Support for Oregon Art Beat is provided by Jordan Schnitzer and the Harold & Arlene Schnitzer Care Foundation Endowed Fund for Excellence... and OPB members and viewers like you.

Funding for arts and culture coverage is provided by... WOMAN: Thor!

[ ♪♪♪ ] WOMAN: There's just something really magical about the stickiness of comics.

MAN: They're a little subversive.

People don't expect heavy information from a comic book, so it's disarming in that way.

I am a big fan of Wonder Woman.

First Garfield and then Calvin and Hobbes.

And still Calvin and Hobbes.

MAN: Half the cartoonists in America live in Portland.

Thank you very much, sir.

You are very, very welcome.

The energy here in Portland has been very infectious.

And it's a huge community of support.

Cowabunga!

[ laughs ] [ ♪♪♪ ] [ people chattering indistinctly ] It's pretty cool!

Yeah.

NARRATOR: You can find them all: Zine makers, writers, cartoonists.

Classic stories of Batman, Captain Marvel, and dozens of alternative heroes have come out of Oregon.

WOMAN: One thing that's really special about Portland is there's a lot of people here who are making their own path, who are like, "I want to be an artist, I'm going to do it my own way, and I'm going to do it as outside of the capitalist system as I can."

What I've always loved about Portland is that it's a place for people who think a little different, for people who have a different way of living their lives.

One of the things I really love being in Portland and feeling like I was a part of Portland was the interaction of creative people.

But how did Portland, a midsize city thousands of miles from the nearest major comics studio, become one of the most influential independent comics capitals in the world?

Like any comic book, it starts on panel one.

[ fanfare plays ] [ thunder rumbles ] In ancient Greece, tales of immortal gods and mighty heroes captured the imaginations of millions and helped make sense of a chaotic world.

Today, we can find that same mythical wonder and ways to understand our world between the pages of a comic book.

[ ♪♪♪ ] Comics, put simply, are a series of words and drawn images that, when placed in a certain order, tell a coherent story.

But how are they made?

The truth is, there's no one way to make a comic.

Some artists will write and draw everything.

Yeah, that's nice.

The good and bad thing about comics is that, like, they're not about having a lot of words on the page, and so I really have to think about, "How I can tell this story in a way with as few words as possible, with as many images that do the telling as much as I can?"

My name is Sarah Shay Mirk.

I go by my middle name, Shay, and I'm a graphic journalist, so I work as a nonfiction cartoonist, which means I write, draw, and edit nonfiction comics.

And these days I'm the publisher at Crucial Comix, which is a small press publishing nonfiction comics.

I always, like, just made comics as a fun kind of side hobby.

Like, I would spend all my weekends photocopying stuff that I'd made and distributing it out to people.

And then I really started making comics professionally in 2017.

The comics that I'm most drawn to reading about are often really political topics, so people writing about their personal perspectives and lived experiences.

I love reading about, like, queer joy and relationships, and so I'm really drawn to, like, yeah, reading queer memoir and queer narratives as well.

So I want both: I want to learn about something new and see a new perspective on the world.

David F. Walker will write out a full script and then work with an artist.

This is the actual script to the story that I'm lettering right now.

This panel description doesn't appear on the page, in the art, but this narration will be in the page.

And so the letterer's job is to place that in the script.

They pick a font, they design the balloons, they do all that sort of stuff.

So this right here... becomes this right here.

I'll decide, as the monster rips a guy's arm off, should there be text on this page?

Should I put a sound effect-- What does the sound of an arm being ripped off sound like?

Is it "riiiiiip" or is it "shred!!!

", you know?

I was writing ridiculously violent stories like this when I was 10.

I'm still writing them, you know, over 40 years later, but I'm having fun.

There's a nice cathartic release for me to write "arm getting ripped off."

Maybe this shouldn't be this fun.

I don't know.

[ laughs ] It's a detailed artistic process, involving everything from sketching, shading, coloring, and so much more.

But the important thing is that everyone is on the same page about the story.

That love of story and strong visuals is what drew Katie Pryde to comics at a young age.

I grew up in a town that didn't really have a good comic book store, so my first access to comics was through, like, short boxes at garage sales and that kind of digging and finding comic books.

I absolutely love the interplay of words and pictures in comics.

I love the craft of them.

I love when people do things with comics that you can't do in another medium, so the ways that comics can stretch and compress time in a way that movies sort of have to move at one second per second, but a comic can make a moment stretch or can make things move very quickly.

All of that.

That's... That's my jam.

When I moved to Portland, I had just extreme good luck of falling in with a lot of comic book people-- creators, journalists, writers, artists-- because Portland is an amazing town for comic books.

Oregon's history of comics goes back further than you think.

[ ♪♪♪ ] In the early 1900s, Silverton's Homer Davenport made a name for himself as the country's top political cartoonist.

His work appeared in newspapers, which were the first places people could read what we now know as a comic.

People like Joseph Pulitzer at the "New York World" developed a really quick and easy way to do color printing.

And companies like Eastman Color started to sell these or give them away, and this is the birth of comic books, which really reaches a climax in 1938 with "Action Comics" No.

1 and the introduction of Superman.

[ ♪♪♪ ] I remember buying my first Superman comic.

I think this is... All of these are sketchbooks.

And it really sparked creativity in me to learn to draw those superheroes: Superman, Batman, Flash, Green Lantern.

Comics were an immediate hit... but not for everyone.

A 1950s study linked comics to juvenile delinquency, causing an uproar.

As a result, publishers implemented the Comics Code Authority, a set of strict guidelines about what to show in a comic.

It wouldn't be until the 1980s when people started seeing comics in a new light.

I think that you can tell the whole story of comics thinking about someone like Rupert Kinnard.

RUPERT: I am a graphic designer, cartoonist, political cartoonist, activist here in Portland, Oregon.

I was born in 1954 in Chicago.

And I started becoming interested in comics around 11.

I became more aware that the idea of being African American in this culture, there was a history that I didn't know of that I was really learning more and more about.

And that made me realize that the superheroes that I was creating were white superheroes.

[ crowd roaring, ring bell dings ] I learned a lot about the boxer Joe Louis, who was a very gentle man but a real huge hero for African Americans during the '30s and the '40s.

I decided I wanted to create an unorthodox Black superhero, and I just started sketching this character that had sneakers on and socks and a basketball outfit.

And to make him a superhero, all I did was add a cape and a scarf around his head.

And I decided to call him the Brown Bomber, based on Joe Louis' nickname.

The novelty of the Brown Bomber always had been that I put so much of myself within the character.

It was a thrill for me to create a character whose weakness was sweet potato pie, because I love sweet potato pie and that would be my weakness.

I had an interesting vantage point because I worked at "Willamette Week."

So it was through "Willamette Week" I became familiar with the work of Lynda Barry and totally, totally loved her work.

And I would say I was influenced by her a little bit, the same way I was influenced a little bit by John Callahan.

For me, those were the two main Portland cartoonists that I really admired.

My name's Arnold Pander.

I'm a graphic novelist and a filmmaker.

[ ♪♪♪ ] When I was about 15, I was working in a comic book store called Future Dreams and I was kind of that comic book kid.

You know, the comic store was where kids would go and eventually, like, you know-- And I was a collector and then I got hired, and so I'd be in this kind of comic book culture.

[ ♪♪♪ ] My brother and I had been drawing comics for our school newspaper.

This was the stuff we were drawing when we were on Clay Street.

Because I was working with my brother, we would kind of feed off of each other creatively a bit, so that drove me.

In 1986, Arnold Pander got the opportunity to break in to mainstream comics.

I got a call from the comic book store that there was a writer, Matt Wagner, who was looking for an artist for his next comic series, called "Grendel."

[ ♪♪♪ ] I said, "Yeah, but I work with my brother," and so we both got the job as a team, as the Pander Brothers.

And then that book really took us into uncharted territory.

"Grendel's" edgy, neo-noir style became one of the most groundbreaking independent comics of the '80s and '90s and proved that independent comics could appeal to the mainstream audience.

Portland suddenly became fertile ground for independent comics.

But it took the arrival of one company in Portland for them to truly take off.

1986, which, for many people, is this sort of miracle year for comics, there's this confluence of events that happens.

You have the publication of "The Dark Knight Returns" by Frank Miller and the publication of "Maus" by Art Spiegelman.

"The Dark Knight Returns" showed a much grittier side to Batman that hadn't been seen in prior adaptations.

"Maus" elevated the graphic memoir genre with its unflinching portrayal of the Holocaust and won the Pulitzer Prize.

Both were influential in showing the power of visual storytelling through comics.

1986 is also when Mike Richardson founds Dark Horse.

MIKE: In the early days, we were called outlaws and this mysterious company in Portland, or the Northwest, doing comics.

I decided to start my company here because this is where I grew up.

Portland was not a hotbed of comic books.

The comic book industry existed on the East, primarily in New York.

That's where the two big companies, Marvel and DC were, and other companies.

So there really wasn't a comic industry in Portland or the Northwest or even the West Coast.

[ phone dials, then fax line buzzing ] With the invention of something as simple as a fax machine, it allowed us to go back and forth with a particular creator.

They didn't have to move to Portland.

I opened a little store called Pegasus Books at the time, met these writers and artists who did not own their work, which was... aggravating even to me as a shop owner at the time.

So that put the idea in my head that someday I would start a company where the writers and artists who created properties could own them.

Dark Horse offered creators the opportunity to own their work, instead of letting Marvel and DC own the rights.

We were getting a lot of the top tier, what they called independent comic creators: Bob Burden's "Flaming Carrot," Michael Gilbert's "Mr.

Monster."

[ ♪♪♪ ] The staff of designers and editors work together to bring the comics to life.

Philip Simon has been an editor at Dark Horse for 20 years.

This is one of our more successful all-ages comics, an army of plants against an army of zombies.

Editors make sure everything that needs to be there is there.

Like, we hunt for errors.

So far we've found 62 things that we need to fix with this book.

That's not... too crazy.

A lot of little things will get fine tuned, but we have to fine-tune everything.

On the second floor, the designers do the last bits of digital cleanup on the final pages before heading to print.

Once all that is done... you have a comic.

Dark Horse's revolutionary creator-owned approach drew hundreds writers and artists to Portland, including one who would bring the company to new heights.

In 1991, famed writer and artist Frank Miller, fresh off his success from "The Dark Knight Returns," came to Dark Horse with a new project that pushed back against the Comics Code Authority's strict guidelines.

That title was "Sin City."

[ ♪♪♪ ] MIKE: It shocked the industry that they didn't take them to Marvel and DC, that they took them to Dark Horse, and that started a stampede of well-known creators coming to Dark Horse.

After that, we were just-- It was just a matter of trying to hang on and keep up with a business that was growing fast.

[ ♪♪♪ ] In the long history of crime and horror comics like "Sin City" and "Hellboy" that the Code Authority tried to regulate, these comics proved that audiences wanted more gritty, adult stories.

By 2011, The Comics Code Authority disappeared for good.

ARNOLD: It was really a validator obviously that the whole idea of mainstream comics and indie comics, those lines were blurring now, and it-- None of that really mattered.

It was just great storytelling.

[ ♪♪♪ ] [ electronic beeping, people chattering ] [ R2-D2 screeches ] [ ♪♪♪ ] Portland became a booming metropolis for comics creators to reinvent the art form.

There's just something really magical about the stickiness of comics, and also... there's also just kind of like an underdog punk thing about comics that I love.

My name is Kelly Sue DeConnick.

I am a comic book writer.

I also write for stage and for television, but mostly comics.

Kelly Sue and her husband, writer Matt Fraction, came to Portland in the early 2000s.

I like how many different comics communities there are in Portland.

Art makers and writers like to be around writers.

And artists like to be around artists.

Here in Portland, Oregon, oh, we have clearly found our people.

David Walker grew up in Oregon and saw firsthand how independent comics exploded.

I remember being, like, in art school on the East Coast and people saying to me, "Man, what's that Dark Horse like?

Should I move to Portland?"

You know, "Are there jobs there?"

Now there's such a large community, a comics community, that I think that people find kindred spirits here and they know people here, and so Portland is a great place to come.

Everywhere you look, you're bound to find someone working on a comic.

People like Steve Lieber, who founded and runs the comics arts collective Helioscope.

I'm working with some writers that I really admire on a crime story set on the Oregon coast in the 1950s.

A typical comic book page has between three and ten.

Here, we sometimes have 25 panels per page.

I really like it because it's forcing me to eliminate all the "prettying" that I tend to do with drawings.

When each individual panel is this big, at that size, the wrong information is just going to be a distraction.

In the past decade I've been a comedy artist.

That's what people have hired me to do, is to do wacky, funny stuff.

Prior to that, for more than a decade, I was mostly a crime and thriller artist, and this is me getting back to those roots, and I'm really excited about it.

My name is Cat Farris, and I'm a cartoonist and a comic book artist.

I ended up going to art school for animation, but when I graduated, I moved back to Portland and there's not a wide range of animation jobs here in town.

I ended up hanging out with some of my friends who were into comics, and they started interning at Helioscope.

They were like, "I mean, you're not getting any animation work, but you can draw.

Do you want to learn how to do comic books?"

"Well, okay, I have to try, 'cause I love comics."

[ man speaks indistinctly ] Paul Guinan was also one of the original founders of Helioscope.

So why does he think Portland has such a vibrant comics scene?

It's all Mike Richardson's fault.

He invited people out here from different parts of the country.

My wife and I are from Chicago and he paid for our move.

As people moved out here, it became the classic immigrant pattern.

Mike Richardson started a snowball down a hill.

And so I blame him.

[ laughs ] Portland would also play a role in elevating a new form of comic that blended real-world reporting with the visual medium.

KATE: Comics journalism is at once a way of telling people about what's going on in the world around them using a medium that doesn't seem as well known as other news media.

Many journalists look to one man's work as the foundation for comics journalism: writer and artist Joe Sacco.

He basically created comics journalism and makes the single most ethical comics in existence and has been doing so and working in the Pacific Northwest for decades.

Joe Sacco got a journalism degree from the University of Oregon but couldn't find success in traditional written journalism.

JOE: I think of it as the world's longest one-panel graphic novel.

So he turned to comics to document world events.

There's the big overall story, but then if you look at the details, there are little stories going on.

The soldiers were told not to stop for the wounded, to keep going.

From 1993 to 1995, he wrote and drew what would be his defining work: "Palestine."

KATE: From that moment, what Sacco realized was that he could tell nonfiction true reportage, and he began to do so on a number of different world events.

Every medium has its strengths, and in the end you realize that comics just have their own too.

I mean, they... they're a little subversive.

People don't expect heavy information from a comic book, so it's disarming in that way, but the thing itself is a piece of art, which I think is what comics are about.

They're about delivering art into the hands of the people.

SHAY: Joe Sacco's work has always been a big inspiration to me.

His work is really detailed, really thoughtful, really meticulous, looks like he spends hours on each panel just drawing all those little lines, and it's really based in reality, him documenting the world around him.

I was reporting on Guantanamo Bay prison.

A lot of people are not going to take the time to read a whole big dense book about Guantanamo Bay.

But I can make it a comic and more people will be drawn to it, they'll pick it up, it'll feel more accessible to them.

This is "Guantanamo Voices."

It's the book that I made about Guantanamo Bay prison, and it features these ten different artists.

[ cell door clanks ] It looks really different throughout the whole book because every artist drew differently, but this is me drawn by the artist Hazel Newlevant.

So the book starts out with me, like, wanting to report on Guantanamo, going to the prison, and kind of my experiences seeing the place and thinking about it.

And then it gets into the experiences of a lot of other people.

I love the mix of art styles.

I wanted you to feel, as you were reading the book, that you were very obviously reading different people's stories.

Yeah, that's "Guantanamo Voices."

It came out in 2020.

[ film camera whirring ] Joe Sacco's example inspired the creation of the political comics website The Nib in 2013.

KATE: And The Nib, for 10 years, was truly one of the greatest comics journalism platforms.

It had stories from people all over the world.

There were a lot of people who are now foundational to contemporary comics journalism who started off by editing for The Nib.

[ on recording ] This is OPB.

I'm Donald Orr.

After 10 years, the award-winning comics website and independent publisher The Nib is shutting down this summer.

NARRATOR: After The Nib shut down, Shay and comics editor Audra McNamee launched the website Crucial Comix to fill that void in 2024.

It's the nonfiction stories that feel most crucial to me, and that's why we call the press Crucial Comix, is because it feels like, "Oh, these are the stories we need to be hearing and publishing and supporting right now."

It just feels so necessary.

[ ♪♪♪ ] RECORDED VOICE [ echoing ]: Attention, men!

KATE: One of the things that a lot of people were challenging was that the stories coming out of mainstream comics were always attributed to men.

There were women doing a lot of the work of making comics, but their names weren't on the covers.

And so telling those kinds of stories is really key to being able to tell the history of comics and to tell it fully.

[ ♪♪♪ ] NARRATOR: Jan Eliot was one of those women blazing the trail.

Since 1990, Jan has delighted readers with her comic strip, "Stone Soup."

She started the strip as a way for her to talk about life as a single parent.

You know, a parent wants to know that they're not the only one in the world that has this cranky kid or this terrible job or, you know, they just want to know they're not alone, and they can read about it in my strip and realize other people have gone through what they're going through.

Val is a strong but not perfect person.

Sometimes she gets angry and frustrated and tired of kids.

She has a 13-year-old to beat all 13-year-olds, and every now and again even she loses her patience, in which case, she might holler.

Living in Eugene, Jan's career in cartooning wasn't easy, especially in a field that, as she says, women cartoonists were considered a minority.

Finally, in 1995, Jan achieved her dream when "Stone Soup" became a nationally syndicated comic strip.

We're there to provide the funny side of the news.

You know, people-- A lot of people can't cope with what's in the paper unless they have their funnies and their sports.

You know, these things kind of balance out the difficult news in the world.

Jan retired in 2020 but left behind a body of work that future generations of comics lovers can enjoy.

I hope I'm not at the end of a great era.

We hear all the time the golden age is behind us, but, I don't know, there's a lot of great cartoons still happening, and truthfully, online, there's some amazing work going on, absolutely amazing work, because they have no boundaries.

They can do anything.

Women cartoonists like Jan Eliot pushed against the norm that comics were mostly for men and boys and inspired a generation of artists and writers.

[ ♪♪♪ ] And in 2012, Kelly Sue DeConnick reintroduced the world to Carol Danvers, also known as Captain Marvel.

So I was looking for something to pitch on and heard that Marvel was looking for Carol Danvers pitches, and so I was like, "She's a pilot.

I grew up on Air Force bases.

I got this."

When "Captain Marvel" No.

1 hit the stands, you know, everything changed for me after that.

Kelly Sue's run on "Captain Marvel" became an instant success.

So much so that her version of the character was brought to the big screen.

It became kind of a banner title for women readers who were returning to superhero comics or mainstream comics after having felt left out for a while.

Probably no matter what I accomplished for the rest of my life, like the first line in my obituary will be "reimagined Carol Danvers as Captain Marvel."

David F. Walker spent his career writing stories that gave a voice to the voiceless.

I'll live and die by the importance of diversity, equity, and inclusion, which, you know, D-E-I is also D-I-E, right?

I will live and die by it.

[ ♪♪♪ ] In 1983, Rupert Kinnard helped start "Just Out," one of Oregon's most influential queer news magazines.

Within a year, the Brown Bomber comic strip was welcomed into the pages of the prominent publication.

I wanted him to have a partner, an equal partner.

And that's when I created Diva Touché Flambé.

And with the two of them, I came up with the name Cathartic Comics, and it stuck ever since.

Rupert used his comic strip to tackle issues within the queer community.

The first time the Brown Bomber comic strip was published here, it was published in the gay press.

The strip really dealt with the community in which it was published.

So it really was more focused on issues within the gay community, and there was just a wealth of subject matter, especially in terms of the anti-gay organizations that were here.

People really appreciated a place where those things were aired.

I think it was "Just Out's" third anniversary issue, and I was the art director and I tried to think of what would be a really great third anniversary issue cover.

The Brown Bomber and Diva was a constant fixture in the paper by that time.

And Portlandia was fairly new to Portland, and I thought that Diva was almost like Portlandia to me and Portlandia was one of my absolute favorite Portland things, and I decided to do an actual illustration of Diva and BB-- and Diva as Portlandia.

I drew it for the cover of that anniversary issue.

[ ♪♪♪ ] Hi.

You finding everything all right?

Awesome.

It's not autobio because it's set in the present day, but it is about learning how to play in a band and figuring out you're queer.

Katie Pryde opened Books With Pictures in 2016 because she saw a need for a more inclusive comics space.

My priority was to create a place where moms could come and buy books for themselves and also feel welcome to bring their children.

I actually wrote a list in my business plan of the 12 imaginary customers that I was going to be of specific service to.

One was the mom who is primary carer of their kids.

One was the Black nerd superhero fan who had been following Storm for his whole life but had never had a comic shop that felt safe and like home to him.

Another was the dad with the daughter who he was having a hard time connecting with, but maybe they can connect around Captain Marvel.

Of course we have comics from all sorts of people, of course we have comics that show all sorts of people, of course people of all sexualities create comics that they are represented in, and so it is my job as the curator of the books we have in this space to make sure that when you come into the store you will see yourself represented.

MAN: Here she comes... In 2022, Books With Pictures won the prestigious Will Eisner Spirit of Comics Retailer Award, which recognizes the best comic store in the world.

I want to thank all of the kids who've come in and really my whole community in Portland, Oregon, for having our backs and coming together to support Books with Pictures.

Thank you!

[ crowd applauding, cheering ] Portland is often seen as a great place to thrive artistically.

But art comes at a price.

And sometimes, that price can be too high.

SHAY: Comics financially are really tough.

It's only been in the last couple of years that I've been able to become, like, a full-time comics person.

I taught at Portland State University for a long time and a background in journalism.

And now I'm moving more into prose, because Jack Kirby said it best: "Comics will break your heart."

Like, I basically have like six different jobs in comics in order to stay afloat.

Initially it was cheap rent.

Portland was the last affordable city on the West Coast.

Our friends in real estate have destroyed that.

That doesn't exist anymore.

In 2000, the average cost of rent in Oregon was around $600.

By 2024, that price jumped to around $1600.

And comics artists are feeling those effects.

SHAY: I am shocked that I've been able to continue to make comics in Portland.

[ laughs ] Every year I'm like, "Let's see what the financial plan is."

Honestly, what's made it possible for me to continue being an artist here is the Oregon Health Plan, OHP.

Like, I'm on it.

I make so little money that I qualify for OHP, and that's what makes it possible for me to be an artist.

I've managed to keep going simply by sheer force of will and because I suspect I might be unemployable under, you know, other job sort of scenarios.

A lot of people left, honestly, because the rent just got too high and they had to move on to somewhere else because they wanted to keep doing their job and they couldn't afford it.

[ sighs ] I definitely have days where I'm like, "Man, why did I choose this profession?

It's not paying me very much."

But I just... I don't know, I can't see myself doing anything else.

Even if it doesn't make a lot of money, it's still probably the coolest job I can think of.

A lot of what has allowed me to stay in Portland, thrive in Portland, and survive in Portland is that community that we're talking about.

Not that there are rules, but there are things that work.

Rules of thumb.

Yeah.

DAVID: I have a lot of friends who speak the same language that I do, who go through the same things that I've gone through, who are having some of the same creative and professional struggles.

And it's very hard, by the way.

What I just said is the hardest part.

Rejection sucks, but you've kind of got to get used to it.

[ ♪♪♪ ] The challenge of having a comics career in a city that's getting more expensive isn't lost on Steve Lieber.

I've seen a lot of younger artists get chewed up.

It's tough.

But he's also in awe at the resilience of this new generation of artists who've adapted their business for the digital age.

I've learned a lot from the younger generation of artists that I share the studio with.

They know a whole lot more about the digital toolsets.

DAVID: The Internet, social media, things like that, crowdfunding, has changed what can be done.

Most old folks like me look at web comics and go, "What?

I don't understand how this works.

How do you make money off of this?

What's a Patreon?

What's a Substack?

What's-- Kickstart, what is that?"

you know?

And if you don't understand those things and you're not successful enough and well established enough in your career now, you're likely to have your career just fall apart around you and you'll sit there and go, "What happened?

I used to be a contender," you know?

How are you?

Not too bad.

[ ♪♪♪ ] SHAY: People are, like, out to help each other because most people make very, very little money.

For almost everybody, it's like just a piece of their income and not the whole thing.... Oh, that's rad, yeah.

I think I'm going to make one more collaborative zine.

Everyone's doing this because they love it and they care about it and they're excited about it.

Portland artists are also self-publishing their work as zines: small, non-commercial booklets that are often produced with a photocopier.

This is all stuff that's part of our zine starter kit here.

SHAY: For me, a big part of Portland's artistic community has been the Portland Zine Symposium.

And I am a zine maker and cartoonist who feels like I know everybody in town, and then I show up there and I'm like, "Wow, who are all these people?

I don't know half of them."

So I feel like there's always new people either moving here or growing up here who start making work and that they feel... hopefully, like, welcomed and supported in doing that.

[ ♪♪♪ ] Even with the rising costs, Oregon is still one of the most sought after places for creators and, more recently, academics.

[ school bell rings ] University of Oregon professor Ben Saunders founded the country's first ever comic studies minor in 2012.

We will be reading particularly sophisticated early newspaper strips, which I think constitute some of the great popular high art of the early American 20th century.

Does anybody have questions?

In 2017, Kate Kelp-Stebbins joined the staff as its first associate professor and director of comic studies.

KATE: I have the great honor of teaching all of our different comics programming classes.

Going back to those inspirations that we're looking at in terms of sci-fi and cyborg bodies, however you find it.

I want my students to leave the course knowing how little they know about how much comics there are and how many different types of comics there are.

--he's a superhero but he's also just a guy.

BEN: It's tremendously satisfying when a student comes up to me at the end of the class and we've read maybe the first part of a series of graphic novels and they are politely cursing me because they feel obliged to now go out and buy four more books in order to find out how the story ends.

That's great when that happens, because that's-- As a teacher, that's your goal.

You want people to read independently and without you.

[ ♪♪♪ ] Portland's community of comics lovers has grown significantly over the years.

Now, every year, thousands of fans come to Portland to attend Rose City Comic Con.

You are very, very welcome.

There you go.

Thank you.

I think that people know that Portland is a place to keep Portland weird, keep Portland sketchy, and it's this safe area to go, "Yeah, let's get my inner self out more and, like, share really cool passion projects."

And with more conventions like Salem's Mid Valley Comic Art Expo, Oregon continues to grow and become a home for comics lovers.

It's a show by the fans... for the fans.

It's all run by local people here in Salem.

It's a completely local, grassroots show.

[ ♪♪♪ ] In 2021, Rupert got to see his legacy as a cartoonist and activist celebrated in downtown Portland.

RUPERT: So me and my partner, we went-- You know, kind of came around the corner, and I just looked at this wall, and it was overwhelming.

There's just so many people on that mural, I don't feel worthy.

But if you're talking about, you know, acknowledging me for my love of community, that's kind of the area where I can accept it.

Comics have come a long way in their scope and acceptance in society, but what does that mean for the future of comics?

DAVID: There are still very few women writing comics or drawing comics, and very few people of color.

And those people of color, those characters of color, those women characters weren't that different than what I was seeing when I was a kid.

And when I was a kid, I was the one who was going, "Are women really like this?"

You know?

"Black people don't really act like this.

I don't know any Black people that act like this.

What is this?

What am I seeing?"

I want to change that.

I want to help usher in a generation that will change that.

It's entertainment, but it's art.

And I really do feel that comics are sneered at and looked down upon, but they're an art form, and it is incumbent upon the artist to be responsible for the message they put into the world.

As for Dark Horse, Mike Richardson sold the business to the media company Embracer in 2022.

By 2026, he was out as the CEO.

Dark Horse remains a company in transition.

Comics will change.

They will evolve.

But whatever they look like years from now, one thing will remain the same: Portland's artists will continue the independent spirit one panel at a time.

SHAY: You don't need anyone's permission to share your voice.

And that everyone's story matters.

Maybe that sounds kind of corny and cliché, but I think that's a really powerful thing to say to people is that, like, "Actually, your experience matters."

Rupert's experience led him to write a book years after a car accident left him in a wheelchair.

It was published in 2025.

A collection of all his comic strips... and a thank you to the people who stuck by him.

It wasn't until I held the book in my hand that I realized this is like a love letter to communities, this book that represents all of my greatest passions.

So cool.

I am honored to tell a bit of that story and that journey.

[ ♪♪♪ ] RUPERT: These are definitely the first sketches of the Brown Bomber.

Okay.

You big baby.

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