By WILL NEVIN, WMQ Comics contributor

Portland, Oregon and Houston, Texas may be separated by half a continent and divided by a common language (that twang in the crunchiest parts of the Pacific Northwest?), but Rachel Reed is — and perhaps always will be — stuck between them.

Rachel Reed

Reed, with dreams of working in comics, crossed that great cultural gulf to join Portland’s Oni Press as its publicity coordinator and eventually rose to become the point person for the company’s marketing department. But then home and Houston called, and she moved, she says, with the understanding she could continue in the marketing position remotely. That turned out not to be — as what followed was a sudden and painful dismissal in the middle of a cross-country move.

She found work and happiness in Houston — but it was a peace broken by the news of the Oni-Lion Forge merge and its attendant layoffs. Like so many of us, she took her outrage to Twitter and fired up a righteous indignation, both for her friends and former colleagues and for an industry as a whole that seems entirely too eager to throw artists, editors, writers and other talent into the gutter.

We talked for a little more than an hour — about how and why she got into comics marketing, how the merger news left her angry and how a union might make life better for everyone.

The following is a condensed and edited transcript of our conversation.

What’s it like to be out of the game? How are you right now? Where are you in life? How are things?

It’s really weird. You kind of build up in your mind that this is the industry that you’re going to work in forever. I worked in it for maybe three years, and I’m done. It’s weird to think, and maybe someday I’ll get a chance to go back. I don’t know if that will happen. It was really hard at first because working in comics was something I was really passionate about. First, I wanted to be an artist when I was in high school. And then I went to Savannah College of Art and Design. And then I got diagnosed with a medical condition that I realized was going to be way too expensive without insurance to treat, and I was like, “Oh well. I could never be a comic artist then because comic book artists don’t have benefits and they don’t get paid well.” So I studied advertising and then got an internship at BOOM Studios. And I decided that I really liked working in marketing for comics, and the upside to that was that you would be an employee who gets benefits. And so that was kind of always my dream job and what I was hoping for.

So at first, it was like living the dream, being able to work in marketing in comics. And having to voluntarily — but not totally voluntarily — leave was devastating. It was completely heartbreaking. And it took a really long time, a lot of really hard thinking: This was the dream job. The dream job has ended, what am I going to do now? But it’s been a year now since I’ve left comics, and I’m doing fantastic. The job I’m working in is not ideally what I want to do, but it is a job that pays the bills and a job that treats me well. It’s a job where I make enough money that I can go to grad school to get my master’s in library science and be able to pay for my degree without having to take out student loans.

There was a lot of upheaval in your life. First moving to Portland. And then moving back to Texas with the understanding you were still going to be working for Oni.

Yes. That really kind of threw a wrench in my plans because I already had an apartment set up in Texas. I wasn’t moved into it yet because we had to wait for the movers to show up, which ended up being another whole thing because it turns out the moving company was a scam, and so our stuff went missing for months. But figuring out all of a sudden that they were going to give me a month to transition out remotely, I realized very quickly that my fiancé and I were not going to be able to live in an apartment together, so we had to cancel the lease, which luckily they did not penalize us for canceling the lease, but we didn’t get things like our security deposit back and such. And then it was just kind of a scramble trying to find a place. … Well, to find work. And then, hopefully, to find a place so that we could live together because my fiancé was working in Galveston, Texas, whereas my parents’ house is a two-hour drive away.

Everything is longer in Texas.

Yes.

What are some of your best memories at Oni? What do you look back on and think, “Man, that was great. I enjoyed that. That was the time.”?

The people. The employees … my heart breaks for them. They’re so wonderful. The people I got to just work with every day, they’re just really kind, passionate, funny people. I mean, these are people who really care. Just seeing, especially with editorial, how much they care about their books, how passionate they are about publishing books that are just very inclusive.

I think the greatest memories are the people that I spent time with. At editorial, there is Ari Yarwood and Robin Herrera and Desiree Wilson.

But they’re just so passionate, so kind. Just very smart women. They really know what they’re doing. In marketing, there’s Melissa [Meszaros, former publicity coordinator for Oni], who took over the publicity from me when I moved on to marketing manager. She and I would often spend a lot of the times just talking through marketing together but also just hanging out. Jung Lee, who works in the warehouse department, and a lot of the designers, too, like Hilary Thompson, Kate Stone, Angie Knowles.

Also, she doesn’t work at Oni anymore, but Shy Allott. She was the director of sales when I started. She completely took me under her wing. I learned so much from her, and she really looked out for me, both workwise and personalwise. She really helped me settle in when I moved to Portland.

What were some of your first thoughts when you heard about the merger, when you read about it?

I saw the merger, and I was like, “OK. This is something that’s going on.” I remember reading the New York Times announcement. When I got to the line — I think it was something like, “We’re going to review staff levels” — I felt my whole body clench up because for me, I was like, “That sentence gives me a lot of bad feelings that people I know at both Lion Forge and Oni are going to lose their jobs.” When I learned about the layoffs, probably an hour later, I was at lunch, and I just happened to look at my phone. I actually gasped out loud. I was just so completely shocked, and then so upset and angry that I actually ended up getting no work done that day.

Why angry?

Angry because I know how hard it is to just lose your job, but at least when I lost my job, I had time to prepare. I knew it was happening. They did not have time to prepare. It was they came into work, and that was it. Angry because Portland is an expensive city ravaged by a housing crisis. Knowing how difficult that’s going to be there to scramble for jobs. And it’s also the emotional toll of having to find a job. It’s a lot of work. It’s basically a full-time job to find a new job. And having to deal with the emotions of that fallout, but also try to secure your living.

Angry because this is a merger that’s supposed to be beneficial to Lion Forge and Oni, but at the expense of their hardworking employees. Angry because when I was at Oni, everyone always felt we were understaffed. And I guess I shouldn’t say “we” like the royal we. But it felt understaffed, and everyone is doing the job of 10 people. And so that confuses me because people were laid off at both Oni and Lion Forge. But the content, at least it hasn’t been said if their content’s being reduced. So it also grieves me that the workload of the people who are still at those companies has just doubled when it already feels like they’re doing the job of 10 people.

In reading over your newsmaking tweets, I think there was at least one place where you called it “bullshit.” I think you were referring specifically to the problems faced by people of color, which that’s what I think of when I think of Lion Forge. They have built their brand and identity on marginalized groups. Those same people, the ones who haven’t been laid off, now have to move from St. Louis to Portland, a city not known for its friendliness toward minorities.

Yes. I’ll go ahead and say it again, it’s all bullshit. You know, you have women who are in more than one marginalized group — they’re women, they’re queer, they’re black, they’re disabled. Just to put them all on the chopping block. They said that the decision wasn’t based on the people. The decision was based on the positions. And I find that frustrating because I know that they said that it was because of redundancies. But surely, removing your director of publicity doesn’t seem like you’re correcting a redundancy. Melissa did the press releases, the social media. She set up interviews. She emailed creators. She did newsletters. She sent out review copies. I mean, she did so much.

And it flabbergasts me that she’s going to be replaced with Lion Forge’s publicist. That there was no thought that, “Hey, now we can have two people doing publicity and lessen the workload.” Lessening the workload would be great because then they could do even better work because they could focus on certain things instead of trying to do every single PR item under the sun.

What have been the things that have really surprised you as you have watched from the sidelines?

Just how messy and poorly thought out it seems. I’m sure we’re not getting the full story of everything because they’re not going to tell us everything that’s going on in their business, but after my experience in the industry, I have a feeling that this merger has not been planned very well. And I’ve already seen a lot of people … at least the Lion Forge creators posting on Twitter about their books and people are asking them questions about their books. Like, “Is your book still going to come out at this time?” Is the merger affecting their book? And they’re telling people, “I don’t know.” They’re saying, “I haven’t heard anything.” I think one creator started pushing their Patreon or their Ko-fi saying that they don’t know if their next advance is going to be coming in when it’s supposed to. And seeing so many people tweeting stuff like that, it worries me because that means maybe their editors who they worked with got laid off. Or if their editors didn’t get laid off, nobody’s communicating with them.

I can only imagine how terrifying it is for everyone to feel like they’re left in a lurch.

I wanted to talk specifically about Melissa Meszaros and what a good job she has done in publicity, first at Dark Horse and then for Oni. It’s really weird — this would seem to be a moment of crisis that you would need extra PR people for. And maybe this is a little bit inside baseball, but why is a PR person so important, not just for any business, but for comics specifically?

This is the person that gets the word out to everyone. They get the word out to the fans, to the readers, on social media. They get the word out to creators. At least, in my experience at Oni — I don’t know what it’s like at other companies — when I worked in publicity and when Melissa worked in publicity, we were the ones who were reminding creators like, “Hey, your book is going on sale this week. Make sure that you’re posting on social media and talking about it.” We sent the review copies out to all the reviewers, and that was always a really big deal for us because we would get told by people, with some companies, they would not get review copies very often. We want people to review the books. We want everyone talking about the books. That’s the business. The power of word of mouth is so important.

Even at the conventions there was just so much. Also, because the people working in marketing are marketing and publicizing every single book that the company sells, they are the ones who know everything about every book.

I was looking at the Dark Horse PR masthead before I called you. They have three people on their team, and it doesn’t make any sense why this combined company wouldn’t have at least two, right?

Yeah.

It’s a real head scratcher.

And it’s always been like that at Oni. I mean, you could look back over the years at previous employees and see that there was always one publicity person and one sales person. You’re marketing upwards of 100 items a year. From comics, graphic novels, trade paperbacks. Not only that, but you’re publicizing creator signings and events at conventions. If you’re doing any kind of social media contests or you’re reaching out to librarians. To retailers even, reminding retailers like, “Hey, things are going to go on FOC” or “Here’s a deal that we’re running right now.” Getting in touch with the distributors, with Diamond, and setting up interviews and working on the Previews ad pages. It’s so many things that happen in a marketing department. It was always so odd to me that it was the most understaffed department, and it was also the department that always had the highest turnover.

Because you poor people get burned out.

Yeah, exactly.

Either you said this directly or you retweeted it, but maybe there’s more planning to these layoffs than we know, and it’s not exactly planning in a good way.

I have no idea. There are a lot of statements that really confused me. I think there was … I don’t remember which article it was, but there was either some kind of a press release or interview or something where there was onboarding mentioned, which confused me because I don’t know if they mean onboarding, like onboarding for any Lion Forge employees to Oni. Or do they mean actually hiring brand new employees. And if it’s the latter, the implications of that are…

…not good.

Yeah. It’s not good because that gives the impression that you were firing the person for the person, and not because their position was a redundancy. And there has to be a reason for firing that person. I can tell you, I mean, in the case of the Oni people — I don’t know everyone at Lion Forge, but I would say the same about them as well — that these are the most passionate and hardworking people in comics. And there’s nothing related to their work ethic that would be a means of firing them. I mean, my God, Melissa was hit by a car crossing a street and now has a traumatic brain injury disability, and she was still on publicity last year. And that’s with her being in the hospital and having to go to physical therapy and rehabilitation all the time. Having a brain injury doesn’t stop that insanely devoted work ethic. There’s no reason — there is no reason — to fire that person.

[Oni Press gave the following statement via email as a response to the claim that the layoffs targeted members of protected classes:

“We know the merger of Oni Press and Lion Forge is an important step for the future of both companies, as well as for the comics industry.

As a result of the merger, we had to make some difficult decisions, and it has come to our attention that speculation about the layoffs have circulated on social media channels. For more than 20 years, Oni Press has remained committed to a culture of diversity, inclusion and equity for all members of our team, our creators and our community. Lion Forge’s founding ethos of ‘Comics for Everyone’ builds on that commitment. We know that, together, our work to sustain and grow a welcoming culture will only strengthen.”]

So, I think that’s a great point to turn to your talk of union. How long after the layoffs were announced before you were like, “Hey, I’m going to look more into this and think about it. I’m going to get passionate about it.” What kind of time interval was that?

Right away. I think it was actually maybe my third tweet when I was expressing my absolute anger at this whole situation. I think one of my tweets was like, “If anyone is seriously working on an effort to start a union for comics, please contact me. I would like to help.”

What in your mind would a union look like? Who would it represent? And how would life get better?

The union is going to be the ones who are going to be able to negotiate salary and benefits for employees, and also be able to protect them from situations like this. And in an ideal world, I would like a comic books union to protect not only employees but also the artists, the writers, the inkers, the pencillers, the people who do freelance design — everyone. I don’t know how that works because right now labor laws for unions don’t cover contractors.

I saw that the National Labor Relations Board decided that Uber drivers are contractors and not employees, that means that maybe those working in the gig economy don’t have rights to minimum wage and overtime benefits.

That’s something that worries me because the vast majority of creators in comics, that is what it is — a gig economy. They might have a contract to work on a specific project, whether it be something that they own the rights to or something that they work for hire for, but either way, they’re still not considered a full-time employee at a company that’s publishing their book. So, in that situation, they’re still part of the gig economy.

So this is something that goes beyond forming a union in comics. This is a national legal labor issue.

And it’s almost a cultural issue too because we have seen unions being rolled back for a generation and wages staying relatively stagnant. And you’re from the South, right? You know there’s a reason why automotive manufacturers are coming to the South. Why we have new plants in South Carolina and Alabama and Mississippi. It’s because we are so brainwashed here to believe that a union is a bad thing. That someone who will stick up for your rights and your benefits and basically your dignity as a person is somehow a bad thing.

You had to have seen those Delta posters, right?

I think that happened the same day and I was like, “What are the odds?”

There’s something just profoundly bankrupt about this economy and this environment where Delta feels empowered to say to its workers, “Oh, you want to organize? Fuck you. Save your money. Buy a PlayStation. We’re going to keep those benefits and that money that would let you buy 10 PlayStations, we’re going to keep that to ourselves. But you be sure to hold on to those union dues.” I wish we could wave a magic wand and fix not just comics, but everything.

What do you think are some concrete steps moving forward that the industry could take?

So, right now there is a survey going on — Sasha Bassett at Portland State University has started a survey for people who have or still do work in the comic book industry. It’s a survey about work life satisfaction. The research that we’re going to get from that survey is going to be a really good first step into addressing the issues that workers are facing and the conditions they’re unsatisfied with in the industry. And so, that’s something that I’m pushing out that survey to people and telling people, “I know it’s kind of long. I know it’ll take you 20 minutes. But that 20 minutes of your time is going to be so valuable.”

For the second step, I’m looking at where the video game industry is going right now. They’re way ahead of us and everyone being unsatisfied with how the industry is going and more and more people are clamoring for union. You see some very well known developers and studio heads also starting to claim there needs to be a union. Game Workers Unite is not an actual union, but the organization is trying to get a union made. And I think that’s something that needs to be started with comics. We need an organization that’s focused on getting the union made.

What do you think fans need to understand about the business of making comic books?

In comics, it’s not one artist and one writer making a book. It’s one or more artists and a writer, and a lot of the time, a company of at least 20 people who are editing the book and making advertising for it and selling it to various types of retailers and vendors and getting it out at conventions. Designing the book. Doing all kinds of things. It doesn’t begin and end with just somebody wrote it, somebody drew it and now it’s in the store. That sounds like I’m underestimating people’s intelligence. I think people understand that, like, “Yes, there is more than just writing and drawing to comics.” But like any other industry, this is a business. And there are so many hands in a comic. It’s people’s livelihood.

And I don’t know if it’s so much as fans need to understand more about the business, but more like they should understand that people in comics are suffering. And they’re not getting what they deserve from the companies that they work so hard for. There are people behind these books, and they’re putting their happiness and their health aside because the companies they work for aren’t doing what they need to do for the employees. They have small workforces with bad pay and a lot of people think, “Oh, it’s such a privilege to work in comics. Your job must be so much fun.” And yeah, it is fun, but it’s also still a job. It’s not a 24/7 merry-go-round of fun. And there are just as real problems working in the comic book industry as there are in any other industry, from bad pay to the gender gap in pay, the MeToo movement, bad bosses doing bad things to the people that they work with.

And because comics is still such a small industry, for a lot of us it seems like, “Oh, it’s really bad because it’s so small that the problems are much more glaring.” Some people might say, “Oh yeah, there might be a bad egg here and there,” but if there is a bad egg at most — if not all — comic book companies, that’s a problem. That’s not a, “Oh, it’s Scott Allie, so that’s Dark Horse’s problem.” This is everyone’s problem. You have an editor Eddie Berganza, again, so that’s DC’s problem. No, this is the industry’s problem.

You have the creators and you have lower-level employees publicly denounce these issues, but you don’t see the executives denounce it. They don’t want to discuss it because that can be a legal liability. But these are the people who are in charge of these businesses. These are people’s lives. People’s lives aren’t a game. People aren’t your meal ticket. They’re not your stepping stone to riches and fame. These are the people that make your business happen, and you should be looking out for them.

What do you think we are going to say when we look back on this merger a year or two or 10 years from now?

I honestly don’t know. This might end up being a fantastic move for Oni and Lion Forge. This might be the thing that completely revolutionizes their business. I think there was … I don’t remember what article it was … but they were saying, combined, Lion Forge and Oni Press only make up 1% of the sales in the market. And maybe this might be a great move for them. Maybe we’ll start to see more animated shows and movies and TV shows, and that will bring in more comics. From what I understand, that’s what they’re trying to do. It sucks that licensing has to be what happens in order to keep the comics going, but I also understand that comics is still a very niche entertainment form. It never was a hugely profitable thing. It was always about movies and TV shows and the other forms of entertainment. This was always a business of passion rather than money.

And so this could be a great thing for Oni and Lion Forge. They might be a stronger company because of that. I really hope that people don’t forget that people were the cost of that happening. This sounds very pessimistic of me, but I know that a lot of people will forget. I already feel like a lot of people are forgetting. I think I’ve been trying to post on Twitter every day about this merger, but every day we get further away from it, the less I see people talking about it. And I know it’s because now things are quiet and because of that, there’s nothing going on. And until we get more news about what’s going on with this new company, people aren’t really going to be talking about it. But I don’t want people to forget that people were the cost. Not only was it people, but the vast majority of them come from marginalized groups — queer, black, disabled, women, all who worked so hard and so passionately.

I hope good things emerge on both sides. I hope for everyone who is laid off, they get jobs that they love, that pay well, that have great benefits, that take care of them. Jobs that respect them. And I want them all to be in happier places, whether that’s at comics or somewhere else. But I don’t want people to forget that people were the cost. I’m angry at Oni and Lion Forge, but there are also really good people who work at those companies, and I want those companies to succeed because of those great people who made those companies successful in the first place. So I don’t wish ill will.

If this was all to crash and burn, that would make this whole situation even worse because then it would feel like it was all for nothing.

So, is there life after comics?

Oh yeah. There is life after comics. It won’t feel like that at first. It really will take some time. I remember one thing that was very jarring — when I interviewed for the job that I have now, the interviewer was asking me about my previous job, and so, I was talking about it. When I was done, he told me, he said, “I just want to let you know, when you’re talking about your old job and your old company, you keep saying ‘we.’ But you don’t work there anymore.”

That hurts so much to hear. I mean, it was a good thing to know because it’s like, “Oh crap. I shouldn’t be saying that in my interviews. Good to know. Good feedback.” But also just realizing, “Oh yeah, I’ve been talking like I’m still part of that company.”

I was going to say it was a big part of my life, but I mean, it was my life. I left Portland and my family behind to go work in that job. And that’s all I get, which isn’t healthy. It’s not great. That’s not what your life should be as your job. But it was also just because of how connected I felt to all the books that I worked on and all the people I worked with. And feeling like I was doing something very important, and then realizing that I’m not part of that anymore. And it’s heartbreaking. Kind of takes a while to get used to that and remember to stop talking about your old job in the present tense, and start thinking about it in the past tense. It takes a while to adjust to that, but there is life after comics.

For some of us, there might be a break from comics. Maybe that’s what it is. Maybe we’ll go back into comics, and it will be great. But so far, from what I’ve experienced, whenever I see people get out of comics, they stay out of comics because they found jobs that pay well, with good benefits, with bosses that respect them and treat them well. And it might not be the most exciting job, but it’s a job where you have that work-life balance that you need to be a healthy, functioning adult.

I’m just going to sit here and nod, thinking about all that stuff because I do not have the best work-life balance myself. When your job is your hobby, it’s a problem. Is there anything that you’d like to talk about that we didn’t cover?

Yeah. I guess one thing I want to point out is … I’ve seen some people say, “Oni fired their best employees.” And they definitely did, but that doesn’t mean that there’s not still good people working at those companies. There are.

But they should all be there. Not a person deserved to be laid off.

Former Oni staffers Desiree Wilson and Melissa Meszaros have publicly requested help with termination expenses.

Will Nevin is a visiting professor of communication studies at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Find him on Twitter — if you dare.