It’s a big week of news and assorted other bits, so let’s get straight to highlighting ten things I liked or didn’t like from the week of comics in another edition of Comics Disassembled, with it being led by a pair of rather notable and consequential news items that you’ve probably already heard plenty about.

Becky Burke, In a Nightmare

In what was undeniably the biggest news of the week in the comics sphere, 28-year-old Welsh cartoonist R.E. “Becky” Burke was detained by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (or ICE) in the midst of a multi-month backpacking trip because of confusion over her visa status that came up when she tried to head up to Vancouver, British Columbia in Canada. After being denied entry by Canadian authorities, Burke was detained while returning to the U.S. because she was believed to have violated the terms of her visa due to working in exchange for a free stay during her travels, as any sort of work would require a different type of visa. Since being detained a couple weeks back, she has been kept in a maxed out ICE processing center in Tacoma, Washington where conditions are apparently reprehensible, as Burke has shared with family and news outlets.

The BBC covered the story quite well and comprehensively, so it’s worth giving its piece a read, as well as its recent follow-up where Burke’s father Paul Burke shared that he believes she’ll be heading home in the next few days in the wake of this story becoming a rather visible one. Hopefully that’s true, and hopefully Burke (along with anyone else caught in limbo by ICE) gets resolution in a timely manner rather than the nonsense everyone seems to have to deal with when it comes to that organization.

I’ve seen some folks note things like “She should have known better” and “She broke the rules so this is what happens.” And sure, by the absolute letter of the law that might true. But it is also, by my personal estimation, complete and typical garbage from ICE, and a clear situation where it’s a twentysomething doing fairly standard twentysomething things that in no way warrants this kind of response. It’s an extreme reaction to something that could have been quickly and much more inexpensively resolved with a plane ticket back home. But that’s not what happened. Instead it’s this complete mess. It has to be a haunting experience for Burke, and it’s yet another deserved black eye for both the United States and ICE. But what’s another one at this point? Just send Burke home and be done with it, for god’s sake. Hopefully we get to that point soon, but if you’d like to support the efforts in getting her home, there’s a GoFundMe that’s been opened up to help pay for legal fees, amongst other things.

While this is a very, very minor aside to a frightening story, it’s things like this, and any number of other stories that are frustratingly similar, that make me wonder what’s going to happen with American comic conventions going forward. The first Trump administration had a chilling effect on international creators wanting to table at those events, both because of the way certain visas were treated and because of the general vibes surrounding America at that time. It’s undeniable that things are only worse now. Will people risk it? I’m not sure, but I’m sure creators are asking themselves that currently, and I’m sure we’ll find out.

Dustin Nguyen, Speaking Out

Artist Dustin Nguyen started a fire this week with a post he made on Instagram, one that quickly had creators talking privately and — in a rare change of pace — publicly about the subject. I’m not going to recreate the entire write-up, so if you want to read all the details, please visit Nguyen’s post. But the gist is this: He’s no longer going to work with Marvel going forward, and it’s because of how poorly the publisher pays, its lack of raises over the years (he said he asked for a $75 page raise in the past 15 years just to get to minimum wage in California and didn’t even get a response), the lack of royalties on overseas sales, and several other things. It was a scorched Earth post, with the only folks from Marvel that escaped untouched being his editors, who the artist was in support of. There’s more to it, so once again, make sure to give the post a read.

But for once, and I cannot believe I’m saying this, you have to read the comments. That section features creators like Sean Gordon Murphy, Zoe Thorogood, Yanick Paquette, Chris Stevens, and Rian Gonzales sharing their Marvel experiences as well as others like Rob Liefeld, JH Williams III, Belen Ortega, and others showing their support. This extends beyond Nguyen, as it seems the negative sentiment surrounding Marvel is pervasive — even extending to its own editors, as former Marvel editor Heather Antos notes in the comments. And it’s the type of thing that qualifies as an open industry secret, one that includes more than Marvel and has been building for years. Heck, artist Klaus Janson even talked about how rates have gone in the wrong direction since the 1980s when he joined me on Off Panel recently, although he doesn’t speak to Marvel in specific. The topic is in the air.

None of this is a surprise. These sorts of sentiments have been shared privately for a few years now — not just by artists, either — and the challenge of writing about the topic is that creators understandably did not want to go on the record about it out of fear of messing with the jobs they have or the jobs they could get in the future. That makes it a difficult subject to write about, because leaning into unnamed sources would call into question the legitimacy of topics like this. Which is what makes Nguyen’s post so brave. He took it on himself to tell his truth, and you could see creators emboldened by his actions. Hopefully this is the start of something more, and something that creates change.

Of course, this is all part of a larger and ongoing evolution of Marvel and its relationship with creators. Between the success of the Marvel Cinematic Universe and the lack of reciprocal success for comic creators, the discussion about page rates and royalties, and assorted other things, it’s shifting — and shifted — in real ways, even if it’s difficult to see how it has from the outside. While the alternatives carry their own flaws — Nguyen said “DC isn’t far from them” in his post, but with the massive caveat that “when I ask for things, DC works with me” — it’s undeniable that some of them are inspiring better feelings than Marvel these days, perhaps especially the one that is featured in the next point in a rather aptly timed social media post.