Tag: Matt Maxwell

Awards, prizes, nfts, sexy men, comic cons, Twitter bans and all the rest.

Guest columnist Matt Maxwell is back with an old school con report - from breakfast to buying back issues to wandering around chatting to secret VIetnamese food. Along with observations on Wizard World Portland and this year's powerful evolution at Emerald City. Face it, pilgrim, this one's got it all!

I’ve probably started my last three Stumptown reports with this, but I love Portland and the Stumptown Comics Festival. You could rightly say that it’s because Stumptown was the first show that I actually set up at, back in 2007 (has it only been two and a half years of being on the other side of the table?). You could, but I’m not sure how accurate that is. Comparing the Stumptown show of 2007 (in chilly October) to that of 2010 (in springtime cool April) is a tricky thing. The show has grown and been managed in such a way as to make the two very different.

2007 yielded decent attendance for an independent comics show, though was often long periods of quiet punctuated with silence. Sure, part of that was the fact that I was just selling a mini/ashcan preview then. Nobody else seemed to have any complaints about the size/speed of the show and I didn’t have anything to compare it with, though I remember it not being particularly busy most of the time (a good starter show, as opposed to jumping in with both feet to say Wonder-Con or the like.)