Labor, Art, and Research: An Introduction

When you meet someone new what is often one of the first things you’re asked after your name? If your experience is anything like mine, more often than not the person inquires some variation of, “what do you do (for work)?” And we know they are not asking about your hobbies, but rather what you do to earn wages. Your job. Economic labor.

Our economic labor is so attached to our identity in our current society that it is often the thing most associated with who we are, second only to our names. It is also what we spend the majority of our adult lives doing. Studies have shown that the average adult spends one third of their lives performing economic labor.

And why do we work?

I’ll never forget when I was a teenager, in an attempt to instill a certain work ethic in me, my dad telling me that he works hard and long hours to do two things: one, provide for his family; and two, save up so he can retire and do more of the things he enjoys outside of work, outside of his economic labor.

Provision. And labor freedom (i.e., the space and time to perform more enjoyable labor).

With sixty percent of people in the US reportedly living paycheck-to-paycheck, the average American household in over $90,000 in debt, and over fifty percent of workers in the US admitting to job unhappiness, performing economic labor for provision and labor freedom in the US is becoming more untenable.

At SP Comics we have what seems to be an increasingly rare opportunity; we get to create art and tell stories as our economic labor. For the majority of comic creators, their work in comics is a side hustle. Even the biggest names in the industry started off their comic careers working on stories on the side in their free time. The work we do at SP Comics is hard and challenging, but highly enjoyable. It is labor freedom.

We also get to engage with meaningful research, both within our team and with outside collaborators — with some of the top scholars in the world in their respective fields. We create comic art and stories that convey important information from research meant to positively impact the world, in an effort to get it in front of more readers.

Now, this is not intended to demean any other type of work. All economic labor is honorable. Good Will Hunting is one of my favorite films for many reasons, one of which is its conversations around the honor and responsibilities of economic labor. In the film, Will Hunting is a 20 year old who has one of the most gifted mathematical minds in the world, but chooses to work as a janitor and construction worker. His best friend, Chuckie, and his therapist, Sean, both admit that those are noble and honorable professions, but not for Will. They stress to Will that when you have the ability and opportunity to engage in other types of meaningful work, you are responsible to the larger community to pursue those opportunities.

At SP Comics we are trying to walk in a similar responsibility with the ability and opportunity we have been afforded. This year, as we continue to create meaningful stories, we also want to think about labor, art, and research in a meaningful way. We will be publishing a blog series in 2024 that looks at the relationship between art and research and various sub themes related to labor, such as wages, unions, benefits, and retirement.

Join us in 2024 as we continue to make compelling sequential art based on engaging scholarship, and join us in our blog news space as we embark on this journey of looking at labor and art.