The anglophone comics industry works like this: the overwhelming majority of people working in comics are freelancers.

Publishers do have permanent staff- editorial and so forth, but generally only the minimum necessary for the running of whatever size company they are.

Sometimes- often- it’s literally just a handful of people. Everyone else, including nearly everyone on the creative side, is freelance, employed on a project by project basis at best; in many cases even that is an overstatement, publishers essentially buy the work once it’s done.

Functionally, this creates a situation where none of the major employers are really responsible for most of the people working for them, not for their wellbeing, nor for the consequences of their behaviour.

It also means that almost no one on the creative side of the industry has even the barest semblance of job security.

Competition for work is about as fierce as it’s possible to be. The regular audience for anglophone comics, worldwide, appears to be fixed at a more or less stable quarter of a million people, and has been for well over decade.

There are outliers, comics that sell a lot more than that, but not many. Please don’t Well Actually me about the Wimpy Kid books or whatever. I’m talking about the industry as a whole here.

This is anecdotal, but ask yourself: how many people do you know who read comics, who are part of that 250k, and have no ambition to make them? I don’t think it’s exaggeration to say that at LEAST 10% of comics readers are also actively pursuing work in the industry.

What are they competing for? I’m not going to go into my working out, it’s boring, & I’ll admit to there being a lot of guesswork involved, but broken down into full time positions the way an employer in a normal industry would, I think you’re looking ~1000 jobs across the board.

This is a massive oversimplification. But I am trying to give you sense of how intense the competition is. And that competition never stops.

Unless you are lucky enough to reach a “superstar” position, where you can get an exclusive deal that guarantees ongoing work, you are a freelancer for life, fighting for every job.

And how do you get those jobs? There’s no formal interview process, not even a standardised submissions process. Most publishers have commissioning editors who are basically talent scouts. You get work by networking.

Another word for networking is nepotism. They are the same thing. I am probably upsetting a lot of people by saying that. But if you take the moral judgement out of the equation, there is no functional difference.

Now. Comics is not somehow magically divorced from the rest of the world. It exists and functions within a patriarchal, racist, homophobic, class ridden culture just like everything else.

The realities of how it functions, the mechanisms I just outlined, can only, inevitably, heighten those things. Every societal disadvantage is increased, every privilege increased.

And on top of that, it is an environment that seems almost designed to nurture predatory and exploitative behaviour. There is no structural recourse for victims to pursue, no avenue to report abusive behaviour or for it to have consequences.

In recent days, much has been made of the drinking culture, of the misogyny of modern geekery, of the elevation of artistic skill, but the fact is that the underlying structure of the industry itself creates a perfect environment for predators.

It doesn’t have to be like this. The anglophone industry is dominated by two of the largest entertainment corporations in the world. There is no real reason why they couldn’t just employ their creative staff on a full time, ongoing basis.

Lots of people benefit from them not doing that. If you’re in a financial position to be able to surf through a freelancer’s life, to be able to get through the fallow periods while waiting for a purple patch, then the freedom is great, I’m sure.

The further up the hierarchy a person is, the more they benefit from the structure remaining as it is, and the more they stand to lose if it changes. This is why you don’t hear people complain about it; those with the biggest platform are the most invested in keeping it going.

But it means it’s functionally impossible to unionise. It means almost no one has access to anything like an HR department. For those in the US, it means there’s no health insurance.

And it means that everyone is dependent on the personal good will of someone with more power than them. Often only fractionally more power, but that’s enough.

You’re probably waiting for a pithy conclusion to this. There isn’t one. I’m just telling you what I see.