The Co-op was founded as an alternative to the existing underground presses, which were perceived as not being honest with their accounting practices.[3] According to Apex Novelties co-publisher Susan Goodrick, the cooperative was "not a publishing company but a framework to help artists publish their own work. . . . The aim of the Co-op [was] the survival of underground comix through independence of the cartoonists from distributors and publishers."[4]
The Co-op also billed itself as part of the United Cartoon Workers of America (U.C.W. of A.), an informal union organized in 1970[4] by Crumb, Green, Griffith, Spiegelman, Spain, Roger Brand, Nancy Griffith, and Michele Brand.[5] (The U.C.W. of A. brand appeared on a number of other comix of that era.)
The collective's first release was Jerry Lane's Middle Class Fantasies, published in May 1973; later titles that year were Kim Deitch's Corn Fed Comics #2 (continued from Honeywell & Todd) and Bill Griffith's Tales of Toad #3 (continued from the Print Mint).
In 1974, the press released Jay Lynch's Nard n' Pat #1 (March), the anthology Lean Years (May), S. Clay Wilson's Pork (May), Robert Crumb & Aline Kominsky-Crumb's Dirty Laundry Comics #1 (July), the anthology Sleazy Scandals of the Silver Screen (August), and the anthology Manhunt #2 (continued from the Print Mint; December).
The press was launched on the verge of the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court ruling, in Miller v. California, that local communities could decide their own First Amendment standards with reference to obscenity. In the mid-1970s, sale of drug paraphernalia was outlawed in many places, which caused head shops, where comix were typically sold, to go out of business. After losing their largest distribution network, mail order became the only outlet for underground titles.[6] As a result, many publishers, including Cartoonists Co-op Press, left the comix business.
After the 1974 dissolution of Cartoonists Co-op Press, a number of the publisher's titles were continued by Kitchen Sink Press.
