If we could muster up the energy we’d be at Stumptown for sure. The guest list is stellar from Nicholas Gurewitch to Brian Bendis (who lest we forget was once an indie cartoonist for Image), and stops inbetween for Derek Kirk Kim, Gene Yang, Larry Marder, Craig Thompson, Tara McPherson, and the peerless Jason Shiga.

And now Portland, OR is now officially COMICS TOWN. The Mercury reports:

There
has been a distinct cultural shift in the last decade, as graphic
novels have gained a wide readership, superhero comics have been mined
for both academic and “literary” material (see: Douglas Wolk, Jonathan
Lethem, Michael Chabon), and girls weaned on Japanese entertainments
like Pokémon have gravitated en masse to manga. Put another way: Even
my mom has read Persepolis. Anyone who still has hang-ups about buying
comics need only set foot in the casually welcoming Cosmic Monkey
Comics or North Portland’s sleek Bridge City Comics to dispel all
lingering stereotypes about the Comic Book Guy. So by now everyone in
Portland knows that, to quote one of the most clichéd newspaper
headlines ever, “comics aren’t just for kids anymore.” (Kapow!) You may
not know, however, that local publishers Top Shelf, Oni Press, and Dark
Horse have all had a hand in this shift. With April’s designation as
Comics Month, as Oni Publisher Joe Nozemack puts it, “Finally, the city
is paying attention.”

PLUS: Dylan Meconis and Bill Mudron (with help from Erika Moen) show why Stumptown is cool in COMICS:

Since we have to stay at home and recuperate, send us any and all links, okay?