Curating the 2012 Comics Fest

This week we completed the bulk of our exhibitor confirmation and emailed all of our applicants informing them of their current status. Thanks to everyone who applied! We confirmed a lot of excellent exhibitors for our 2012 Fest, but unfortunately our space is limited, so we also also had to leave left a lot of excellent artists on the waiting list.

We consider every application we get, but our top priority is to grant space to people making comics. Some terrific game companies, non-comics illustrators, and designers of all kinds applied this year, but our mission is to support comics, and so we had to turn away these applications in favor of people making comics.

We strive to present as diverse a face of the artform of comics as possible, so we weighted table selection towards cases where applicants were able to show us where they fit in the creative spectrum. Other factors that account for how we evaluate your application include: Whether you've exhibited at Stumptown in the past, how familiar our committee is with your work, and how easily we were able to evaluate your comics on your website. In creating a curated comics show, we make every effort to be familiar with all the comics that our exhibitors make, and if we couldn't see a representative sampling of your comics on your site or with your application, it made it harder for us to see how your work would fit on the show floor.

This is only the second year where Stumptown has been a completely curated show. Previously it was simply first-come, first-served, and if you didn't get your application in quickly you simply didn't get a space. Our hope was that the Curated approach would increase the overall quality of the experience for our attendees, and we feel that proved true with last year's show. Attendance was up, and the consensus was that it was the best Comics Fest we've ever held. We believe that our 2012 Exhibitor List will continue this tradition of excellence, and we regret that we can't provide space to everyone who wants it. But we still want you to be a part of the show, and encourage you to come to the Festival, meet us, and continue to apply in the future. Stumptown is about creating a great event for Portland and the comics community, and we're grateful that you're a part of it!

-indy