Happy New Year!
November and December were absolutely bonkers. January kind of feels like we’re coming up for air after fighting to get our heads above a big wave. And the air feels GOOD. As it turns out, doing four days of weekend tabling during the busiest weekends of the holiday season is exhausting. Trying to do normal holiday life stuff was crazed. Runnin’ a shop is a very strange experience sometimes and we’re a small team over here. Thank you to everybody who helped us out even the tinest lil bit.
It feels really nice to kick into the new year with less immediate intensity, more functional planning, a bunch of community-driven events on the horizon, and great creative energy surging through Portland despite everything going on in the world. ✌️ 🌎
In this issue:
Little Guys at Secret Room t-shirt
Jan/Feb Shop Events!
Our big year o’ publishing (2025 retrospective)
<3 Secret Room <3
PREORDERS ARE A-GO!
We made a tee shirt with our friend Raf Spielman (screen printed by Grilka Press) and it’s available for preorder now! Whether you enjoy lookin’ at art and readin’ zines, standing around holding hands, or coming out to weirdo movie screenings, comics readings, and multimedia performances, you’re welcome at Secret Room.
This is the kind o’ stuff that happens at our little shop & gallery in inner southeast Portland. Which little guy are you?
These shirts will ship out early March (or pickup at our shop in Portland). Really, really excited about this, it’s a new type o’ thing for us and we truly could not be happier with how it turned out. Preorders also come with a fun lil treat!
January + February 2026
Big Nose Rag Release Party & Reading | 1.23.25 Friday @ 7:30p
Big Nose Rag is a new anthology edited by cartoonist Olivia Cruz showcasing an array of new, gross, funny, sexy, dumb, smart, and sensitive indie comix creators. The release party at Secret Room will have readings/performances from all of the artists in the inaugural issue! We’re so psyched to get to host this evening.
Readings by: Diamond Quevedo, Kusa Choy, John James, Winona Guro, Julia O., Erin Tanner, and BNR editor/host Olivia Cruz!
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Monster Commando | 1.31.25 Saturday @ 7:00p
Cave of Monsters brings us the very first English sub of Monster Commando, an absolutely bizarre, fun, and ultra-rare opportunity to see this 3-part never before seen tokusatsu with some crazy cool effects and limited VHS release. Hosted by CoM’s Sam Kusek.
About: The year is 210X. In an era where humanity roams the galaxy freely, bounty hunters Y, M, and H, hardened by solitude and battle, earn their keep by capturing alien creatures on brutal, hellish planets.
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February Events | Stay tuned for info as we lock down specifics
2/6 Screening: Portland director Ryan Webb joins us February 6th for an intimate screening of his 2024 heartfelt stoner sci-fi practical effects comedy Let’s Do Drugs and Talk to Aliens. We caught the release event at Clinton Street Theater in 2024 and really fell in love with this film!
2/21 Galaxy Gateway: Our sci-fi public access show Galaxy Gateway returns on February 21st for an episode about love on planet earth with a stacked cast of performers including Ross Jackson, Molly Mendoza, Molly Lecko Herro, and Aaron Fairchild.
2/28 Live Music: Emmet Martin returns February 28th to host an evening of experimental, improvisational, field recording, and meditative music, headlined by sound collage artist Max Nordile, backed by 3 bands including Emmet’s own project Varied Terrain. Not familiar with Emmet? They run pnw cassette label Bud Tapes!
Eight new books, three reprints, and the future of Secret Room Press
2025 was a big publishing year for us. As most of you know, we’ve been publishing risograph printed comics & art books since 2019 under the name Secret Room Press — for newcomers to our mailing list, we started in printing & community space work looooong before opening our small press shop & gallery in Portland. Somehow, despite being our first full calendar year at the shop, 2025 had the most Secret Room Press releases of any year yet!
Why would this happen? Probably just good momentum, really. When you start doing stuff, you’re bound to do other stuff. One idea quickly becomes two ideas, then three. Halfway through a project you start thinking about another project. In our experience, a “life of art” is really a life of continued intentional momentum, of stringing together sequences of projects and events and life moments that coalesce into something emotionally consuming and fulfilling. It’s hard to pin down what causes this. I think we just let the snowball roll as we run after it down the hill.
At the end of that chase? 8 new books. Phew!
So what’s next for the press? Well, a lot! We’re always working on new publications and we have no intention of slowing that down. Very excited to talk about all the stuff we have underway, but we wanted to do a lil retrospective of what we’ve worked on the last 12 months.
Not including all the books and ephemera we printed to accompany art shows or projects we worked on through our print shop with people, Secret Room Press released:
Sleepy’s Delay - We worked on this book for around a year with Portland artist Erin Tanner, from pages he had inked nearly a decade before its release. He gave the originals to us inked directly into a hardbound sketchbook. 162-pages of whimsy, comedy, and melancholic delight through fantastical worlds with a bunch of great characters. Nobody is balancing the line between making you laugh and filling your heart quite like Erin Tanner.
Karaoke Nightmare - A short, fantastic comic about the future of karaoke from Ross Jackson, independently printed ahead of its release in the forthcoming Mondo Karaoke Vol. 3 (PDX’s premier karaoke appreciation zine). We love Ross’ embrace of the classic wide-format strip printing (also appreciated by The Comics Journal in his other strip collection Ft. Carvey, FL).
[editor’s note: including the reprint of Ross Jackson’s Aquarium Life: Part 1 in late 2024 and reprint of Quinn Amacher's SYNCING in February 2025, we had been doing a lot of perfect bound, larger format books in a row, so we introduced a new format-specific anthology series called shush to focus on physically smaller productions. Less demanding for both artist and publisher!]shush 01: Am I… in Love? by Ava Pom - our first book with Ava, whose illustration work we are absolutely enamored with! Short comics about Ava’s daily life thoughts on romance, truly delightful and beautiful work. It was really amazing working with Ava’s art, her linework is so confident and fun and just looks stunning in the vibrant bubblegum, sunflower, and brown we settled on for this release. Cannot wait to see what she’s working on next!
shush 02: WILDER by Quinn Amacher - A beautiful fantasy short about artists who make commissions for the witches who rule them and the complications of their romantic lives. As Ryan C. of Four Color Apocalypse wrote, “This is a lithe, subdued, delectable effort in purely visual terms, a veritable feast for the eyes, that showcases an artist fully aware of how to use an economy of lines to maximum effect.”
shush 03: Twin Story by Phoebe Mol - One of our favorite Portland artists/cartoonists and one part of the publishing outfit World Egg Press (truly a publisher to watch), this poetic, experimental comic is follows two soft red eternities that stretch before and after living. Truly a gift to work with Phoebe on this.
Material Dimensions Part 2 by Carlos B. - The second installment of Carlos’ socialist sci-fi epic released for Short Run in November, along with a reprint of Material Dimensions Part 1. If the subject matter wasn’t pertinent in a world fraught with late stage capitalistic pessimism already, Material Dimensions Part 2 continues to optimistically and beautifully explore a core belief: A better world is possible.
Word From The Bird by Grayson Bear - An artistically surprising turn from cartoonist Grayson Bear, known for their work on comics like Pokey (Ignatz nominated!), Duck Map, and Al Dente. Word From The Bird is drawn entirely in soft-edged graphite renderings, a sort of period piece that feels out-of-time. This was been the first time we’ve seen Grayson drawing human characters in a comic, and when we read the script for it we were absolutely enamored with what they managed to pull off. Don’t take our word for it!
Poem World by Erin Tanner - The first time we’ve ever created a box set and a crash course for us in making more varied physical objects. Poem World has five zines of poetry and illustration on different subjects and spans love & relationships, Palestine, pop culture, friendship, and much more. As it turns out, making a box set may be one books but it really was the same as making five books and a box. Oops!
~~~
So that’s it for 2025. EIGHT new ones, a few books back in publication, and a slate of new stuff coming out this year. We’ve got some really, really interesting folks in the 2026 roster. No spoilers! Not yet, at least. We’ll be dropping a double-release of new books at MoCCA in late March - that’s all the news for now, see ya in the big apple!
💛 PEACE ON EARTH FOREVER 💛
Top 5 things to gaze at in 2026:
Clouds slowly drifting across a blue sky
James Webb telescope photos (eg. Pillars of Creation | NIRCam and MIRI Composite 2022)
Books full of drawings and/or paintings
A dog’s eye
Naturally moving water (ocean, river, waterfall, etc.)
Listening recommendation for a pleasant voyage:
Yuji Ohno - Cosmos (1981) | this album is a stunning mix of synthesizers and symphonic sounds that is mystical and jazzy and uplifting and honestly just really, really good. I might have to make a small run of bootleg cassettes.
OKAY BYE FOR NOW
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