Open Source Comics at SXSW 2009

My friend and New Hampshire Media Makers cohort Bryan White (Cinema-Suicide.com) has been working together with another NHMM regular, Nick Plante (zerosum dirt(nap)), on an idea involving “open source comics,” and he wants to do a panel on that topic at next year’s South By Southwest Interactive Conference. Bryan explains:

My idea for a panel is actuallly about comics.  Open source comics, to be exact.  Myself and Nick Plante of Zerosum have been talking this out over the last week or so.  A social network aimed at artists and writers to create a line of their own comics in a single mythology, similar to the Marvel Universe or the DC Universe.  It is to be completely non-commercial with a very rigid and limited set of editorial constraints.  Everyone is free to be a part of it. The foundation of the panel is to suggest one alternative direction for social networks so that the web doesn’t become a series of tribes of Myspace of Facebook folks but to actually give social networks some purpose.

I think this is an amazing idea. As someone who’s had a comic book idea kicking around in the back of his brain for the past ten years or so, I can’t wait to see how this develops. And I definitely think it’s a great idea for a panel at SXSW. If you think so too, vote for Bryan’s idea here.