Next Sunday, March 14th, the Dill Pickle is in the running for a grant award from Portland Stock for a new print project — Oregon History Comics! The project presents illuminating, marginalized and quirky accounts of local history in an accessible medium, engaging history fans and the public at large in learning about the place in which we live.

Not familiar with Stock? It’s a monthly dinner, where $10 gets you a homemade meal + the right to vote for who gets the proceeds from the door.

This time, Stock is at Pacific Northwest College of Art (PNCA), Sunday, March 14th at 6PM. Space fills up fast, so RSVP TODAY OR TOMORROW to portlandstock@gmail.com.

Read more about the project after the jump…

1. Project Summary: (100 words)
Ten stories about Portland’s history. Ten local illustrators. Ten excellent history comics! Over the next year, Portland Mercury reporter Sarah Mirk and the creative civic organization the Dill Pickle Club will publish Oregon History Comics: 10 short comic books telling little-known stories from our state and city’s history. The series will present illuminating, marginalized and quirky accounts of local history in an accessible medium, engaging history fans and the public at large in learning about the place in which we live. Topics include (and we’re open to suggestions for more!): Lone Fir Cemetery, the World’s Largest Log Cabin, the Vanport Flood, Chinatown, the X-Ray Cafe, dead freeways and the history of bike building in Portland. Sounds interesting, right?

2. How will you use the funding toward the realization of your project? (50 words)
Ten local comic artists will work on the comics series. Some of the artists we are considering include: BT Livermore, Shawn Granton Nicole Georges and more. We want to pay artists what they deserve for their time, energies, efforts and drawings. We will split the Stock grant evenly between all ten artists. The Dill Pickle Club will pick up the tab for printing the comics.

3. How will it manifest at the next Stock event? (100 words):
Our first comic, about the ghosts of Lone Fir Cemetery, should be published by next month. We will bring the first batch of Lone Fir comics hot off the presses to the next Stock dinner and share them with the audience. We will also give a short presentation about the project and look forward to a discussion with Stock attendees about future releases. Also, we will be sure to credit Stock in all ten books and donate a box set of the comics to the organization’s archives.

4. Why is this project important? (100 words)
Many Portlanders are transplants, and have never learned or long forgotten Portland’s recent past. Printing these stories as exciting, engaging comics will encourage people who would never pick up a dense Portland history book to learn about where and how the social, racial and physical structures of their city were built. By celebrating Portland’s underrepresented histories, Oregon History Comics aims to provide a more informed perspective to current politics and public opinion.