After a year and a half of quietly organizing behind the scenes, 102 workers at Dark Horse Comics in Milwaukie, Oregon, are going public with a campaign to unionize with Communications Workers of America. On May 27, the group asked the National Labor Relations Board to conduct a union election.
Working at the publisher of the Sin City, Hellboy, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer comic series is prestigious, but wages at Dark Horse hover around $50,000 per year.
“We’re working in Portland, but most of us cannot afford to live where our work is,” says Riley VanDyke, a 2025 American Manga Award-winning graphic designer.
VanDyke says three senior team members have left the graphic design department in the past two years due to low pay and a year-long pay freeze, and only one was replaced with a new hire. That prompted workers in the department to push for and receive 10% raises, but VanDyke says the average salary is still well below the $58,596 living wage according to MIT for single, childless adults in the Portland metro area.
“Even with the 10% pay bump, I still qualify for income-controlled housing,” VanDyke says. “I literally applied to income-controlled housing, and HR at Dark Horse had to approve it.”
Comics workers reached out to Portland’s CWA Local 7901 in October 2024, inspired by what CWA had done for workers at Image Comics and Seven Seas Entertainment, says CWA 7901 president Meg Ward. Unions for workers at those publishing companies organized in 2022 and ratified their first contracts in 2023.
Along with living wages, Dark Horse workers are seeking more “transparency and equity” to provide worker input on major company decisions. They are frustrated by management not sharing the financial data and reasoning behind their decisions on staffing and other expenses.
But VanDyke says their union’s goal isn’t to villainize management. They just want their jobs to be as stable as they are fun. “Ultimately, I want all of us to be in a better position to keep doing the thing that we love doing,” VanDyke says, “making really f***ing cool books.”
