Posted in: Comics, Image | Tagged: hiveworks, union

Comic Creators Rally For Unions, Guilds And Cooperatives

Comic Creators Rally for Unions, Guilds and Cooperatives... but what does the US law say?

The fight to establish a union of comic book creators in the US has been fraught. US law has made unions of freelance employees illegal under anti-cartel legislation, unless they were explicitly grandfathered, such as the Writers' Guild for TV and film. The recently established Comic Book Workers United union for Image Comics employees was for non-creator staff roles at the publisher, as was United Workers of Seven Seas at manga and light novel publisher Seven Seas Entertainment. Newbury Comics retail staff unionised, while staff at Abrams Books looked to join the United Auto Workers Union.

But what about creators themselves, especially in the wake of bankrupt publishers and distributors? And it's not just print comics that are affected. The Hiveworks Artist Guild, a group of around 100 past and present webcomic creators associated with Hiveworks Comics, posted via the Cartoonist Cooperative, alleging years of labour abuses, financial mismanagement, and misconduct at the hands of Hiveworks' leadership, specifically owner Xellette Velamist and Chief Operating Officer Isabelle Melançon. Founded in 2011, offered hosting, ad revenue, crowdfunding support, and more to indie web comic book creators, according to the guild, it failed. Their statement said, emphasis mine;

"We sent our first letter as the Hiveworks Guild in the spring of 2023, listing several grievances and presenting the argument that Hiveworks cannot provide the services it claims to offer. Pushing back on the idea that we misunderstood Hiveworks, we sought clarity for what the company actually was. Hiveworks responded by saying they simply do not have the budget to offer all of their advertised publishing services. This led to a back-and-forth where Hiveworks eventually decided they were not a publisher, but rather a "service provider," and we were not its creators, we were its "clients." This was meant to take pressure off of Hiveworks, but it only led to a muddying of its mission statement. Isa left Hiveworks in early 2024, and Xel left the Hiveworks Discord in early 2025. Thanks to their departures, communications between the Guild and existing staff finally became more productive and open. With this new transparency came clarity on financial issues. Many of our members discussed how much they were owed from previous Kickstarters, but we were continually told that Hiveworks as a whole was in no financial danger."

"In the time since Isa's departure from Hiveworks and Xel's departure from the Discord, the Guild was excited to work with remaining Hiveworks staff to salvage things. At first, there was a renewed hope for better communication, but a number of events soured the experience. We are now left with a situation that has gone from bad to far, far worse. In early 2025, the Guild learned that Hiveworks was substantially more financially troubled than previously reported. They had a combined $340,000 debt from years of mismanagement of Kickstarters, failure to pay the company that hosts the Hivemill shop, and other smaller financial failings on behalf of Xel and Isa. One staff had also admitted in one of the company meetings between staff and artists, that around $15,000 was stolen from the company's PayPal account in 2023, adding to the financial stress staff had only become aware of after Isa's departure in 2024. We also learned that remaining staff were also owed $17,000 from the company, but had kindly decided to defer their own paychecks to help fund our departures from Hiveworks."

"In light of such an enormous announcement, staff put forth their best solution for the debt: a Kickstarter to save Hiveworks. Guild members disagreed with this idea on both scope and principle. To "fix" Kickstarter debt with another Kickstarter seemed unwise, and there were no concrete plans on what items could be sold – much less why anyone would buy them. We held that the $340,000 debt was unlikely to be remedied by a fundraiser in any significant way. With the rejection of this plan, whatever hope of working together with staff quickly crumbled yet again.  Since the Kickstarter proposal, many Hiveworks members have judged the situation to be too massive to solve, and have cut ties with the company before any likely implosion or potential legal battle. Some of those who remain have unpaid debts, unresolved contract issues, and merchandise that will sit in the warehouse until it is either shipped out (which is currently not an option, financially) or destroyed. Hiveworks is now run by a skeleton crew, and remaining members receive little to no communication about their outstanding troubles."

Henry Barajas, creator of Death To Pacheco from Image Comics, talking about important events coming for comics in 2026, says "I say this year after year: UNION. The first-ever union protecting the people who make comics is desperately needed. If not a union, a guild." What's the difference? Well, the big one is that a guild can't collectively bargain or negotiate on pay or other conditions. Which for many, defeats the point. But organisations like the Cartoonist Cooperative, which hosted the Hiveworks statement, are stepping up as lifeboats for creators, advocating for fair pay and ethical practices. They state

"We are a member-run organization that aims to improve and protect the careers of comics workers globally. We are artists, letterers, colorists, writers. We are online, we are in your local comics shop, we are in your library- we're everywhere. Who aren't we? Cartoonists and other sequential arts industry workers are often treated as disposable by the companies that employ us and publish our work. Even entirely self-published authors struggle to deal with the intense pressures of getting their work into the hands of readers or just making comics in the first place. We're forced into unhealthy and unsustainable schedules, strong armed into terrible rates, and rarely ever receive future returns on our hard work. For our medium to continue growing, this needs to stop. Our founders, united via the internet, got to talking about the inability for workers in our industry to unionize. There are union groups for specific employers, but none for comics as a whole like there are for other industries. We may not be able to legally unite, but nothing was preventing us from cooperating with each other, right?"

The Writers Guild of America East is pushing for union coverage for animation writers, and the Animation Guild has continued to represent artists and technicians since 1952. The Writers Guild of America (WGA) is gearing up for potential strikes in 2026, with their contract expiring in May. Might any of them find a way to include comic book writers in their midst?

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