Portland on the Take
Portland is well known as as a large economic hub but it also holds a long history of corruption. The Red Scare that followed the 1934 Waterfront Strike gave rise to gangsters gaining control of some of the city’s unions. Collaborating with high-ranking city officials, criminals like Al Winter and James Elkins amassed power and influence, often employing goon squads of union members and hired criminals to enforce their authority.
Authors JD Chandler and JB Fisher illuminate Portland’s days of civic corruption and concealed murders. With unprecedented access to the police investigative files of the 1947 Frank Tatum murder and the detective notebooks and tape recorder transcripts of Multnomah County sheriff’s detective Walter Graven, the authors shed new light on Portland’s tumultuous mid-twentieth-century past.
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Comments & Reviews
Also funnybooks: I'm almost done reading My Life in a Jugular Vein by Ben Snakebite, about whom I can find virtually no information online. It's a collection of daily diary strips by a 30-ish punk rocker who lives in Austin, Texas. It's a bit samey after a while -- almost every strip has him making out with a cute girl, eating Mexican food, working at a video store or touring with one of numerous punk rock groups -- but like James Kochalka's diary strips, Snakebite lets you into his world with his whole heart. Sometimes he comes off like a dick, sometimes he seems like the greatest guy in the world. And he always makes me hungry for Mexican food. His art and writing are a little like John Porcellino's, so if you like King Cat, you may really dig the comics of Ben Snakebite.
There’s no story to be followed other than what some band dude who lives in Austin, TX does day to day, which might seem boring, but actually turns out to be engrossing. Everyone has a friend like Ben, or is like Ben themselves, so it’s pretty effortless to relate to his comic. There’s no pretension to his strips - he’s just a man with all his glorious imperfections trying to have a good time. There’s something refreshing about a guy who’s willing to put every part of his life onto the page, whether the stories are mundane or hilarious.