Highlights from Ride - Milwaukie

Milwaukie, Oregon is the home of Dark Horse Comics, the third largest comic book company in the United States. This is their headquarters in Milwaukie.

Dark Horse was founded in the 1980's and takes it name from the fact that comics in those days were dominated by the two giants, Marvel and DC. It's funny - Marvel and DC have been bought and sold and the only original comics companies left are the independents, of which Dark Horse and Image are the largest.

This is Things From Another World - one of a chain of comics stores in the Portland area. There aren't as many of them as there once were - I think 3 are left in Portland, but they were the start of Dark Horse Comics - Mike Richardson, a PSU grad founded the chain, and when he got dissatisfied with the quality of comics out there, he started Dark Horse. DH was a pretty small company until they started going after and getting the big media licenses - Aliens, Predator, etc. Then came the critically acclaimed comics that put DH on the map, like Concrete, Hellboy and Sin City. Now DH is the big company, and TFAW is a subsidiary. Anyway, this is the Milwaukie store, which has lots of cool stuff and reminds me a lot of Dave's Comics in Royal Oak, Michigan (which closed in December 2000).

This is downtown Milwaukie. Pretty peaceful, isn't it? Another slice of small town Americana. Not much here, especially considering Milwaukie has 20,000 residents. Most of the city extends out to the northeast, and in fact the main police station is out that way and no longer downtown where City Hall is.

My wife and I used to live in this area, a few blocks away behind Milwaukie High School (Go Mustangs!).

That's about it - I ride through this town every day. Other than the geekiness factor of living near the 3rd largest comics company, there's not too much exciting about it. Milwaukie has a few issues: opposing the Mal-Wart that they want to build in Eastmoreland (which may hurt downtown), building a new multi-use development near the library, rebuilding Hwy 99E which runs about a block west of all these pictures, debating whether to have their own fire department and thinking about annexing more of unincorporated Clackamas County (which doesn't want to be annexed). Oh, and fighting the proposed new Tri-Met transit center along Kellogg Lake (they may have succeded - the latest plans I've seen from Tri-Met show the center on the north end of Milwaukie in the Industrial area)