Portland, Oregon, is often called the Rose City, but the denizens that inhabit its underbelly rarely smell so sweet. Dirty cops, dirty robbers. These shady characters and their illicit connections reveal their boiling corruption in Phil Stanford’s true crime stories. Only the names have been changed to protect the guilty. Collects City of Roses parts 1–12 from Dark Horse Presents. Join writer, Phil Stanford, and artist, Patric Reynolds, this June 11th for a special book release and signing.
Phil Stanford made his name in Portland by needling the pompous and powerful with his columns for The Oregonian and the Portland Tribune. But Stanford has been particularly obsessed with the seediest corners of the city’s shady past—much of it captured in his 2004 book, Portland Confidential. Stanford, 70, has now found a new medium: comic books. His 12-part series, “The City of Roses,” illustrated by Patric Reynolds, is based on true events from 1968 to 1981 involving the city’s drug kingpins and (Stanford says) crooked narcotics cops. The grimy history, Stanford says, helps explain how power in Portland really worked. “Everyone was crooked, everyone was very compromised,” he says. “It’s all what really happened—dirty dealers and dirty cops. But I changed some of the names to protect the guilty.”
-Willamette Week
WHO: Phil Stanford and Patric Reynolds
WHAT: CITY OF ROSES HC release party and signing
WHEN: Wednesday June 11th, 6-8pm
WHERE: Floating World Comics, 400 NW Couch St
Phil Stanford is a journalist and author based in Oregon. Stanford’s first book, Portland Confidential, is an expose of the city’s post-War past as a vice mecca, operating under the protection of the local police. It was a regional best-seller and received the Independent Publishers “Best True Crime Award” for 2005.
Patrick has worked with Patton Oswalt and Joss Whedon (Serenity: Float Out), Mike Mignola (Abe Sapien: the Haunted Boy), Marc Andreyko (Let Me In), Steve Niles (The Thing: the Northman Nightmare), and David Lapham (Exile to Babylon) as comic book illustrator.