Dark Horse Workers United Poised as Less Than 48 Remain for Deadline

Even by the standards of the comics industry, it has been an unusual 40th anniversary for Dark Horse Comics. 

On March 4 of this year (exactly one month late for the formal 40-year marker of the company’s founding), founder and longtime CEO Mike Richardson abruptly exited the company in what was characterized in news reports at the time as a “dismissal” by the publisher’s current owners Embracer Media. Two months later, on May 20, Embracer announced plans to spin off their company into two separate entities, with Dark Horse and sister brands to belong to a “new IP & Licensing business unit.” Two weeks later, the company announced they would be shuttering all of the retail locations of Things From Another World, the chain of comic shops predating Dark Horse itself. On May 27, the latest anniversary news became public: a supermajority of Dark Horse employees announced their intention to form a union under the name Dark Horse Workers United.

In a letter sent to interim Dark Horse Media CEO Jay Komas, and signed by 59 employees, the staff announced their intention to unionize under the aegis of Communication Workers of America Local 7901, the same CWA local which previously engaged in successful unionization efforts at Portland-area comics publishers Image and Seven Seas Entertainment. The letter read in part:

“We, the workers of Dark Horse Media, have come together to form one union, Dark Horse Workers United (DHWU), with our parent union, the Communications Workers of America (CWA). In solidarity we stand together to contend for our rights as workers, vote as a democratic body, and improve our material conditions."

The letter asked that Komas and Dark Horse voluntarily recognize the union by June 3.

On the prospective union’s website, which launched the same day as the announcement, the group outlined five “foundational principles” (democracy, diversity, equity, solidarity, and transparency) and three broad categories of goals: “improve job security, wages, and benefits,” “create a transparent and equitable workplace culture,” and “acquire a seat the table” with regard to company decision-making.

Motives and Tactics

According to DHWU spokesperson Riley VanDyke, organizing for the prospective union had begun as early as 2021, even before the publisher’s purchase by Embracer Media in December of that year. The principal issue, both then and now, was a sense among Dark Horse employees that the company’s pay was inadequate compared to other comic publishers in the Portland, Oregon region. 

“It's kind of an open secret at this point that the company leans upon the passion tax, the idea that you are going to do cool shit, so they’ll pay you less and you’ll just have to take it,” VanDyke said. “We're told a lot of the times, quote, ‘There is no money in publishing,’ but the truth is it's just not equivalently divvied out. So in every department, people are chronically underpaid.”

VanDyke could not provide The Comics Journal with specific pay rates either for job categories at either Dark Horse or comparative publishers in the area, but said, “We know from discussions with fellow employees that our rates tend to be below market rate in our area (The Portland Metropolitan area). While different departments vary based on the job type and skill set, a common sentiment amongst our workforce is a concern that the level of highly specialized skills, significant demand and quality to which Dark Horse is known, is not reflected equitably in our pay.” Representatives of Dark Horse Media management, including Komas, did not reply when contacted for this article. Other Pacific Northwest publishers, including Portland-based Image Comics and Seattle-based Fantagraphics, declined to comment on either employee pay rates or the Dark Horse union drive in general.

The group’s organizing efforts began slowly, building from a core of “three to five people,” all in the Dark Horse production department. One major difficulty was the physical layout of the Dark Horse office itself. “The biggest hurdle at Dark Horse has been that the company historically has just been really siloed,” VanDyke said. “There were essentially five different buildings [in 2021]. Now there are less because we got rid of one of them, but…there isn't a super natural way to go and talk to people that are in these other buildings easily, and overcoming that has been the biggest challenge.”

Consequently, the group reached out to the CWA local, who worked with them to arrange more creative methods of bringing employees into the fold: “We had lunches down in editorial to talk with people and get to know them,” VanDyke said. “We would go and join accounting or other departments on walks so that we could just have some time to get to know each other. We would set up parties after big company meetings and just be like, ‘Hey, if you want to hang out, watch a movie, just come on over. We can chat and get to know each other.’ So we slowly started making connections in these other departments, and then some of those people joined in on the organizing committee, and suddenly we had more reach, and then it was a lot easier to keep going from there.”

In its present form, Dark Horse Workers United consists of a central, all-volunteer organizing committee, and organizing leads in each division of the company: VanDyke in design, Derby McCann and Maureen Heaster in prepress, Andrea Kidder in print, Kris Raikes in technology, Alley Raney in publicity, Joe Cavanaugh in editorial, and Brooke Wians at Things From Another World (whose staff remains involved despite news of the stores’ closures in June). 

Although the Embracer purchase was not an instigating factor for the would-be union’s formation, it did play some role in the more immediate timing of the union’s demands, as did the departure of Richardson. “Mike himself started the company with the idea that creators should continue to own their own IP” VanDyke said, “We have a good company culture at Dark Horse. And we want to have protections in place so that this new parent company coming in doesn’t do things that would jeopardize that.”

To date, Embracer’s public statements have largely echoed VanDyke’s sentiments. In a press release from the same day as the announcement of the forthcoming closure of Things From Another World, Dark Horse management outlined a broadly creator-focused direction for the company’s publishing division: “Going forward, we are deepening our commitment to our writers, artists, and storytellers who define the Dark Horse voice, ensuring they have the development support, creative partnerships, and resources to bring their visions to life across film and television. We believe the strongest path forward for Dark Horse Entertainment runs directly through the creative talent that makes this company extraordinary.”

In an interview with The Comics Journal, which took place before the public announcement of Dark Horse Workers United but after Richardson’s exit, Dark Horse editor Daniel Chabon described the editorial climate under Embracer as one that continued to favor creator-owned comic properties. “We’ve been owned by Embracer for several years now,” Chabon said. “At this point they’ve been great to work for. And I know that there's been a lot of news recently and transitions recently, but the conversations all being had in-house are that we are not changing the publishing line whatsoever.” 

With regard to Richardson’s exit, Chabon said, “I think we just kind of need a refocusing. What that is specifically, I don't know exactly yet, but it's not really changing doing creator owned books or licensed books. It's also about new ideas.”

Union Demands and Money Troubles

As noted on the group’s website, Dark Horse Workers United enumerates three overall goals, the first and most high-profile of which is their demand for improved wages and benefits. For the moment, however, the prospective union is making no specific requests for pay increases, noting that Dark Horse’s financial circumstances make it a less than ideal time for such demands. “We all are under no illusions that Dark Horse is doing great financially,” VanDyke said. “We know things are kind of rough right now and we're not expecting immediate pay increases.”

The actual financial position of Dark Horse is complex: as a division of the Swedish-based parent company Embracer Group, Dark Horse revenue belongs to the broader Entertainment & Services segment alongside several other gaming and entertainment brands. According to Embracer's most recent annual financial reporting for FY 2024-25, that segment reported a net loss of SEK -1,096m (approximately -$118M USD). 

This, however, was largely a result of so-called “goodwill impairments” written off as a result of Embracer’s numerous acquisitions of other companies in recent years. The same report notes that Dark Horse itself "delivered net sales growth YoY and profitability compared to the previous year," suggesting that the comic business itself may actually have improved even despite the overall accounting.

At the same time, Dark Horse initiated a wave of layoffs in February of 2025, in the wake of both troubles directly within the comics industry (especially the then-recent bankruptcy of Diamond Comic Distributors), and within Embracer Group overall (which had lost an expected $2 billion investment from the Saudi-based Savvy Group shortly after purchasing Dark Horse).

On May 20 of this year, Embracer announced its intention to spin off Dark Horse media alongside several other entertainment brands into a separate publicly-traded company, under the name Fellowship Entertainment. Notionally, at least, that prospective company appears to be in somewhat stronger, if still ambiguous, financial shape: a “strategy update” released alongside the Fellowship announcement calculated pre-tax profits for the 2025 calendar year at SEK 1,172M (~$126.6M), but capital expenditures of SEK -1,2138 (-$133.7M). 

But beyond raw dollars and cents, Dark Horse workers complain of a “wage/hiring freeze” currently in place at the company, as well as what VanDyke calls a “top-heavy” payment structure at the company, which dates even to the time when Richardson and co-founder Eric Paul Shaffer were still in leadership. This, too, is difficult to assess, since neither Komas nor other Dark Horse executives have publicly-known compensation.

Indeed, that absence of transparency in financial and other matters is itself one of DHWU’s central demands. VanDyke elaborated that the workers’ group is asking for both open access to Dark Horse’s financials (“Once we are officially a union and we're recognized by the company, they will have to open the books to us, which means that we will see how and what decisions are being made monetarily,” VanDyke said), and a greater say in the company’s decision-making as a whole.

“We want to have a seat at the table,” VanDyke said. “TFAW (Things From Another World) closing was as much of a shock to all of us as it was to everyone else. We found out from someone that worked at TFAW that it was happening.” Consequently, the workers are asking for “Some kind of formalized process where we actually have a voice in things that are happening,” though no more specific process has yet been decided on.

With regard to their principles of equity and inclusion, DHWU is pursuing twin goals: protections for Dark Horse employees, and assurances for the future of diverse content within Dark Horse Comics themselves. Where employees are concerned, VanDyke said, “Most of the people in [the] design [department] are some kind of queer, and we just want to ensure that we keep protections for ourselves as things kind of go a little bit scary in our country right now.” 

Protections for comic book content are more vague in their goals at this point: VanDyke rejected outright any quotas on diverse-themed comics, but explained that the motivation arose from several queer-themed comic projects that were halted last year – moves which the workers believe might have been different had they been given a greater role publishing decisions. 

The Future for DHWU

As of press time, Dark Horse management has made no public statement in response to Dark Horse Workers United’s letter. At least officially, DHWU say that they are hopeful voluntary recognition of the union will be forthcoming by the June 3 deadline. Should that fail to happen, however, DHWU would petition the National Labor Relations Board for an election, in which a bare majority of eligible employees must vote in favor of the union in order to achieve recognition.

The latter scenario was the case in Portland’s most recent comics unionization at Image Comics in 2023, where workers won union recognition in an election after Image management declined to recognize them voluntarily. At Seven Seas entertainment, in 2022, management initially refused to recognize the employee union, but reversed its decision before an election would have taken place. 

In any case, the would-be union is prepared for a likely fight. “Unfortunately, with how labor is in the U.S., power is always stacked against the worker,” VanDyke said. “So we have prepared for the case where union busting and retaliation might start to happen, and we're prepared to stand our ground and fight back as we need to.”

One smaller complaint of DHWU has possibly been affected already by the company’s response to the union effort. “Management did, we think, catch wind of the unionizing effort a couple of weeks ago,” VanDyke said. Subsequently, Dark Horse management announced a more lenient policy on remote work for editorial staff – anticipating one early demand of DHWU. 

“We were told that it was because Mike [Richardson] is no longer in the office, but we suspect that it had something to do with the union effort,” VanDyke said.

VanDyke is aware that the union faces a number of challenges attempting to organize in the current environment which had not been present at either Image or Seven Seas when they formed unions. Since the election of Donald Trump, the period before an NLRB-sanctioned union vote occurs is now expected to run 4-6 weeks (up from a previously-expected two weeks during the Biden administration), a period which VanDyke described as “four to six weeks to try and union bust” for management.

VanDyke is likewise unswayed by concerns that the shaky financial outlook of Dark Horse/Fellowship/Embracer and the comics business more generally makes this an inopportune time to demand pay raises and hiring. “If we don't do it now, then when will we do it?” VanDyke said. “[Underpayment has] been a problem for decades, and there's literally always going to be the excuse that this is not a good time. The thing is, life keeps happening, and we cannot afford not to try.”

Dark Horse creators reached by The Comics Journal expressed widespread support for employees unionization efforts. “For freelancers like me, comics can feel like the Wild West,” Powers artist Michael Oeming told the Journal. “But when a company is owned by a much larger corporation, protecting editors, designers, and staff should be a no-brainer. If a comic company is owned by a billion-dollar corporation, supporting unionized workers should absolutely be possible. I’m proud of the work I'm doing and have planned at Dark Horse Comics, and a big part of that comes from the people behind the scenes who put those books together. They deserve clear protections.”  

“I am a union member,” said Oeming’s Powers collaborator, Brian Michael Bendis.“I'm in a couple of unions. It has saved my ass a couple of times. I completely support the excellent team at Dark Horse. I've been there for years now and I have seen how excellent they are at every part of the process. They deserve all the protections that a union would offer them.”

VanDyke, meanwhile, sees the union effort in terms of both the immediate present and a future legacy. “I think we really need class consciousness and union solidarity to come back if we want to have any kind of power in our own lives,” VanDyke said. “I worry that we're going down a really dark path, and I'm hoping that this movement and other ones like it can help see us through that to a better state.”

 

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