Stumptown, Part Three: The Reckoning (at long last)

If the mighty Thor and Botticelli’s Venus had a love-baby who grew up one half a fast talkin, hard rockin’ folk duo with Charlie Daniels (that would eventually split due to “creative differences”) only to find that, after wandering the earth for years like Caine from Kung-Fu, it would be a penchant for making funnybooks that ended the journey and rooted Love-Baby in Portland, Oregon.

Knowing, however, that in the end there can be only one, a devistating showdown with The Kurgen results in a magnificent amount of creative-energy errupting only to be absorbed by local Oregonians (not to be confused with Argonian) and after a mysteryous calling straight out of Close Encounters of the Third Kind, eventually manifested again in the form of the Stumptown Comics Fest!

Just walking into the joint was such a sensory overload that I wouldn’t even know where to begin. No, that’s not true, to begin one of the first people I noticed was Nicholas Gurewitch of Perry Bible Fellowship fame. After chatting with him and getting a signed copy of his book (The Trial of Colonel Sweeto and Other Stories) I’ve determined that if you met him in a cafe or, god forbid, a bookstore, you would have no idea he is the creator of PBF unless he said so. And even then there’s a likelyhood you wouldn’t believe him. Nicholas is such a laid back, soft spoken, polite, guy that it almost shattered my expectations of what the creator of such a chaoticly funny comic would be like in person. Almost. Turns out he’s still a massively cool cat and I’m glad I got to meet him.

When we weren’t at the fest we were ‘venturing around Portland because, hey, why not? New cities are ripe for ideas that sound good when it’s past midnight and you’re drunk. This is the very philosophy that, in addition to Stumptown faces, introduced me to some of Basement Dan’s Arizona crew–all of whom were rad. It also led to some PBR in a seedy dive bar and one too many accidental turns down m-u-u-u-u-u-urder alley.

Portland is a curious one, though, where I can say I’ve finally found a city that managed to take SLC’s wonky grid structure and fuck it up even more. This effect is only heightened by cutting a river through the middle of everything and then building a bunch of bridges you can see but obviously go nowhere. But it’s so goddamn clean, I will give it that. Even it’s homeless manifest as dandy fop’s who eat with fingerless gloves from tin can’s whose sterling silver lids are barely hanging on.

But what road trip would be complete without some sort of introspective, coming of age, Stand By Me style lesson to be learned in the end? For me it was regarding how “star struck” I can be around people, and it’s not always with folks that have a modicum of celebrity–it can be anyone. However, having dinner with Craig Thompson (and even listening to him talk a bit about that, more or less) made me check my head enough to realize “The dude sitting next to me is just a dude, albiet a completely rad one, he’s still just a dude.”

It was put in even better perspective afterward when we all talked about it and he was called my peer (my contemporary, my co-worker even). This made me realize that while it’s entirely possible to highly respect another person’s work, it can be done without the bullshit of hero-worship mucking about. After that we all told stories about eating pies and barfing.

The return trip was admittedly a bit of a blur, and not just because Amy decided to take us up to 100 mph (hyperbole need not apply) despite my observations that we didn’t, in fact, have a Flux Capaciter installed. A crash landing in Tripcity and it’s been business as usual ever since.

School’s out in a week and the most important thing I took away from Stumptown was a realistic idea of what to expect (and how to prepare) for APE in November. So before it even arrives, now I know how I spent my summer vacation.