Periscope: Portland's storyboard and comics studio.

I went to see Alison Bechdel at Powell's last Thursday, where she read from her new graphic novel Fun Home. It was a terrific event, with a big, enthusiastic crowd. Bechdel's approach to an author reading was perhaps the first successful one I've ever seen from a cartoonist. Fun Home has a clear verbal narrative in the captions and she read these from a typed script while projecting a slide show of the accompanying panels (with their captions cropped out.) It worked perfectly.

The crowd.

A section of the signing line.

Fun Home just got a great review in the New York Times. And those of you who have read the book might be interested to learn that the Home in question is up for sale. Got $279,000? You can own a piece of literary history.

-Posted by Steve