. (Girls Read Comics, which I've linked to before, is hosted on their site.) They had a sketchbook out that they were encouraging people to sketch in, and so I took a few minutes to sketch Professor McMoosington in a disco pose. "You must sign it!" they said, so I did. "And you should put your webcomic url on it!", so I did that too. I found the act of sketching and talking about my comic to these people rather terrifying - I'm fairly comfortable with the comic in the context of my usual social circle, but it was rather humbling knowing I was surrounded by more established comic artists.

In other news, Portland's eastside is just as soul-crushing as Seattle's eastside. What is it about traveling east over a body of water that makes people say "We must build acres of soulless corporate park here!"? Fortunately it is a quick MAX ride back to civilization. Now I am sitting in a warm Irish pub drying out from the rain and listening to three Irish gentlemen talking heatedly about religion.