This one’s all diary and new book announcements, folks! Just a quick note that we’ve got a free/donations music performance event at the shop on Tuesday that our pals at Bud Tapes organized with Rebecca Novak, Letras, Organic Produce, and The Devil. It’s at 6:30pm at 3225 SE Division Street, a strange mix of experimental, improvisational, and liminal soundscapes. No other events on the calendar at the moment. Okay, let’s get to it!
<3 Secret Room
One big week, Two tabling events, Three new books
The weeks leading up to the Short Run and Zine Symposium back-to-back weeks are always pretty wild, but this time we really had a full plate. Early during the week before Short Run we had a bunch of folks over to our studio to watch some spooky movies and collate/bind a ton of books. Like absolute freakazoids, we had a harebrained scheme to release THREE new books at Short Run. Ross, Lani, Erin, Phoebe, Anthony, Tommy, and Ollie came over and we couldn’t have gotten everything done without them. We blew a fuse from too many things running in the studio of course, and it was a weird mad dash to get everything in order, but it all shook out in the end.
We had a station for sewing, collating, saddle stitch binding, printing, box-making… people and objects in every room of our house and studio. Our dog gave up her usual “new people” patrol, realizing her effort to herd everybody was futile. We had CRTs in different rooms playing different movies. It’s a lot of fun to work like this, despite the chaos.
This is just how small press is sometimes. It’s a group effort with hard-to-quantify manual labor and a mad dash to get everything done before the next tabling event. It’s pizza in the living room and books piled on the floor, chatting about our favorite comics and trying to stay warm with space heaters in an unfinished shed. “Any fun new projects? Hey, you ever check out ____?” It’s usually fun, sometimes stressful, and always worth it when you’re holding a brand new book in your hands. It’s worth it even more when you hand that book to the artist who made it.
Later that week we hosted the Galaxy Gateway Halloween Spooktacular at our shop, a continuation of our sci-fi variety show, this time featuring Ashley Robin Franklin, Erin Tanner, Andrew Alexander, Grayson Bear, Brooke Hearst, and Phoebe Mol.
Ross Jackson reprised his role from last Halloween’s reading as The Cryptkeeper, pulling a group of impromptu readers on stage to group read a classic Tales From the Crypt comic in what has now become an annual tradition. Incredibly fun. This project is one of my personal favorite things we put together at the shop, it’s getting over-the-top in a way that feels really natural.
We’re working on the next Galaxy Gateway installment for February with some absolutely buck wild ideas, new puppets & paper mâche creatures, and a very fun theme. Stay tuned!
The next day we hit the road for Seattle, Washington, a 3-hour drive with cartoonist Quinn Amacher (we’ve published her books SYNCING and Wilder and will certainly do more together in the future) and talked extensively about the movie Heat (1995), which I really need to rewatch.
Like all tabling events, Short Run Comix Festival is run by a board of crazily passionate folks who have been uplifting artists for many years. We do Short Run every year - we always release a new book for Short Run and it’s a time where the community comes together and we all catch up and see what we’ve all been working on for the year. It’s a major book release weekend since it happens at the beginning of November so everybody’s puttin’ out new stuff in time for the holidays.
We table in The Sea of RISO with all the other weirdos who print with these dang machines, this year tabling with Ross Jackson and Grayson Bear and next to our pals at Living Room Press. After a long day of tabling we ended up at Star Brass with a couple dozen cartoonists shootin’ dice and watching the final game of the World Series. This is not necessarily a representative list of activities for underground comix folks but you never know how the night will shake out. We chatted about our different comic scenes in different cities, promised to table again soon in new places, and hit the hay.
The next morning we went to the annual RISO brunch that Zine Hug (Alex Barsky & Zack Lydon) host that happens the morning after Short Run every year. A bunch of risograph studio folks all catching up about the state of our small (but worldwide) community and all the projects that we’re working on or just finished working on. We picked up dozens of books for our shop from some of the best RISO-focused publishers in the country and ate amazing congee and donuts, listened to Shintaro Sakamoto, and sat on the floor of the kitchen talking about what FAQ stuff would be beneficial for stencil.wiki (the ultimate RISO resource). A long drive back to Portland that afternoon with a quick stop at Cold Cube’s print studio to pick up books and hang out a bit.
Always a nice weekend in Seattle!
PZS is one of the longest-running zine events we know of. This year was the 25th Anniversary, a shocking run for any community event, and every year brings people from all over the country out to celebrate zine culture. Comix, perzines, poetry, essays, art books, anti-mainstream culture at its finest. Independently published weird stuff galore. I picked up hilarious self-published comic strips, an illustrated guide to skipping rocks, the new Zine Cuisine Portland Community Cookbook (from the fine folks at Portland Zine Meetup), some indie comics from Beijing, and a nonfiction zine on how to find hidden cameras. And more.
The vibe at the zine fair is very different (but walking in tandem) from comics events and art books fairs. All are good. All bring community together in a necessary and powerful way. A lot of folks who are making this kind of work don’t really cross over outside of conventions, so we have friends who we see once a year or so at events like these. As they say, we’re all passing around the same $20 bill. It’s an interesting and different type of energy though, there’s a wider range of subject matter at the zine fair than at a comics festival and it brings a totally different crowd together.
On Saturday we tabled across from D.R.Y. - Daniel, Raul, Yasmeen - from San Francisco, friends of ours who are making some truly incredible comics and prints and next to Seltzer Press, a Portland-based publisher who is making really, really beautiful RISO-printed poetry zines, art objects, prints. We got breakfast burritos from the Portland Farmer’s Market that happens just outside of the venue, though that’ll likely change with Portland State University opening the new art building. PZS will probably end up in there next year, a cool change of venue. Porltand Zine Symposium is our hometown show, we’ve been tabling at it in some capacity or another since 2017. We stood on the balcony overlooking the park blocks enjoying the absolutely beautiful fall breeze.
We didn’t make it to the after party this year because we were too beat from the long week. Cielle was sick (and quarantined at home), we were down 1/3rd from our normal tabling squad. We hosted two events at the shop between Short Run and PZS (ack!). This year we had 8 new books on our table from the previous year, which is honestly astounding, even to us. How did that happen? During a year where we’ve spent most of our time working on the Secret Room shop, hosting/running events, printing gallery shows… when the heck did we make eight new books? Glad to see it all in one place though, and excited for what’s to come.
Despite our promise to ourselves that we’d take it easy in December, we’re tabling at 3 different Portland events! Oops. It’s hard to say no to hangin’ out with other publishers, artists, and fellow bookstores.
As always, tabling season is exhausting and absolutely rules.
Three new books, all released November 1st, 2025. Our final publications of the year… but don’t worry, we’ve got an incredible work 2026 slate!
The follow-up to Material Dimensions: Part 1 (2022), Carlos B. dives deeper into the sci-fi socialist world he’s been crafting for years. Truly wonderful, expressive cartooning and optimistic about the future. We’re so, so excited for where this story is going and about the ways in which Carlos continues to push the boundaries of his compositions. We’ll be publishing an additional issue every year… or faster! Aptly, we just watched They Live for Carlos’ birthday last week, another piece of media exploring how we perceive the structures of the world around us.
Our first publication with cartoonist Grayson Bear (Ignatz-nominated Pokey, Business Insider, Duck Map) and certainly not our last. We initially met them at a comics reading in Portland a few years ago now and have been talking about working on a project together for years. We were astounded when they pitched us this script and the accompanying graphite pencil cast drawing. We’re so happy with how this unnerving tale of violence and facade plays out, a beautifully rendered piece of cartooning.
Portland’s Erin Tanner is a cartoonist/illustrator and storyteller like no other. We put out his brilliant fable Sleepy’s Delay (2025) but the bulk of his work is published by Seattle’s Living Room Press, who concurrently put out Jorbuckle’s Inferno on November 1st at Short Run. Poem World is a box set collection of 5 poetry zines, each on a different topic, that range from earnest to funny to delightful to melancholy… often in a single poem. Truly a masterwork.
Abbey St. John’s Solo Show
The gallery show we’ve got up on our wall for one more week is a truly gorgeous project by Portland artist Abbey St. John, who we previously worked with on a print for 2024’s Dedmal group risograph show First Contact. We’ve printed other work with them as well over the last couple of years and love what they’re doing! Truly a joy to work on this project together. Shoutout to the Regional Arts Culture Council (RACC) for providing funding to make this show possible.
Featuring:
4 new RISO prints
A brand new 32-page book (printed by Secret Room Press)
10+ Cyanotypes
Tee-shirt designed by Abbey w/ all proceeds going to the Palestinian Children’s Defense Fund (printed by Grilka Press)
💛 PEACE ON EARTH FOREVER 💛
What else? A few things we’re excited about:
Let’s Do Drugs and Talk To Aliens (2025) - an amazing film written and directed by local filmmaker Ryan Webb, got to see this at the Clinton Street Theater earlier this month
Jorbuckle’s Inferno (2025) - Erin Tanner’s beautiful mythology-soaked-in-pop-culture book from Living Room Press
Cold autumn evenings - it’s nice to hunker down as it gets rainy and cruddy in the pacific northwest - the perfect opportunity to stay home, listen to a record, and read some zines
OK Chicken & Khao Soi - a new restaurant from the folks behind Portland’s Yaowarat opening directly across from our shop, very excited to see something take the ol’ Pok Pok location into a new era
Angel’s Egg (1985) 4k Restoration - very psyched to see this absolutely wild looking anime in the theater, it’s been on our watchlist for a long time
The end of the Kickstarter strike - unions win again!
OKAY BYE
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