Rose City Comic Con’s (RCCC) Creator Pro track, launched in 2022, presents the alt-creative paths within the comics industry: jobs in comics publishing, jobs in comics retailing, jobs in comics education (teaching or studying comics in K-12 and higher education settings). What’s unique about this track at RCCC is that there’s no requirement for special tickets or even a Pro badge, and in making this programming open to all, it creates a culture of inclusivity. And even that speaks to what it’s like to live in the Portland comics scene. As I heard Brian Michael Bendis say multiple times throughout the weekend: “Portland is lousy with comics people.”
While the number of full time comics creatives is a small percentage of overall creatives in the industry, Portland is home to a disproportionate number for its size. In addition to Bendis, the Willamette Valley is home to writers Kelly Sue DeConnick, Matt Fraction, Greg Rucka, David F. Walker, Christopher Priest, Gail Simone, and the Helioscope artists collective, featuring Cat Farris, Paul Tobin, Colleen Coover, Steve Lieber, Erica Moen, Karl Kesel, and Terry Blas, among others. Many of these creators volunteer their time and energy meeting with aspiring writers and artists. Steve Lieber, the nicest man in comics, does a monthly portfolio review at Books with Pictures in Portland, but other opportunities abound. Outside of Portland, panels with writers and artists are at all comic cons, and available online.
The Creator Pro track at RCCC still features writers and artists–it even has a creator mixer designed for aspiring creators to meet and form creative partnerships. But it also, importantly, includes everyone else. Having your name on the front page isn’t the only way to work in comics, and I was pleasantly surprised to see a panel devoted to “All the ways to work in Comics.” The panel offered a snapshot into Oni Press, but also into the myriad of positions inside a comics publisher–even an indie press like Oni. Moderated by Daniel Crary, Oni Press’s Director of Sales and Marketing, the panelists collectively represented the life of a comic from pitch to publish: Editor Gabriel Granillo, Director of Design and Production Angie Knowles, Senior Graphic Designer Sarah Rockwell, and Operations Manager Andy Mcelliot.
The moral of the story (and morale boost) was the simple message of: you can do this. Every day another editorial gets published about the dire nature of the job market. Does capitalism suck? Absolutely. But we do have to work, and if you have to work, why not seek opportunities to work for a company that makes something you personally love and enjoy?
Although there was some time at the end of the panel for a standard Q&A, the majority of the time was spent on the panelists’ jobs, and their career paths. Surprisingly, none of the panelists began their careers with the intention of working in the comics industry. Many of them were doing similar jobs at other companies and when they had the opportunity to work for Oni, and multiple people expressed insecurity about Oni Press wanting to hire them. The moral of the story (and morale boost) was the simple message of: you can do this. Every day another editorial gets published about the dire nature of the job market. Does capitalism suck? Absolutely. But we do have to work, and if you have to work, why not seek opportunities to work for a company that makes something you personally love and enjoy?
After the panel was over, I contacted Daniel to see if he was willing to talk more about the panel and, as never happens, we were able to schedule a conversation right away.
Daniel is exactly the kind of person who should be doing sales and marketing at a publisher like Oni Press. His passion for the comics industry is authentic, and he is motivated by a sincere desire to bring people in. When your product is stories, it can be easy to focus on writers and artists, but, as Daniel was quick to say at the very beginning of our conversation: “when you consider distribution and how many people Diamond and Lunar employ, and Penguin Random House, and when you think about retail, it’s a massive industry.” For Daniel, this panel was an opportunity to shine a light on the people who don’t get their names on the front covers–or even in the fine print.
The panelists, Daniel included, had a much more indirect route to working in comics. “I knew one person in comics,” Daniel confessed. “That was my track. I knew a single person, and they knew that I was an events professional, and so I came into it through the convention side of things.” The other panelists also came to Oni without previous connections to the comics industry. Gabriel Granillo worked as a journalist at Willamette Week before becoming an editorial assistant at Oni. He shared that it was a bit of a gamble, but one that ultimately paid off when he was promoted to editor. Sarah Rockwell and Angie Knowles had degrees in graphic design, but had never worked in comics before. Andy Mcelliot was even more of an industry outsider, working for hometown ice cream chain Salt and Straw before applying to work at Oni.
“I would have had more confidence to make the jump if I had heard examples from other people saying; ‘no, no, no, I didn’t do this at all before. I wasn’t in this whatsoever, but I had transferable skills and a can-do attitude.’”
In the true spirit of being the person you wished you’d had when you were young, Daniel’s motivation for sharing his personal journey into comics and gathering others with similarly non-linear pathways is based on his own experience. “I would have had more confidence to make the jump if I had heard examples from other people saying; ‘no, no, no, I didn’t do this at all before. I wasn’t in this whatsoever, but I had transferable skills and a can-do attitude.’” While these non-creative opportunities are few and far between, Daniel hopes that panels like this one will get people to even be aware that these positions exist. “It’s such insider baseball,” he reflected. “These things aren’t advertised especially well, it’s not a career path that people think of.”
While there’s no guarantee that the panel (or a panel like it) will be present at next year’s RCCC, Daniel and I are in agreement that there should be even more to really help people understand the entirety of what comics publishing is, from creator to retailer. In 2022, the Creator Pro track had a retailer panel which included Katie Pryde, owner of the Eisner Award-winning Portland comics retailer Books With Pictures. Daniel wished he’d been able to feature a dedicated sales person or retailer to speak openly about the sales process as a part of this year’s panel; partly because retailers are incredibly important to the ecosystem of the comics industry, but also partly because comics sales is, like comics, a little bit quirky and weird. Daniel explained to me: “There are things that are idiosyncratic in the comics industry, things like FOC…we don’t have BookScan at the comic book retail level. We don’t have exact sale through numbers, we don’t have universal transparent ordering. It’s unique in that way, and I think there’s limitations that sales and marketing run into because of how the industry is set up.” It’s that kind of insight and knowledge that can help job seekers, but also raise awareness of those within the industry about how and why it is different from other industries.
Where better than Portland to be the start of something like this? Although comics is a massive industry, it is still much smaller than book publishing and other media production (like television, movies, and even video games). Although this is changing as more book publishers open their own comics divisions, the majority of publishers in comics are still considered indie and small press. This should mean that there are potentially more jobs out there for unnamed workers than ever before, but what we see instead is often the same people taking the same jobs at different companies, rotating through in a massive game of musical chairs. That won’t change unless we, collectively as an industry and culture, make it change. And it can’t change until we open all the doors to our industry and continue to consciously recognize and validate that all paths can lead to Rome (or at least to Portland).
And who knows, maybe at RCCC 2025 there will be a panel with current and former comics journalists and critics, sharing their stories of how writing for some website or other led to their current careers. More than a few people from WWAC have gone on to have their names on the front covers, but let’s not forget that creators like Kieron Gillen and Stephanie Williams were writing about comics long before they were writing comics for major publishers like Marvel and DC.
