For more than a decade, The Nib was the premier online destination for graphic nonfiction, including journalism, memoir, science explainers, essays and political commentary in comic format. The award-winning site closed up shop in September of 2023, but a new effort to carry the torch of short-form nonfiction comics called Crucial Comix has sprung up in Portland, Oregon, combining an online venue for creators with affordable educational curricula to develop the next generation of talent.
Crucial Comix was cofounded by publisher Sarah “Shay” Mirk, a former editor at the Nib, graphic novelist and experienced journalist who worked for both traditional and online publications, and editor-in-chief Audra McNamee, a recent graduate of the University of Oregon with a degree in computing science and a keen interest in science journalism, who also published on the Nib. The two met in a Zoom chat during the pandemic and began talking seriously about creating their own platform as news of the Nib’s demise became public last year.
“Last August when we knew the Nib was ending, we thought, alright, what’s going to come next,” said Mirk. “I looked around and realized, oh no, it’s me!”
Mirk and McNamee began work on Crucial Comix in early 2024 with a small seed investment from a donor and their own resources. The company incorporated over the summer and began publishing in September. The site currently hosts 23 feature stories including many by Nib alumnae and hopes to ramp up further as it develops a readership and network of contributors.
The site features a range of nonfiction work, including Mirk’s personal memoir “Why Did I Think I Was Straight” exploring gender identity as a continuum rather than a binary choice, Zareen Choudhury’s essay about going gluten free, a bit of service journalism from McNamee and Allia Service on why stop sign laws don’t work for bikes, and several commentaries on the recent election.
“We’re going really broad on subject matter,” said McNamee. “We want to be the home for nonfiction comics. We’ve got a lot of comics about the environment, we have memoir comics of all kinds, we have a lot of comics about people’s identity and what it means to them. We want to get as many voices as we can, that offer unique perspectives that are not being supported or published elsewhere.”
One interesting feature of Crucial Comix is its business model. Though the company publishes comics online, they plan to generate most of their revenue through the sale of online classes.
“There’s a huge demand for people who want to learn how to make comics but don’t want to enroll in an MFA program or pay high university tuition for classes,” said Mirk. “At the same time, there are so many artists who have amazing work and have nowhere to publish it except on Instagram or Substack. So how can those two markets serve each other?”
Mirk explained the plan is to run online classes with low tuition, splitting proceeds between the platform and the instructor. The surplus pays artists who publish on the site, creating a bigger community and more potential students for the classes.
“Even if the revenues are low, it’s still worth it to build a generation of nonfiction comic artists and a whole community around this kind of material,” Mirk said.
According to the cofounders, one of the biggest advantages of the platform they are building is that creators will not have to worry about getting filtered by algorithms. “We have our own independent website and newsletter,” said McNamee. “It’s going to be more important than ever to have a space that’s free of advertisers or any kind of optimization. As our media landscape gets more controlled by and catering to the interests of billionaire owners, we need independent outlets publishing the work of artists and writers.”
Especially considering the recent US elections, Mirk says telling and engaging with these kinds of stories is a survival strategy. “All my friends are queer and trans,” Mirk, who identifies as nonbinary, said. “Our future feels very uncertain. This tool of comics is like a lifeboat for the next four years, to help process what we’re experiencing and sharing it with other people. It feels like the only thing I want to be doing right now is finding and building those communities of mutual support.”
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