Guests will beam into the Oregon Convention Center this weekend from many different worlds. Lt. Uhura, The Incredible Hulk, Clark Kent, Neville Longbottom, Brad from “Rocky Horror,” dancing “Angle Grinder Goddess” Angela Marie, pro wrestlers Becky Lynch and A.J. Styles — even California highway patrolmen Jon Baker and “Ponch” Poncharello will be there.
So will comic artist and author Clayton Hollifield of Battle Ground, which is slightly closer to Portland than Krypton.
Wizard World Comic Con, a gargantuan pop-culture convention, “is much more TV- and media-oriented in general than it used to be,” said Hollifield, who remembers when the event was all comics and comic books, and the guests of honor were artists and cartoonists.
Nowadays, Wizard World Comic Con casts a much wider celebrity net; for example, Montel Williams will be there to tell showbiz tales, pure and simple, and Kato Kaelin will host the Saturday night dance party.
If you go
When: Wizard World Comic Con
When: 5-10 p.m. today; 10 a.m.-10 p.m. Saturday; 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Sunday.
Where: Oregon Convention Center, 777 N.E. Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd., Portland.
Admission: Single day, $50 and up; all three days, $90. Some celebrities charge autograph fees.
On the web: wizardworld.com/comiccon/portland or claytonhollifield.com
“Wall-to-wall entertainment all weekend” is how Wizard World CEO John Maatta puts it: In addition to all those celebrities, the Oregon Convention Center will be swamped for three full days by dancers and electronic musicians; costumed performers, magicians, acrobats and fire-jugglers; arts, crafts, costume- and mask-making; costume contests and costumed game play; and expert panels and group discussions on such hot topics as “The Art of the Saturday Morning Cartoon,” “The Game of Thrones Fan Experience,” “Cosplay and Mental Health” and even “Sexuality in Geek Culture.” Check out wizardworld.com for the whole huge list of activities.
Adult humor
Hollifield will be there the whole time, he said, chatting with faithful fellow comic-book readers and creators — and stoking up as much interest as possible in “San Gwynn,” the comic-book series he’s working on now.
You wouldn’t know it by what’s playing on the big screen these days, but Hollifield pointed out that contemporary comic books have travelled light years since the heyday of Marvel and D.C. superheroes, aimed mostly at boys.
“San Gwynn,” by contrast, is completely humorous and rather adult. It follows an anti-hero of the commercial kitchen whose undertalented overconfidence gets him deep in hot water again and again. (The title is a play on “sanguine,” which means both cheerfully optimistic and blood-red.) Hollifield said he learned from experience everything you don’t want to know about what goes on behind the scenes in the restaurant industry. “San Gwynn” is aimed at readers 18 and up.
The proliferation of cooking shows and cookbooks of every strip demonstrate that people care deeply about food these days, Hollifield said; this startup is his most successful project yet, he said, and he’s looking forward to compiling several issues in a real book that publishers might get behind.
Quick reactions
Hollifield, 40, grew up in Longview and Vancouver. He was always a sketchbook artist, he said, and spent hundreds of hours on his senior project at Hudson’s Bay High School: writing, drawing and publishing his own photocopied comic books.
He majored in creative writing at the University of Washington. But it’s tough to get readers to devote quality time to your fledgling prose and give you honest feedback afterwards, he found. Visual artwork gets immediate reactions, and Hollifield said he found the society of fellow comic book creators friendly and supportive. When he decided his artistic skills weren’t quite what they should be, he said, he took figure drawing classes at Portland Community College.
It’s no secret that being a comic-book artist and author is a labor of love; Hollifield supplements that income with seasonal work for his mother’s tax-preparation firm.
Unless you do contract work for an outfit like Marvel or D.C., he said, you retain ownership of your own art — and all the responsibility for marketing it.
That’s why Hollifield likes huge conventions like Wizard World Comic Con — they’re the best possible place to connect with comic book enthusiasts who’re interested in the unlikely adventures of a hapless sous chef.
“People are so enthusiastic” at Wizard World Comic Con, Hollifield said. “It’s kind of a nerd carnival. I mean that in the best possible way.”
