Congratulations to Winners of the 4th Annual Stumptown Comics Fest Trophy Awards!

The Stumptown Comics Fest Trophy Awards works to bring recognition to the amazing and creative writers, artists, and publishers that the Stumptown Comics Foundation strives to support. Publications under review for these awards were been submitted by the various talented folk involved in the Stumptown Comics Fest event. Submissions were judged not by a panel of "professionals", but by those attending the Fest on Saturday, April 24, meaning the trophies were awarded based on the popular vote of actual comics fans. Without further ado...

...congratulations to the winners of this year's Stumptown Comics Fest Trophy Awards!

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• Outstanding Debut: The Complete Ouija Interviews, Sarah Becan
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• Outstanding Writing: Boilerplate, Paul Guinan & Anina Bennett
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• Outstanding Art: Boilerplate, Paul Guinan
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• Outstanding Small Press: Bearfight!, BT Livermore
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• Outstanding Publication Design: Panorama, Stephenny Godfrey
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• Outstanding D.I.Y.: Bearfight!, BT Livermore
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• Outstanding Webcomic: Wondermark, David Malki
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• Mystery Award: Portland mayor Sam Adams, in recognition of his naming April as Comic Book month for the third consecutive year
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This year, the Trophy Awards ceremony was hosted by podcaster Bobby "Fatboy" Roberts, cartoonist Carolyn Main, and Shannon Wheeler (of The New Yorker and Too Much Coffee Man fame), and was held Saturday night at Cosmic Monkey Comics.

The awards ceremony was followed by the ever-popular and rowdy Comic Art Battle. Hosted by local Marvel comics scribe Jeff Parker, the Comic Art Battle has been described as a cross between Pictionary and professional wrestling... and it was definitely not a scene to miss for those involved in the independent comics scene. We hear there was even a "dance off" tie-breaker!

Our appreciation goes out not only to those who coordinated the event, but to all who submitted their work for review, and to the comics fans who entered their votes. Thanks you all, and we hope to see you again next year!

The Stumptown Volunteer Appreciation and After-Fest Party 2010

Tonight, after the close of the 7th Annual Stumptown Comics Fest, head over to the Bossanova Ballroom for our official after-party, in appreciation of our amazing volunteers for this year's festivities!

The evening will feature a live DJ set by our surprise guest Paul Pope(!) plus a screening of his movie "Psychenaut". We'll also have music and visual performance by Twigs Lvov (Jack Lewis), and perhaps a surprise or two... The doors open at 8pm and after-party entrance is $8 cash, $5 with your exhibitor badge, and FREE for our lovely volunteers--just show your volunteer badge to get in!

Upstairs from the after-party, the Bossanova Lounge will be hosting the April Dr. Sketchy's Anti-Art School, featuring the sultry siren of burlesque, Miss Harvest Moon! Doors for Dr. Sketchy's will open at 7:30pm and the drawing starts at 8pm. There is a $10 cash entrance fee, which will ALSO grant you entrance to the main floor event at 9:30pm.

The Bossanova Ballroom is at 722 east Burnside Street in Portland Oregon. Sponsored by Baby Tattoo Books, Dr. Sketchy's Anti-Art School, MacTarnahan's Brewing, The Royal Tease, The Bossanova Ballroom, Wacom, The Stumptown Comic Book Foundation, and darkmonkeygod.

Welcome to Stumptown 2010!

Well, hello and welcome again!

Quite a year since many of us last met here at the Doubletree. April is now not only Comic Book Month here in Portland (check out copies of the third annual official decree around the Fest - courtesy of Portland Mayor, Sam Adams), but seemingly across the nation! We are very grateful to Comic-Con International's San Francisco Wonder Con, The New York based Museum of Cartoon and Comic Art MoCCA Festival and C2E2 - the new Chicago Pop Culture event from the NYCC organizers, for working to share April with us. Thanks gang (and shout out to Staple and ECCC, as well)!

Speaking of great thanks, please be sure to let our guests and exhibitors know how much you appreciate their making the trek to Stumptown. Dean Haspiel (ACT-I-VATE, The Alcoholic) and Paul Pope are winging in all the way from New York, Batton Lash and Jackie Estrada are up from San Diego,  Kate Beaton (Hark, A Vagrant) is in from the wilds of Halifax, Montreal-based Drawn and Quarterly exhibits for the 1st time and hosts R. Sikoryak and James Sturm, Graham Annable debuts his Grickle collection from Dark Horse Comics, Craig Thompson is once again taking rare time away from his drawing board during the home stretch of Habibi, Hope Larson is a host of Drink & Draw Like a Lady, Lucy Knisley created stunning badge art for us, illustrator of "Stumptown" from Oni Press Matthew Southworth is here, and home town hero Theo Ellsworth coaxed his NY based publisher Secret Acres to visit. Plus, we've got exhibitors from literally all over the world!

Sponsors are a huge part of what makes this show possible; MacTarnahan's Tap Room and Brewery, Muse Art & Design, Bob Self of Baby Tattoo Books, Portland Art Museum (bringing the R. Crumb Genesis exhibition to PDX beginning June), Brown Printing, Pollyanne Birge and the office of Mayor Sam Adams, CBLDF, Dr. Sketchy's PDX, Wacom, Alter Egos Society, and The Sequential Art Gallery, to name a few. Supporting them supports us!

More support has come from great friends of the Fest including Diana Schutz, Brian Michael Bendis, Mike Richardson, Jim Valentino, Dylan Williams, Kevin Smith, Harvest Moon, Bernadette Baker, Cort and Fatboy, and countless others. We are ever grateful to them. On a more personal note, thanks to my mom, who encouraged my love of comics throughout her life which ended abruptly last summer. You are missed. Thank you to Angie Kelley, Bob Schreck, Diego Kirsch, and all of you for your personal support of me. It means more than I can articulate.

Enough gratitude cannot be given to the Festival organizers. Many do not realize that the Stumptown Comic Book Festival and the Foundation which sponsors it are entirely volunteer based. From the people walking around handing out water to the Festival director, to the board of directors of the Foundation itself, we all do it for the love of comic books and the joy of community. Thanks go to Sequential Art Gallery proprietor and Stumptown Foundation President Kaebel Hashitani, Zeo Cohen, Dylan Meconis, Michael Cassella, John C. Worsley, Fest founder Indigo Kelleigh, Neal Skorpen, Sarah Corsiatto, New Yorker Cartoonist Shannon Wheeler, Cosmic Monkey Comics co-owner Andy Johnson, media maven Merrick Monroe, Floating World Comics owner Jason Levian, Adam Rosko, the mysterious Myrrh Larsen, Geek-in the-city and now with Things From Another World Aaron Duran, to recognize by name just some of the people responsible for wrangling this show!

Once again, we end where we begin: with you. Thank YOU, because without your continued outright love and championing of comic books, cartooning, graphic novels, manga, graphics, or whatever else you wanna call comic books, none of this would happen. Your passion and appreciation provide the support and drive that it takes to make the Stumptown Comic Book Festival a community-based event celebrating the thriving artistic and cultural expression that is comics. May it remain so forever.

Best,

Stumptown 2010 Signing Schedule

This year we're partnering up with the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund again to provide a designated space for Guest signings. We've even managed to wrangle signings by visiting artists Mike Allred and Kurt Busiek!

Each day beginning 10AM, numbered signing tickets for that day only will be available for free from the CBLDF table (Table 25) on a first come - first served, one per artist per person basis. Yes, you can get tickets for each artist, just not more than one ticket for each artist. You will need to have your numbered ticket and line up approximately ten minutes before the signing time begins. There will be Stumptown Volunteers to guide you.

Saturday April 24
Mike Allred 12PM-1PM
Paul Pope 1PM - 3PM
Kurt Busiek 3PM - 4PM

Sunday April 25
Mike Allred 12PM-1PM
Craig Thompson 2PM-4PM and possibly beyond.
Paul Pope 4PM-6PM

*Times are subject to change.

Again the tickets are free, but we do request you take a few minutes to familiarize yourself with what the CBLDF does and to donate to this worthy cause.

While photography is welcome, we must ask that you do not request photos with the artists during their signing times, as that slows things down quite a bit. Thank you. Generally, artists will not be doing sketching during these times, but some will have works for sale. Paul Pope's work is available at table 31.

As with past festivals, you may end up lined up outside under the covered deck, so please be sure to bring weather appropriate dress. We'll make sure you don't get wet, but can't control the temperature!

Stumptown Comics Fest 2010 in the News

As always, the month leading up to the Stumptown Comics Fest is a busy one, and an extra busy one at that! The event is organized by volunteers united by our love for comics and comic art, and we do what we can to make the most of a single weekend of comics regalia. In the weeks leading up to this year's Fest, we have seen a wonderful amount of support from individuals and media organizations--both local and online. In our final week of preparation, we would like to extend a giant THANK YOU to the people who support the Stumptown Comics Fest and understand everything the Foundation has set out to achieve.

This is our seventh year of organizing the Fest and it is largely due to the support of the public that we have managed to grow so large. So, here's a little recap of some of the media support Stumptown Comics Fest 2010 has received...

April 1: The month of April opened with the 6th Annual Stumptown Comics Fest Art Show, hosted in the Antoinette Hatfield Hall of the Portland Center for the Performing Arts. This year's show featured over 40 artists, many of whom will be exhibiting at the Stumptown Comics Fest, and showcased 80 unique pieces of comics art. The opening reception was kicked off by Portland's own Mayor Sam Adams officially declaring April 2010 the city's third annual Comic Book Month. Mayor Sam Adams and his office have been strong proponents of the arts and we are ever honored to have the support of our wonderful city.

April 8: Local radio show Words & Pictures, hosted on KBOO by S.W. Conser, welcomed Stumptown Comics Fest director Shannon Stewart and Stumptown Comics Foundation president Kaebel Hashitani to talk about Comic Book Month and this year's Fest. The 30-minute broadcast is available to stream or download on the KBOO website, and Shannon and Kaebel both did a great job in their representation of the organization. Thanks guys!

April 12: The multi-disciplinary comic fan that is Kevin Smith graced Portland for one glorious evening, and gave the Fest a great shoutout ; "This April, Portland, OR is (by Mayoral Proclamation) CITY OF COMIC BOOKS! So get your rump down to Stumptown Fest!" We were floored to have Kevin mention the event, and thanks to an attentive website administrator didn't have any issues hosting the stream of new visitors Kevin's link sent our way. Thanks man, truly.

April 14: The morning City Council meeting saw a few unusual additions to its schedule of speakers, including the Stumptown Comics Foundation's president Kaebel Hashitani, who attended the meeting to speak on behalf of the Stumptown Comics Fest, talking to our City Council about the myriad of ways the Fest and its exhibitors contribute to the local economy and arts culture. The Portland Mercury's Blogtown posted a great article covering the testimony. If reading that article isn't enough and you'd like to hear the whole presentation, you can watch this video of the City Council meeting on their website; scroll down on the menu under the embedded video and click on Agenda Item #490 to go directly to Kaebel's presentation on behalf of the Fest.

April 15: The pre-Fest issue of the Portland Mercury (Vol. 10, No. 47) dedicated their book section to Stumptown Comics Fest! We recommend you visit the website to read the reviews, or go grab a copy of the paper while it lasts in newsstands.

April 16: The long-respected online and paper publication The Comics Journal posted a very thorough "Stumptown Comics Fest 2010 Preview" article. The post includes a large number of artists, writers, and publishers exhibiting at this year's Fest, and asked them what sort of exciting things attendees of the Fest can expect to see at their tables. This article is a great resource for people planning on spending their weekend at the Stumptown Comics Fest, and even includes links to respective websites. Well done!

April 17: Mayor Sam Adams continued to show his support of the Fest by lending us a hand in our search for volunteers when for volunteer signups and included a link back to our Volunteer page. Mayor Sam isn't the only one who has repeatedly given us support on Twitter, and we appreciate every single retweet and @stumptowncomics we get!

April 19: Just yesterday online publication Ain't It Cool News posted a great interview with Paul Pope, who was a surprise addition to this year's guest list (and who is also spinning tunes at our official afterparty!). In the article "THE AICN Q&A: PAUL POPE", Russel (a local writer and illustrator) and Pope cover so many topics we could never summarize it accurately... well, AICN's line of "Mike Russell Delivers A Must-Read Interview With Paul Pope! BATTLING BOY, BATMAN: YEAR 100 And Much More Discussed!" is pretty good. You should really hop over and spend some time reading about one of America's comics greats. We are very proud that Pope is joining us this year and look forward to what he will bring to the Stumptown Comics Fest!

Okay, maybe that wasn't really a "little" recap! And there's more on the way; promotions will continue over the course of the week, and we look forward to seeing what people write/blog/tweet/talk about after the Fest. If you think we've missed anything, please give us a tip on and we'll try to include it in our next roundup of Stumptown Comics Fest coverage!

You better go see Kevin Smith @ the Crystal on Monday April 12!

Yep, that Kevin Smith! The one whose first foray into the wilds of comic book writing came outta Portland's own Oni Press. Oh, and, you know, the ultra talented man behind some really fun films too. One night only at McMenamins Crystal Ballroom, so check it out PDQ PDX!

SCF2010 Surprise Special Guest: Paul Pope!

Stumptown is honored to be welcoming indie-comics wunderkind Paul Pope as a Guest of the April 24-25 2010 Comics Fest!

Pope originally launched himself onto the self-publishing stage in 1993 with his genre-defying work Sin Titulo. His second published work, The Ballad of Doctor Richardson, earned Pope an Eisner nomination and was later reprinted by Portland's Dark Horse Comics. In the years since, Pope's vicious, 'take-no-prisoners' approach to brush work, and his unique world-building talents have earned him numerous accolades over the years on such work as THB, Batman: Year 100, Heavy Liquid, and One-Trick Ripoff, and he is also the only American comics artist to have worked with Japanese manga publisher Kodansha for over five years!

We'll be posting additional information about Paul's appearance in the weeks leading up to the Comics Fest, so keep checking back!