Stumptown Comics Fest

You don’t have to look further than "Girl Fuck: An introduction to girl-on-girl lovin’" to see that Erika Moen is all about sex, and completely unafraid to talk about it. The 16-page zine is a starter course for those clueless in non-hetero girl sex, and includes some guidelines from Gender Bending 101. Her work is in the Best Erotic Comics of 2008 and her comic "Silver Bullet" was in the second True Porn Anthology, another erotic comics collection.
But her work isn't all tits and wiggles (rhymes with shits and giggles? No? Okay). Her 2004 self-published "I like Girls" is Moen’s intensely personal story on falling in love with a girl for the first time and the intimidating task of telling her family. Read on for cunts, cartoons, and controversy...NSFW what!

Annie Murphy is a Portland-based artist whose new comic is making waves in the self-publishing world. Murphy discovered the title of her historical/biographical/autobiographical comic "I Still Live" written on the tombstone of 19th-century spiritualist Achsa Sprague. At the age of 20, Sprague came down with a joint disease which caused her to spend the next six years bedridden. But in November of 1852, Sprague was revived and credited her convalescence to the presence of angels and spirits. Her reconstitution inspired her to tour throughout the United States and Canada, spreading not only spiritualism, but women’s rights as well. Read on for more on Annie and some of her moving pen and ink works...

This past weekend was the fifth annual Stumptown Comics Fest in Portland, and while I won’t spend too much time on the rather decentralized and chill atmosphere of the festival, the focus on independent and alternative comics, and gorgeous weather from the weekend, I would like to showcase some of the women comic artists there! April is Comics Month (at least in this town), so this week I’ll profile one woman comic artist a day who was at this weekend’s fest and who was RAD. It’s called "Rad Ladies Who Draw Comics."
Today is all about Hellen Jo, who was a featured artist at the fest. Bay Area-Based, Jo’s first comic book Jin & Jam, about quirkily disaffected teens navigating San Jose (Jo’s hometown), is out now from SparkPlug comics. Before her big small-press debut, Hellen self-published a three part autobio comic called Komiches Buch a "teenage horror story" called Paralysis: A Romance, and a serial comic Blister. More after the jump!!