The Cartoonist Cooperative Want to Disrupt Predatory Publishing Practices

The Cartoonist Cooperative logo shows a cute inkwell and pen called Inkling and Nibford

In case you didn’t realize, we really love comics here at WWAC. But often the sequential art that we love is born out of an industry that is flawed at best and exploitative at worst. It’s why we’re always excited to see creators coming together to forge brave new ways to share their work. The newly launched Cartoonist Cooperative aims to do just that. Founded by Reimena Yee, Sloane Leong, Nero Villagallos-O’reilly, Joan Zahra Dark (Ed.’s note: a WWAC contributor), Zach Hazard Vaupen, and Aaron Losty the group recently shared their mission in an exciting press release.

“The CARTOONIST COOPERATIVE aims to disrupt mainstream publishing practices and trends by empowering each other through shared promotional efforts, industry information, pooled resources and skill sharing. From early development to final work, the CARTOONIST COOPERATIVE will be active in supporting its members throughout the creative process through an exclusive Discord server, forum, and educational writing on craft and career hosted on our website.”

It’s the kind of organization that comics desperately needs and it just so happens to have many of our favorite creators involved, so we reached out to Sloane Leong to chat. In a very generous conversation shared over email Leong,  Dark, Vaupen, and Losty answered our questions about the group’s founding, their aims, and what they hope to change, which we’re sharing here in full.

Could you tell me about the origins of the Cartoonist Cooperative and how it came together?

Sloane Leong: I started a cartoonist Discord in 2021 when I was feeling the effects of creative isolation and the sudden deceleration of the comic industry. In mid-December 2022, we were chatting about the blocked Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster merger, the dire state of publishing, and how we were supposed to survive as creative workers in this type of environment. There’s the mainstream route, crowdfunding, and self-publishing, but it still requires some financial backing, a supportive audience, and specific entrepreneurial skills to make a living off of. There’s a distinct lack of structural support for us and what is there is spread over platforms and communities.

I started thinking aloud, trying to find solutions. How could we share our skills with each other, pool our collective audiences, and support each other creatively without burning out? I thought about the success of the recent Shortbox Comics Fair and creative collectives I’ve seen that have survived the ups and down of the industry. I also considered how tons of readers gravitate towards platforms like Webtoons and Tapas, a centralized way to find comics in the genres they like and in a format that’s legible on phones, the most common way people engage with media now. We needed to consolidate our work and our efforts in one place. So I started pitching some solutions in the chat and other cartoonists helped build off those. That’s how the shape of the Cooperative was formed.

It seems like a really ambitious project, what have the more nuts and bolts parts of putting it together been like?

Leong: My co-committee members, Zach Hazard Vaupen, Nero Villagallos-O’Reilly, Reimena Yee, Joan Zahra Dark, and Aaron Losty have been integral in developing this idea with me. So far it’s been a lot of figuring out workflow to make it easy for members and outside supporters to help the cooperative. On the technical end, Nero and Reimena have spearheaded the actual organizational aspect of this by building the website and databases that we need to function.

Joan Zahra Dark: The beauty of large projects like this where there’s no bosses and we’re all figuring it out together is being able to have open conversations about exactly what we want the cooperative to look like and what would work best for members to make sure they can uplift each other’s art as much as possible. It also means we’re communicating a lot! The back and forth from what we want for web design to drafting the language for our forms to how we even define a member of such a huge organization of cartoonists. A lot of it happens really fast as we’re confirming details and there’s a real excitement to that as we’re putting together all the pieces for everyone.

A comic explains the nature of the Cartoonists Cooperative, starring an ink pot and an ink nib pen. The answer to the pen's question, "What does the cartoonist collection actually do?" is "It's a curated, searchable database of comics, from minis to graphic novels, new and old!"
Drawn by Anna Bow, Written by Sloane Leong

This is such a wonderful sentiment: “The CARTOONIST COOPERATIVE aims to disrupt mainstream publishing practices and trends by empowering each other through shared promotional efforts, industry information, pooled resources and skill sharing.” Could you explain to people outside the industry why this is so important?

Zach Hazard Vaupen: I think from the outside, people see a lot of comic books getting published and assume it’s a booming industry supporting tons of artists. The unfortunate reality is that the vast majority of artists and writers both inside and outside of the comics industry are not making a living; nearly everyone is supporting themselves through the creation of their work with other gigs or part/full-time jobs. And the rewards are small. And it’s incredibly difficult to branch out to find new readers. Even most professionally published and distributed comics struggle to find an audience, as publishers tend to rely on the majority of their creators to take on the lion’s share of promotion. The skills needed to promote and distribute your own work, while protecting yourself legally and from scams, is not something that comes easily or naturally to many cartoonists, and even those for whom it does, they may not have the time or energy to effectively build a business around their comics that would keep their practice sustainable. With the cooperative, we hope to lighten the load and empower ourselves through the help of community effort and pooled resources. This way we no longer have to rely exclusively on gatekeeping publishers or inaccessible distributors.

Dark: So much of the work that comes with self-publishing your comics has nothing to do with actually making comics! Whether it’s marketing, connecting with other artists, getting your comics printed even! Publishers and distributors very much rely on those skills being unavailable to the majority of cartoonists to make putting their work out themselves incredibly difficult and exhausting to anyone who isn’t already in a place financially to support what is ultimately not a money-making prospect for most. At its core, the cooperative is both centering the people who are doing this self-published work by having folks step in to do the marketing AND making sure the people who are trying to work with comics publishers have as much transparency into that process as possible and aren’t taken advantage for not knowing enough compared to their industry peers.

Aaron Losty: I think “disrupt” is the key word here. It may not be obvious to the outsider viewer how predatory many publishers are. And although we’ve no plans to act as a publisher I think it’s important to remember that these publishers would not exist without the creators and for far too long we’ve bent ourselves to fit into spaces that we’ve no say in. As Joan has mentioned, a lot of what a publisher can offer (distribution, marketing, etc.) may be too much for one person to accomplish but as a collective, a shared load will help us all sustain ourselves. I think there’s plenty of evidence to prove we can exist and make a living beyond the confines of a “traditional” publisher and it’s truly exciting.

What kind of stories and creators are you hoping to be able to highlight and nurture with Cartoonist Cooperative?

Leong: Anyone making anything that’s weird, unique, experimental, and true. Popular media is produced by the wealthy for the majority to make more wealth. That means for many that they only ever get to see a sliver of human experience in art and its hardly ever counter to popular narrative traditions, worldviews, and aesthetics. I’m excited to highlight more creators who are bucking trends, complicating and enriching our inner lives and imaginations, and taking creative risks.

Losty: If we’re speaking about comics purely in the American English speaking market we have to take into account that maybe a three dozen people at maybe half a dozen publishers make the decision on who is published. That’s thirty-six people’s opinions and tastes determining the publishing faith of tens of thousands of creators who would like the support of a publisher. Many who simply won’t be considered because their style doesn’t fit with the very narrow publisher norms. Or even dismissed because they want to print in a non typical format. Great stories will always be great stories and I think the beauty of the Co-op is the openness, and that we can lift up these voices who’ve had doors unceremoniously closed on them.

A comic explains the nature of the Cartoonists Cooperative
Drawn by Anna Bow, Written by Sloane Leong

Something that stood out to me as a disabled person who makes comics was the fact that the Cooperative members specifically talk about uplifting disabled people — the comics industry and capitalism often leaves us behind. How do you hope that the Cartoonist Cooperative will be able to make the space more accessible?

Vaupen: Everyone has something to offer, but not everyone can do it all. Nor should they! Through the cooperative, members will be able to both request and offer help with anything that they may find to be an obstacle, meeting people where they’re at with what they can do. It is our aim to level the playing field for everyone along all lines: race, gender, sexuality, disability, etc. and to create a collaborative environment that will be a safe space for all types of comic creators to grow. Personally, I think most of us are into comics because we’re trying to connect with other people, not create a competitive or exclusionary environment. Our goal with the cooperative is to create a better and more open environment for all types of comic creators at all types of levels.

Dark: The larger comics industry relies so heavily on, among other things, conventions and how much you’re able to physically get out there to meet other artists, sell your comics at a table, get yourself noticed by other comics professionals. And there’s also a whole other factor that I think cartoonists especially understand of having to sell yourself online as well as your work, it’s all so exhausting. Whether or not anyone is trying to create an exclusionary environment, these systemic barriers for disabled folks are already there and publishing as it stands is very much formed around those systemic class, race, gender and able-bodied barriers we’re all facing. If the cooperative can make it even a little easier for more people to self-publish their comics and be able to sustain themselves from that practice and for people that do want to work with publishers to deal with less bullshit, then we’ll be doing something right.

You mention the brilliant Panel Syndicate and amazing ShortBox as inspirations for Cartoonist Cooperative, what was it about their work that got you so excited?

Leong: Zainab’s Shortbox Comic Fair was inspiring to me as it showed that there’s a big audience out there excited to embrace ‘small art.’ Many cartoonists had notable financial success, something that a lot of them hadn’t had before when publishing their work on their own individual shop platforms. The digital nature of the Fair and the month-long promotional cycle was also really helpful to see in action, it showed me what good branding, a tight promotional campaign, and pooled audiences can do.

Losty: Just to briefly add to Sloane’s comments. I think The Short Box Comic Fair highlighted how incredibly lush the market is for digital only comics. Even though print comics are still the major chunk of the pie the digital market is growing alongside it. I think we also need to credit how transparent Zainab has been with the facts and figures behind the project. Because platforms like Comixology(RIP) never release their backend numbers.

As an artist and cartoonist what excites you the most about the Cartoonist Cooperative?

Leong: I’m excited about the Cooperative helping make comics a sustainable practice for more creators and also seeing new, interesting comics be made because of it.

Vaupen: In addition to what Sloane said, I’m also excited about the huge collaborative nature of the cooperative and how it will be able to connect together cartoonists that may not have found each other otherwise.

You can learn more about the Cartoonist Cooperative at https://cartoonist.coop/

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Rosie Knight

Rosie Knight

writer. fake geek girl. makes comics, occasionally sells some.

One thought on “The Cartoonist Cooperative Want to Disrupt Predatory Publishing Practices

  1. Awesome article!! I love this site so much and can’t wait to vote for your next Eisner award! Thanks for always bringing exciting and insightful articles about comics to me and others!

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