Portland journalist and zine maker Shay Mirk loves comics.
“I always like just making comics as a fun kind of side hobby. I would spend all my weekends photocopying stuff that I’ve made and distributing it out to people,” they said.
From their North Portland home, Mirk creates their comics and zines, short, handmade booklets, usually made with a printer, and distributes them to the public at local pop ups around the city.
Mirk is one of hundreds of comics artists working in Portland, creating new and original work that push the boundaries of the visual medium.
“One thing that’s really special about Portland is that there are a lot of people here who are making their own path,” they said. “There are people who say ‘I want to be an artist. I want to do it my own way.’”
Oregon’s history of comic creation
Portland is known as one of the biggest hubs for independent comics creators.
Comics publishers like Dark Horse Comics, Oni Press and Image, and classic tales of Batman, Captain Marvel and dozens of alternative heroes have all come out of Oregon.
So how did Portland, a mid-sized city thousands of miles from the nearest major comics publishing company, become a hotbed of independent comics?
Oregon’s history of comics dates back to the early 1900s.
Silverton’s own Homer Davenport made a name for himself as the United States’ top political cartoonist. His work could be seen in newspapers around the country.
Newspapers were the first places where people could read what we now know as a modern comic.
During World War II, comics were used as simple, and effective, propaganda tools. Publishers featured famous heroes like Captain America urging the public to contribute to the war effort.
In the 1970s and 1980s, most mainstream comics were published by two major companies: Marvel Comics and DC Comics, both of which were based in New York City.
With hit characters like Superman, Batman, and Spider-Man, mainstream comics grew in popular culture.
Rise of Portland’s indie comics
But around that same time, Portland was developing a reputation as a haven for underground and alternative comics, which focus on stories outside the mainstream superhero genre. The movement was quickly gaining steam.
Artists like “Simpsons” creator Matt Groening, and cartoonists like Lynda Barry, John Callahan and Rupert Kinnard laid the groundwork for Portland’s rise as a hub for the independent comics community.
Kinnard moved to Portland in 1979 after graduating from Cornell University and fell in love with the city.
In 1983, he helped start “Just Out,” Portland’s first queer news magazine, and introduced the world to his two most popular characters, The Brown Bomber and Diva Touché Flambé, through his comic strip, “Cathartic Comics.”
Young cartoonist Rupert Kinnard poses next to a display of his original comic characters.
Courtesy Rupert Kinnard
The Brown Bomber is the first ongoing gay, Black superhero in comics, as a reflection of Kinnard’s own identity as a gay Black man.
“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,” he said, laughing.
Through his work at “Just Out,” Kinnard used “Cathartic Comics” as a vehicle to address issues that he saw within the queer community.
Kinnard’s work came at a time when independent comics were still relatively niche.
It took the arrival of one company to make them a household name.
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Dark Horse Comics
Mike Richardson founded the independent comic book company Dark Horse Comics in 1986, in Milwaukie. A born and raised Oregonian, Richardson grew up loving comics and pop culture.
In 1980, he opened up his own comics shop, Pegasus Books, in Bend. He then met other artists who were frustrated that they couldn’t own their creations if they worked for the big comics companies, like Marvel and DC Comics.
“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,” he said.
He named the company Dark Horse Comics.
“My intention was at some point if someone got tired of reading stories about men in tights and wanted to move into something more serious, we wanted to be the next level,” he said.
Through original stories like Mike Mignola’s “Hellboy” and Bob Burden’s “The Flaming Carrot,” Dark Horse Comics’ reputation as an independent publisher grew.
The Dark Horse Comics building in Milwaukie, Ore., on May 6, 2026.
Saskia Hatvany / OPB
Then in 1991, famed comics writer Frank Miller approached Dark Horse with a new comic, one that would continue to push the boundaries of what a comic could be.
That title was the gritty neo-noir “Sin City.“
Sin City’s black-and-white imagery, and narrative that evoked nostalgic pulp fiction detective novels, captured the imagination of its readers, and proved that audiences wanted more than super-hero comics.
“It shocked the industry that he didn’t take them to Marvel and DC,” Mike Richardson said. “And that started a stampede of well-known creators coming to Dark Horse.”
Along with original work, Richardson had the foresight to license original film properties, and adapt them to comics, something that he says no other comics companies were doing at the time.
Comic artists flock to Portland
Meanwhile, Oregonian creators like David F. Walker and Arnold Pander witnessed firsthand Portland’s comics boom.
“When I was about 15, I was working in a comic book store called Future Dreams here in Portland. And the comic store was like after school where kids would go,” Pander said.
“I remember being in art school on the East Coast and people saying to me, ‘What’s that Dark Horse?’ Like ‘Should I move to Portland, you know, are there jobs there?’” Walker said.
Arnold Pander, and his brother Jacob Pander, broke into the business when writer Matt Wagner asked them to be the artists on his influential indie comic, “Grendel.”
“I said yeah, but I work with my brother and so, we both got the job as, as a team, as the Pander Brothers, and then that book sort of really just took us into uncharted territory,” Arnold Pander said.
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David F. Walker has written for Marvel and DC, and taught comics courses at Portland State University. He has since moved to writing his own original stories and publishing them himself.
“And now I’m moving more into prose because Jack Kirby said it best, comics will break your heart,” he said.
Many comics creators ended up moving to Oregon, including writers like Kelly Sue DeConnick and Matt Fraction.
“I like how many different comics communities there are in Portland. And artists like to be around artists…here Portland, we clearly found our people,” DeConnick said.
Artists Steve Lieber and Paul Guinan came to Portland and co-founded Helioscope, a collective of comics artists dedicated to creating a wide variety of comics.
“Portland is a place for people who think a little differently, for people who have a different way of living their lives,” Lieber said.
“It’s all Mike Richardson’s fault,” Guinan said, laughing. “Mike invited dozens of people to come out and not just work for him but to live here. And so Portland became the largest per capita city in the United States for comics creators and remains so to this day.”
Pictured left to right: Kelly Sue DeConnick, Rupert Kinnard, and Sarah Shay Mirk interviewed by OPB for an Oregon Art Beat special.
Cameron Nielsen / OPB
Hub of indie comics publication
Soon, more independent comics publishers like Oni Press, IDW, and Image, called Portland home.
Katie Pryde opened the comics shop Books with Pictures in 2016. Pryde loves comics and saw a need to create a space that was inclusive to all comics lovers, regardless of age, genre, or identity.
“I actually wrote a list in my business plan of the 12 imaginary customers that I was going to be of specific service to,” she said. “And the thing that I find reassuring now nine years in, I know who those people are and they are people who come to the store.”
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In 2020, Books With Pictures won the prestigious Will Eisner Spirit of Comics Retailer Award. The Eisner Award is considered the top honor in the comics industry.
“It felt like a really clear recognition of my vision for inclusive stores that support kids, for stores that support women, for stores that are really a center of community,” she said.
Pryde also partially owns the store Books With Pictures Eugene, which, in 2026, took home the same Eisner Award.
New genre of comics
Portland would also play a role in popularizing a new genre of comic that blended real world reporting with the visual medium.
To many people, University of Oregon graduate Joe Sacco laid the groundwork for comics journalism.
“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,” Sacco said in a previous interview with OPB.
From 1993 to 1995, Sacco published what would be his defining work; the nonfiction book “Palestine,” which chronicled his travels in the region from December 1991 to January 1992.
Shay Mirk looked to Sacco as inspiration for their own journalism work.
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In 2020, Mirk published “Guantanamo Voices,” a collection of 10 first-person narratives about the experiences of those who have been involved with the prison.
“A lot of people are not gonna 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 said.
Mirk and comics editor Audra McNamee established the comics journalism website “Crucial Comix” in 2023.
“It’s the nonfiction stories that feel most crucial to me, and that’s why we call the press Crucial Comix,” they said.
Artists’ financial challenges
Despite Portland being seen as a place to thrive artistically, art comes at a price. And sometimes, that price can be too high.
For many artists, moving to Oregon was simply a cost-effective decision. But rising costs of living are making careers in comics much more difficult.
In 2000 median rental cost was just over $600 and had ballooned to well over $1,600 by 2024, according to data from Oregon Housing and Community Services.
And artists are feeling those effects.
Shay Mirk admitted that the reason they are able to create comics is because of the Oregon Health Plan.
“I am shocked that I’ve been able to continue to make comics in Portland. … I make so little money that I qualify for OHP, and that’s what makes it possible for me to be an artist,” they said.
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Artists aren’t the only ones struggling financially to make it in comics.
The Northwest Museum of Cartoon Arts, a museum dedicated to the history of comics in Oregon, opened its doors in downtown Portland in November 2025. But by June 2026, the museum officially closed.
As for Dark Horse, Mike Richardson sold the company to the media conglomerate Embracer in 2022.
By 2026, Richardson was out as CEO and Dark Horse’s employees voted to unionize.
Dark Horse remains a company in transition.
Mike Richardson, founder and former CEO of Dark Horse Comics, poses for a portrait in his home collection of memorabilia from his career in comics, movies and entertainment that he hopes to use in a museum at his Portland, Ore., area home on May 8, 2026. Dark Horse and Richardson have had a big influence on the city of Milwaukie as the nation’s third largest comics publisher headquartered there.
Eli Imadali / OPB
Comics as an academic discipline
But even with the growing cost of living and the changing business of comics, Oregon continues to attract creators, and more recently, academics.
At the University of Oregon, Ben Saunders established the nation’s first-ever comics minor program in 2012.
“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,” Saunders said in an earlier OPB interview.
In 2017, Kate Kelp-Stebbins joined the staff as an associate professor and first Director of Comics and Cartoon Studies.
“I have the great honor of teaching all of my comics studies classes. I want my students to leave the course knowing how little they know about comics,” she said.
‘A love letter to communities’
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.
And, with more conventions like Salem’s Mid Valley Comic Art Expo, Oregon continues to grow and be a home for comics lovers.
Sydney Gore and Ellie Gossett pose in cosplays for Rose City Comic Con in Portland, Ore., on Sept. 10, 2022, like many attendees at the annual convention.
Jamie Diep / OPB
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.
“You don’t need anyone’s permission to share your voice and that everyone’s story matters,” Shay Mirk said.
Rupert Kinnard’s experience led him to publish a book in 2015, years after a car accident left him in a wheelchair: a collection of all his comic strips… and a thank you to the people who stuck by him.
“In a way it wasn’t until I held the book in my hand that I realized this is like a love letter to communities. I am honored that I’m in a position to be able to tell a bit of that story and that journey,” he said.
Note: Jacob Pander, brother of comic creator Arnold Pander, is currently a producer with OPB’s Oregon Art Beat series.