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Crucial Comix is the home for essential nonfiction comics and zines.


Founded in 2024, we are a cartoonist-run small press that publishes narrative nonfiction comics and offers compelling classes on comics-making and practice.
A black and white portrait shows someone holding up a zine called Queer Enough

Our Values

We believe that comics are a powerful way to shape how we perceive ourselves and the world. Comics can capture emotional realities, offering a profound way express feelings and experiences that are impossible to depict in words alone. Comics connect with readers, drawing new eyes to stories about politics, history, and identity. Comics are made around the world by people who want to share their ideas and dreams. In short, comics are crucial.

As cartoonists face down book bans, political censorship, and financial difficulty in publishing boundary-pushing work, it’s more important than ever to build a community of artists that is rooted in mutual support and enthusiasm.

Crucial Comix is all about skill-sharing, accessibility, flexibility, and experimentation. We are a small press that aims to be always evolving so we can be a relevant and reliable resource for artists. Our pitches are always open. Our classes are all offered sliding-scale. Our comics are all free to read. Each season, we welcome a cohort of volunteer editors to guide up-and-coming artists through the process of making a nonfiction comic.

Meet the Crucial Crew

Staff

sarah shay mirk

Sarah Shay Mirk

Publisher

Sarah “Shay” Mirk (they/she) is a graphic journalist, editor, and teacher. For six years, Shay was a contributing editor at comics publication The Nib, where projects she worked on won both Eisner and Ignatz awards. They are the author of several books, including Guantanamo Voices, an illustrated oral history of Guantanamo Bay prison. Her book on the craft of making nonfiction comics, Making Nonfiction Comics: A Field Guide to Graphic Narrative (co-written with Eleri Harris), will debut from Abrams ComicsArts in 2025. In 2024, Shay was the Applied Cartooning Fellow at the Center for Cartoon Studies in Vermont. She is white, nonbinary, and queer. You can follow Shay on Instagram @mirkdrop

Audra McNamee

Audra McNamee

Editor

Audra McNamee (they/she) is a nonfiction cartoonist based in Oregon who makes comics on topics ranging from computer science to the history of Jell-O.  Audra is currently working on comics about the neuroscience of psychedelics at the University of Oregon, and teaching comics classes at Portland Community College. Audra is also in charge of operations for the UO Science and Comics Initiative.

Audra’s comics have been featured in The Nib, the Oregon Quarterly, and UO’s comics magazine Art Ducko. You can follow them on Instagram @audmcname

Fall 2024 Editors

Crucial has a cohort of volunteer editors for each season who work on long-form comics and help guide our submissions process.

Fall 2024 Teachers

Each of these artists is teaching a class or workshop in Fall 2024.
WORKING ON A PROJECT?

Hire Crucial Artists

Are you thinking about embarking on a nonfiction comics project but could use some help? The artists at Crucial Comix have experience working with media outlets, academic researchers, local governments, and aspiring memoirists to create compelling nonfiction comics. 

Here’s what we offer:

Crucial's Finances

Our business model is simple: Fund comics classes that fund the creation of new comics. All of our classes are online, so we don’t pay for big overhead costs like traditional educational institutions. When people sign up for our classes, the money is split between the teacher and Crucial. We put the money back into the press to pay for things like new comics, zine printing, and editor honorariums. 

Current Rates 

In Fall 2024, we are offering a reprint rate of $100 for previously published comics and between $100-450 for original comics. All income from classes is split, with teachers making 75% of the income from each class and Crucial keeping 25%. 

Sliding Scale Classes and Workshops 

To make them affordable, all of our classes and workshops are offered at a sliding scale cost. 

Supporter - This payment level pitches in a little extra toward the teacher’s income and helps pay artists to create new comics at Crucial. Thanks for your support! 

Standard - This is the basic rate for the class, which covers our costs. 

Discount - We want people of all income levels in our classes, so choose this rate if you paying the standard rate is a stretch for you. 

We set aside three spots in each class to be offered for free to people who would find it a hardship to pay the discount rate for any reason. These free spots are first-come, first-serve. If you would like to take a class for free, please send us a short email (at editor@crucialcomix.com) about yourself, what class you would like to take, and why. If a free spot is still available, we’ll send you a discount code to register for free! 

Annual Budget 

Our 2024 comics are funded in part by the Perrault Family. Thank you! 

We are committed to financial transparency—we will publish our annual budget below starting in January 2025.  

Credits

Web design by Audra and Shay | Photos on this page by Jamie Thrower | Crucial is based in Portland, Oregon, which rests on traditional village sites of the Multnomah, Wasco, Cowlitz, Kathlamet, Clackamas, Bands of Chinook, Tualatin, Kalapuya, Molalla, and many other indigenous groups. 

© 2024 Crucial Comix