Vanity Publishing vs Comic Coops

Can someone enlighten me on what is expected of a comic coop?

I know artist coops consist of about 4 to 5 artists and work together producing works for commercial companies and are paid collectively in a commission. Are comic coops any different?

Or are comic coops more about setting up a mini publishing company?

Are there guidelines for doing this sort of thing?

I know some print publishers have set up special competitions to win prizes in short story writing and poems. Then one can pay a publisher to be published "in print" by said companies. I'm just hoping comic publishers are not going to go down that path. In the short story world printers have got into the act and will publish work for yourself but it's merely vanity publishing and you pay them.

Some of them are the most dodgy places out there. All they are doing is making a living out of people just paying advertising money so they can say they have been 'published in print'. The books are never sold anywhere and people get a free book (but they've paid for it anyway, well more than what the book is worth). There are so many scams like that out there.

A friend of mine got her poem published in one of these scams. She didn't realise she had been taken for a ride until after the fact. I guess some people don't mind paying someone just so they can be in print. Or maybe I'm being too cynical and if people want to do that then that's up to them.

That's a terrible scam.
I've never hearde of a comic coop, but what happened to your friend is terrible. It's hard to stick to the addage of never paying to publish you own work when the company doesn't tell you it's a common vanity company hiding under a sheet.

One of the palace wizards was selected to be featured in the Spectrum Anthology, and though she said the compitition was fierce, and the backlash from envious artists was a bit harsh, she never paid a dime other than the postage to send in the entry.

I haven't heard of comic co ops either - to my knowledge, there is no demand for print comics other than the obvious big players and i can't imagine any publisher wanting to commision anything in a field which is known to lose money, unless you're making Spiderman or similar and even those titles really survive because of merchandising and spin offs etc - that's where the money comes from. Artist are still queueing up to work for those big players so they hold all the cards.

If you're going to print comics without all that promotion and distribution behind you, you're going to lose money, so what's the point? There seems to be an obsession with seeing your work in print and it's coming from younger creators who don't remember the bad old days before the internet. They seem to take for granted the awesome power they have at their disposal and hanker after some imaginary world of making money from print when in reality, the net is freedom and a worldwide stage. Still, companies like Ka Blam (?) now offer print on demand, so all the bases are covered. You only print an issue when somebody is willing to pay for it - again, all made possible by the web.

I think demand is the key actually. The simple rule I would apply is, don't put your work into print unless people are asking for it. Putting together a print volume with no promotion and no distribution for no audience? That really is pure vanity.