A new Portland museum pays tribute to the city’s comics culture

Comics lovers now have a new place to learn about the history of the visual medium in Portland, thanks to a new museum debuting downtown.

The new Northwest Museum of Cartoon Arts held a ribbon cutting ceremony for its new museum Monday, Nov. 3 located at 322 Northwest 8th Ave.

The event brought together dozens of the community’s most prominent comics creatives like writers Kelly Sue DeConnick, David F. Walker, Matt Fraction, and Brian Michael Bendis.

NWMOCA Board Chair and de facto museum director Michael Rosen said the museum serves as a place to showcase the history of Pacific Northwest comics as well as a community center for artists and comics lovers.

“The museum is three things. It’s a community center where we ask artists to come in and work during the day and interact with people. It’s a teaching museum where we’re focused on teaching underrepresented communities about the power of comic arts, and it’s a museum,” Rosen said.

NWMOCA is divided into six sections, each focusing on a different part of Portland’s comics history.

One exhibit is dedicated to prominent queer cartoonist Rupert Kinnard, and another exhibit showcases the nonfiction works of renowned comics journalist Joe Sacco.

“Then we have the writer’s room. It’s an opportunity to celebrate the writers. And then our last space showcases up and coming artists, the next generation of comics artists in the Pacific Northwest,” Rosen said.

Throughout the years, Portland slowly gained a reputation as the place for independent comics creators to live because of its affordability, and the general DIY spirit that so many identify with the city.

“The comic scene has been here for at least 50 years. It started with Dark Horse Comics inviting creators out into the area to produce comics that were the first comics company that was creator owned. It snowballed,” Rosen said.

Rosen, a lifelong comics lover, wanted to find a way to pay tribute to that rare creative synergy. The result, said Rosen, was the culmination of years of hard work, dating back to 2021.

“The first thing we did was we surveyed the comic arts community. We talked to at least 50 people. Every one of them said it’s time for a museum,” Rosen said.

After the survey, Rosen put together a group of board members which included creatives like Books with Pictures comics store owner Katie Pryde, and academics like Ben Saunders and Kate Kelp-Stebben, and got to work raising the funds for the museum.

Over four years, NWMOCA raised $40,000 to establish the museum.

“The work really was fundraising for the last 4 years. And then this opportunity presented itself in this underutilized space in northwest Portland,” he said.

Rosen shared that seeing the finished museum and experiencing the love from Portland’s comics community gave him an immense sense of pride in the work that he and his team did to put the museum together.

“I’m feeling proud of all the people that have contributed that I’ve gotten to work with, relief that we made it and happiness to see what it looks like. This is an incredible space and a lot of people have contributed to how wonderful it looks,“ he said.

Rosen hopes the public takes away a sense of love and appreciation for the visual medium and its connection to Portland.

“People can come in and create, they can learn. The connection between comics and literacy is really strong. This is a museum for the whole city of Portland. It’s not just for comics nerds,” he said.

The museum is currently in the middle of a soft opening throughout the month of November but will be open to the public beginning Dec. 9.