A half-hour drive and four decades separate Milwaukie's Dark Horse Comics from the 50,000 fans who now pack the Oregon Convention Center every year for Rose City Comic Con, but a new documentary argues the two are inseparable. Oregon Public Broadcasting's “Indie Comics City: How Portland Built Its Own Comics Universe” will hold its world premiere on Saturday, September 12, at Rose City Comic Con, tracing how a single creator-owned publishing model turned the Portland metro area into one of the country's biggest hubs for independent comics.
The 50-minute film, produced by Oregon Public Broadcasting, is a special episode of the station's long-running arts series Oregon Art Beat, according to OPB. It features interviews with comics writer Kelly Sue DeConnick, cartoonist Rupert Kinnard, Dark Horse Comics founder Mike Richardson, author and Crucial Comix co-founder Sarah Shay Mirk, and comics journalist Joe Sacco, per the outlet. Producer Steven Tonthat, who worked on the film alongside director of photography Cameron Nielsen, editor Lisa Suinn Kallem, executive producer Jessica Martin, and narrator Crystal Ligori, told OPB that Portland became a place where “people can create their work their way.”
The premiere screening starts at 3 p.m. in Room D137-140 at the Oregon Convention Center, with admission included in a Rose City Comic Con ticket, OPB reports. It will be followed by a panel discussion and audience Q&A featuring Kinnard, Tonthat, Books with Pictures owner Katie Pryde, and moderator Donald Orr, an OPB producer.
How One Milwaukie Publisher Sparked a Movement
The story the documentary tells begins in 1986, when Mike Richardson founded Dark Horse Comics in Milwaukie, pioneering a creator-owned profit-sharing model that eventually turned the Portland area into a nationwide hub for independent comics, according to The Oregon Encyclopedia. That approach helped Dark Horse grow into the nation's fourth-largest comic publisher by letting creators retain full ownership of their intellectual property, per the same account.
The ripple effects were significant. Former Dark Horse employees Bob Schreck and Joe Nozemack founded Oni Press in Portland in 1997, building a major footprint for non-superhero graphic novels like Scott Pilgrim and Whiteout, as reported by Oregon Public Broadcasting. Two decades later, in 2017, Image Comics — the third-largest comic book publisher in the United States — relocated its headquarters from Berkeley, California, to Portland's Montgomery Park, a move that ComicBook.com notes solidified the region alongside New York City and Los Angeles as a top U.S. comics hub.
That gravitational pull drew major creative talent to the city as well. Writers and artists including Kelly Sue DeConnick, Matt Fraction, Greg Rucka, and Brian Michael Bendis relocated to or built their careers in Portland starting in the 2000s, cultivating what Travel Oregon describes as a highly collaborative, do-it-yourself creative network.
Pioneers Beyond the Big Publishers
Not everyone who shaped Portland's comics identity came through a major publishing house. Cartoonist Rupert Kinnard created the Brown Bomber in 1977 and Diva Touché Flambé in 1984, work recognized as the first ongoing syndicated comic strip to feature openly Black gay and lesbian superheroes, according to Willamette Week. Kinnard's five-decade career in cartooning and activism was recently compiled into a 2025 retrospective book, the outlet reports.
Community-level institutions have carried that inclusive ethos forward. Southeast Portland's Books with Pictures, owned by Katie Pryde, won the Will Eisner Spirit of Comics Retailer Award in 2022, an honor widely regarded as the comic industry's equivalent of an Oscar for comic shops, according to Oregon Public Broadcasting. Pryde later expanded the model to Eugene, Oregon, in 2020, opening a sister location that was named a global finalist for the 2026 Will Eisner Spirit of Comics Retailer Award, per Comic-Con International; the Eugene shop is co-owned by Pryde and Andréa Gilroy.
A Convention Built to Match the Scene
Rose City Comic Con itself grew out of that same local energy. Launched in 2012 at a local hotel with 4,100 attendees, the convention has grown into Portland's flagship pop culture event at the Oregon Convention Center, now drawing around 50,000 visitors annually, according to Rose City Comic Con. It was founded by local organizers hoping to bring a San Diego-style convention experience to the Pacific Northwest.
The documentary's release also lands amid upheaval at Dark Horse itself. Richardson departed as CEO under parent company Embracer Group earlier this year, and in May he announced plans to open the Milwaukie Pop Culture Museum beneath Dark Horse's offices in a building he continues to own, according to Popverse. The museum is planned to showcase film props and Dark Horse history in downtown Milwaukie, the outlet reports — a reminder that the corporate dynamics reshaping comics publishing continue to press on the very people who built the Pacific Northwest's independent scene.
A Central Tension: Growth Versus Affordability
For all its acclaim, the film does not shy away from the pressures now facing that scene. Portland's rising housing costs are making it harder for creative people to stay in the city, according to Oregon Public Broadcasting — a tension the documentary frames as central to its story, even as the region's reputation as a comics hub has only grown.
Where and When to Watch
After its Rose City Comic Con premiere, “Indie Comics City” will become available on OPB's website starting September 12, with a digital premiere the same day, per the outlet. The film will then air on OPB TV on Thursday, September 24, at 8 p.m. Pacific time, airing on both OPB TV and the PBS app, according to Oregon Public Broadcasting.
