Image Comics could easily lose unionization vote against Comic Book Workers United, but union demands to ‘cancel publication of any title’ are a bridge too far

by 11.11.2021

Image Comics has opted for a formal unionization vote after declining a request that the company voluntarily recognize Comic Book Workers United and the Communications Workers of America as representing the company’s staff. It had been submitted by 10 out of its 18 employees, although the union organizers say there are 12 eligible employees who can join.

Under federal law, a simple majority vote via secret ballot overseen by the National Labor Relations Board would ratify the union. The law also bars an employer from either hiring or firing employees based on whether they support unionization, making it unlawful to attempt to game a union election, for example, by bringing in a new crew to tip the vote.

Meaning, with a majority of the company’s workers already in favor of unionization, it appears very likely the union organizers will win the vote — provided the original group of 10 employees sticks together.

If the union wins, then Image Comics and the union will have to collectively bargain under federal law, defined as “meet[ing] at reasonable times and confer in good faith with respect to wages, hours, and other terms and conditions of employment…”

Among the prospective union’s demands: Continuing to accommodate remote work during Covid, monthly staff meetings, a push to hire more staff, performance reviews for management, blasting the company for an “overall lack of diversity in both general staff and management,” all but accusing the company of being racist and sexist, and finally, demanding the power to “cancel publication” of creators the union thinks are racist, sexist, etc.

While things like remote work and meetings might appear reasonable, giving a union editorial control over a comic book company to figure out who’s a racist or sexist is insane.

Specifically, the union organizers’ demanded the “collective voting option” to cancel Image Comics’ creators they find problematic: “Renewed commitment to company values through the addition of a collective voting option to immediately cancel publication of any title whose creator(s) have been found to have engaged in abuse, sexual assault, racism and xenophobia, homophobia, transphobia, anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, ableism, etc. until such time as said creators have engaged in meaningful reparations toward affected person(s).”

They also want explicit diversity hiring quotas: “A long term, actionable plan to address the overall lack of diversity in both general staff and management. The authors, artists, and readers who bring comics to life have never been homogenous and the stories we publish can only be improved by staffing our organization in a way that more accurately reflects the demographics of our creators, our readership, and the nation as a whole.”

Responding to the demands on Twitter, Cyberfrog creator Ethan Van Sciver blasted the union organizers for demanding what he called “race-based hiring quotas” and the union’s requesting power to cancel creators: “I don’t like the idea of people who want race-based hiring quotas implemented at IMAGE Comics also determining whose comics don’t get published for reasons of ‘bigotry.’ Seems hypocritical and counterproductive. More about politics than entertainment and art.”

Van Sciver added, “this isn’t a union in the traditional sense. They aren’t asking for things that workers normally feel entitled to like better wages and health care. They’re asking most strikingly for the power to deny certain creators publication.”

Here, Van Sciver has got a point. Who has editorial control over who works on Spawn is not an unfair labor practice under the National Labor Relations Act. Nor is deciding not to use explicit racial or gender hiring quotas. Sorry, but those are not, in the words of the law, “wages, hours, and other terms and conditions of employment” under which there is anything to collectively bargain in a traditional sense.

Besides that, founded in 1992, Image Comics’ ethos is the creator-owned model. Image does not own the rights of the publications including many of the comic books — the creators do. According to the company’s website, “the trademark and copyright of the work in question is wholly owned by its original creator. The majority of the comics and graphic novels published by Image are creator-owned. While Image as a company spearheads the promotion and distribution of the titles it publishes, it does so with non-creative interference to protect the company and maintain responsibility for our public image.”

Here, the company’s workers are spitting on the idea of “non-creative interference,” especially the union’s demands for “a collective voting option to immediately cancel publication of any title…” What an insult to the principles that the company was founded on.

More importantly, the principal creators and board of directors at Image, the owners of those creator-owned properties, are also leaders of their own creator-owned companies, which the employees of Image Comics do not work for.

According to Image Comics’ website, “Todd McFarlane Productions, Top Cow Productions, Shadowline Comics, and Skybound Entertainment are all under the Image Comics umbrella. Each company is owned and fully controlled by an Image Board of Directors member. As such, Todd McFarlane Productions, Top Cow Productions, Shadowline Comics, and Skybound Entertainment are each fully autonomous from Image Central and are not bound by the rules and regulations thereof. Shadowline, Skybound, TMP, and Top Cow are not ‘imprints’ of Image, they are, for all intents and purposes separate publishing companies that operate in concert with with Image.”

Meaning, all Image Comics does is promotion and distribution. But the properties, that is, what to publish, are controlled by those umbrella companies. Here, the union is attempting to come in between that relationship in a bid to grant itself the power to “cancel publication of any title” on some misguided basis of diversity and inclusion.

I say nice try. It won’t work — as long as Image Comics does not cave into these ridiculous demands.

This is a novel attempt to impose what elsewhere in the industry would be Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) factors, for example, in the case of diversity and inclusion hiring quotas — incentivized by government regulations to invest private employee retirement funds and also through federal and state employee retirement plan purchases in ESG funds — at publicly traded companies like AT&T and Discovery, which own or soon will own DC Comics, respectively, and Disney, which owns Marvel Comics.

Image Comics, Inc. is not publicly traded.

Robert Romano is the Editor-in-Chief at Comicsgate.org.

11/11/2021, 1:11 a.m. Edited for clarity.

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