The Comic Labour Research Project (CLRP) is an independent research project examining the working conditions of creative professionals in the North American comics industry.
Its goal is to better understand how comics professionals self-organize in order to collaborate and support one another. Through a series of interviews with various comics creators, the project seeks to answer the following questions:
- In an industry often drive by precarious labour and passion projects, how do artists find the necessary supports to thrive?
- In a medium that is frequently shaped by collaboration, how do a geographically dispersed creators collaborate?
- When a creative scene exists across digital networks, what does community and mentorship look like?
- Can research into these spaces help identify opportunities to create further supports and opportunities for creators?
Back in 2019…
The first phase of this project focused on communal studios, where comic creators come together to share space, resources, and knowledge. Based on interviews with organizers and members at studios like Helioscope, RAID, and World Monster HQ, this original study examined the roll these spaces play in combatting precarious labour conditions.
“Communal studios serve as both a support network and a pool of industry experience, providing new artists with the knowledge and confidence to negotiate equitable wages.” – Excerpt from conference paper
One of the themes that arose from this research was the challenge of rising rent costs in urban centres. Studio organizers observed that the conventional logic of moving to a big city to launch a career in comics was no longer practical, and that early-career artists were increasingly turning to online spaces to get their start. This raises the question of how online social spaces differ from local scenes and communities.
The New Phase
The current phase of research turns its focus on online communities of comics creators in a variety of forms, including coops, creative working groups, Discord communities, as well as emergent communities that form on quasi-social websites like DeviantArt, Substack, and social media.
The goal of this new phase is to develop a fuller picture of the diversity of online communities supporting the labour of comic creators. The research seeks to analyze the potential for these spaces to foster mentorship, create professional pathways, and facilitate collaboration. How does the community and support created in online spaces differ from local scenes and studios? How does their accessibility reflect the voices and career paths of their members?
The immediate goal of this current phase is the generation of multiple conference papers for the Spring and Summer of 2025, followed by the publication of a research journal in 2026. The longterm goal of this project is the creation of resources and initiatives to help facilitate creator communities.
An independent project
Please note that this is an entirely independent scholarly research project. The project is currently unfunded and is being carried out independently from the researcher’s affiliated institute.
The Comics Labour Research Project 