If you make your way around Portland’s strip club scene, Richie Stratton is sure to be a familiar face. You can find him hosting Sinferno Cabaret at Dante’s on Sunday nights, Kit Kat Showclub on Wednesdays and Fridays, and co-hosting alongside the lovely Axel at the Polerotica and Miss Exotic Oregon finals. Beyond his gift for hosting events with a fun and entertaining stage presence, Richie is a creative multi-hyphenate with talents that include screenwriting, a 20-year-and-running career in stand-up comedy, and most recently, creating and self-publishing a comic book alongside co-writer Aaron Wagner and illustrator Marcus Lake.
Richie once hit an elk with his car on the way to a comedy gig in Idaho. If he hadn’t, there’s a chance I might not be writing this piece about him today. Then again, a crash like that could very well have guaranteed I wouldn’t.
His comic book series, Night of the Were-Elk, found its inspiration in that very crash. Such an up close and personal encounter with an elk—one that could easily have killed him, gave Richie a glimpse of just how terrifyingly massive these animals are...monstrous, one might even say, and he and Wagner began envisioning the beast in a horror setting, as a species of killer, shapeshifting creatures—a fitting response to so close a brush with the grim reaper. The result is a truly unique and wonderfully weird offering to the world of comics.
Set in a small town in the Pacific Northwest, Night of the Were-Elk centers around Tiffany, a trailer park dweller who staves off loneliness in the company of bar flies and truckers who are just passing through. Following one such encounter, Tiffany unwittingly finds herself caught in the sights of a menacing secret society. Equal parts murder mystery and supernatural thriller, Night of the Were-Elk is a fun and exciting read. Richie was gracious enough to grant me access to a script that lays out the comic’s full story arc, and I’m pretty excited for the release of future issues.
On that subject, the first two issues are already available, with #3 set to release sometime in August or September, and subsequent books releasing every two months or so after that (there’s no definite release schedule in place; Richie assures me it’s best to give Lake the space he needs to work his visual magic). If you’re interested in picking up a copy, head to crawlinkcomics.com, where you can directly purchase physical or digital copies, or find a map of comic book stores throughout Portland that carry the book (of which there were nine last I checked), and a couple of which have sold out and re-upped on their stock.
So, what’s in Richie’s future beyond Night of the Were-Elk? Remember when I mentioned that one of Richie’s talents includes screenwriting? Well, he has two short films being shown at this year’s Guignolfest, a film contest and festival of short horror films, in Portland. He and Wagner also recently collaborated on a screenplay for a buddy comedy, mashing up two of exactly nobody’s favorite movies, resulting in the once-again-wonderfully-weird Paul Blart: Timecop. No word on whether they’ve successfully attached Kevin James and Jean-Claude Van Damme to reprise their respective roles, but I’ve got my fingers crossed!
If you have an artist working in Portland’s strip club industry who you’d like to see featured here, email Nate Hazen at nate@xmag.com with your suggestions.
