Dark Horse closing its affiliated stores, and sees a company union formed

KOIN-6 reported that Dark Horse, now owned as they are by a Swedish company, will be closing a few specialty stores they've owned in Oregon as part of their shift to emphasize video games and movies:

A major comic book company is shuttering its two Oregon stores later this summer as part of a wider restructuring.

Dark Horse Comics has announced its Things From Another World stores in Beaverton and Milwaukie will close on Tuesday, June 30. Its California store is also slated to close months later on Wednesday, Sept. 30.

[...] With the looming closures, the company revealed it is now focusing on its entertainment sector to ensure that its writers and artists “have the development support, creative partnerships, and resources to bring their visions to life across film and television.”

Dark Horse, which was acquired by Swedish video game giant Embracer Group in 2022, is additionally launching a new initiative that will reimagine its comics as interactive games.

Sounds like they could be on the way to changing their business into a video game producer instead. Which actually makes a farce out of what their alleged goal was to start with when they first opened as a publisher in the mid-80s. And look how it's implied they're more interested in emphasizing adaptations for the film industry. Seriously, does that do the comics medium any favors? Not really.

As though the above news wasn't problematic enough, Courthouse News says some employees of the publisher are forming a union:

Workers at Dark Horse Comics publicly announced Wednesday that employees at the comic publisher’s headquarters have organized a union, joining a growing wave of labor organizing across comics, games and creative media.

The union, called Dark Horse Workers United, says it has support from a supermajority of employees across multiple departments at the company’s headquarters in Milwaukie, Oregon, just outside of Portland.

“At the moment, we have just under 70 public supporters and more who are aligned with us but not public,” said Riley VanDyke, a graphic designer and member of the organizing committee.

VanDyke and fellow organizer Riley Pittenger, who works in sales, said the organizing effort began roughly a year and a half ago with a small group of employees frustrated by low pay, inconsistent workplace policies and a lack of transparency across departments.

“Dark Horse’s strength is in its employees,” VanDyke said. “Everyone is extremely passionate and kind and creative, but they’re also extremely underpaid.”

This reminds me of the time when some workers at Image formed a union, and what was problematic about that was that the members did so because they wanted to control the narrative in terms of creativity, and what they believed contributors could or couldn't do. Maybe this is more about pay, but if it mutates into something more ludicrous, that won't bode well for creative freedom at Dark Horse.

Workers described what they called a “passion tax” within comics publishing — the idea that employees accept lower compensation because the work is creatively fulfilling.

“It’s an open secret that the company leans on the ‘passion tax’ to get talented people for very low cost,” VanDyke said. “We love working here. We love the work we do and the people we do it with, and we want our collective standard of living to reflect the amount of passion we put into the work we do for Dark Horse.” [...]

Organizers framed the campaign as part of a broader labor movement within creative industries, including recent union drives in publishing, games and comics. Fellow Portland-based comic publisher, Image Comics, formed Comic Book Workers United in 2023. Yet that union has seen little progress and soon filed complaints against Image with the National Labor Relations Board for reportedly mistreating and targeting union members.

“I hope we can influence more creative workplaces to take steps to take back some of their own power,” VanDyke said. “Creative jobs are some of the easiest to take advantage of, because creativity isn’t valued like more ‘hard skills,’ most of the time.”

Management has not responded publicly to the campaign as of Wednesday, though organizers said they hoped the company would voluntarily recognize the union.

When it comes to payment, certainly they've a right to ask for better wages. But that doesn't mean this union couldn't end up being corrupt and demanding control of other people's creativity. And if it does, what's the point of doing business with them anymore? As far as recognizing the union goes, if you think unions today can be a bad influence, Dark Horse is unfortunately more likely to validate this union, especially now that they're downplaying comics production in favor of movies and video games. If Image is resisting whatever union they still have among employees because it's more interested in controlling creative license, that's good. But DH could be more vulnerable, and for all we know, as a publisher, they could be getting outmoded pretty soon, based on where they're going.