The Mashups Comics
A Creative Commons Comic Project
Truth or hoax?
Social networks have lit up with stories about individuals with
strange powers. Viral videos seem to provide evidence that these
individuals have either just started to appear or are now finding it
harder to conceal evidence of their strange abilities. Further,
these powers are not random, the bearers seem to become the conduit
for a figure of myth, legend or literary characters. Dubbed “The
Mashups” , these are people who walk the path of archetypes such as
the hooded bandit, the monkey king, Dr Frankenstein
or the weird sisters.
The Mashups Project
The Mashups setting is
a shared world, providing a set of resources and characters for
comics creators to collaborate. Using the creative commons licence,
ownership of the Mashups world is shared among creators who are free
to tell stories, develop characters and extend the scope of the
universe.
Why superheroes?
Comics can tell any
kind of stories, but superhero comics have a strong history of
collaboration where multiple creators work on a common world and
characters. Unlike corporate-owned setting, The Mashups characters
are shared by all the creators.
Further, superhero
settings are closely related to the real world, meaning that is is
quicker for readers to get a handle on the setting and it is simpler
for creators to establish the scope of their stories.
What are the Creative Commons?
Copyright laws can get
in the way of the creative process. A creative commons licence is a
legal solution to a problem created by the law.
A creative commons
license is an innovative way of sharing creative work. Once you
place a work (here we are talking about comic art, story, dialog,
characters and setting) under a creative commons licence, you are
allowing others to build on your work and create their own work
without fear of copyright infringement. Everyone
is entitled to share and create and no-one
can claim exclusive rights or prevent others from creating.
Creative Commons have
been used by musicians, where remixing and building on the work of
others builds innovation. Wikipedia uses a cc licence for its
content and many flickr and youtube users are now choosing to upload
their work under a creative commons license.
What about the public domain?
Unfortunately the legal
protection from public domain has been shrinking and once you place
work there you lose all control over it. Corporations have been
known to 'plunder' the public domain and claim control over public
domain works, such as a certain norse god or a certain concept from
Nietzsche’s writing. Creative Commons protect you from this
happening.
Which licence are we using?
The licence we use has
three conditions:
Attribution:
Creators must acknowledge The Mashups community when publishing work
Non-Commercial:
You can cover your costs but you cannot make significant money out of
Mashups work.
ShareAlike:
Every piece of work derived from a Mashups work must also be
published under the same CC licence.
You can use the graphic
tag from the bottom of this page, available at creativecommons.org.
Who can create Mashups comics?
Anyone is welcome. The
only condition is that if you use Mashups characters and setting,
that anything you produce also carries the same creative commons
licence, this is known as 'share alike'. Obviously this suits
short works, you are not going to make this your life's work, but we
hope you will be interesting in contributing to the community and
working with other creators.
Can I add new characters?
Certainly. Remember
that once you add a character, they become available under the share
alike aspect of the licence for everyone to use. We are hoping to
develop a wiki in which you can share background details and discuss
characters and designs.
Who can publish Mashups comics?
We are using a
noncommercial license which
means that anyone can publish or distribute online, as long as they
are not in the business of making a profit. You can print and sell
small press comics containing Mashups material, as long as you are
only charging enough to cover costs – we are pretty flexible with
this given most indie comics are not commercial. If you make a
couple of dollars on it, that's OK and it is best if you use this to
finance further creative commons publishing.
If I can't own this or make money out of it, why would I be interested?
Independent
creators seldom make a living out of their creative work, but this
doesn't stop them. While no individual owns a creative commons work
you do share ownership with the whole community. You can distribute
your work and the work of others both online and off. It is an
opportunity to work with other creators, to find a mentor or to act
as a mentor to others, and to promote your creator-owned work.
Creative commons licensing creates a safe playground in which to
share without fear that someone is going to take your toys and sell
them to a corporation.
At what audience should I pitch my work?
We
don't like censorship, but we'd like the Mashups to be available to
the broadest audience of readers and creators possible so we are
aiming at a T (teen) audience, which means no gratuitous exploitative
content. As we are on a non-adult blogger service see their
conditions at http://www.blogger.com/content.g
As the community develops we will not doubt need to return to this
discussion from time to time to fine-tune the rules.
In which city is the Mashups set?
As
we are Australian-based, we using a generic, unnamed Australian city
as a setting for the initial work, but stories could take place
anywhere. We are looking for a realistic sense of place and
authentic sounding dialog without resorting to cliches and cringeful
Australianisms. An interesting question is whether we should set the
stories in a real city (eg Melbourne or Sydney) or should create
fictionalised cities such as in the DCU.
Where to from here?
This
is the first stage of the project, setting out its goals and some
characters to get the Mashups world started. The next stage will
involve collecting a few comic stories using these characters, we are
looking for short works of 1-5 pages, but there is nothing preventing
creators from doing longer works.
At
the moment we are using Blogger as the basis for our online
community. If you want to be able to post material to the blog, we
can give you access to it. As the community grows larger we will
need to develop better resources for sharing creative work and the
background details of the characters in some kind of wiki.
We
also want to build a community of creators from a range of experience
levels, to spin ideas, to share skills and provide support. We will
be utilising existing social networking services but remain open to
discussion as to the best way to organise this and also real-world
events.
While
shared universes are not new, this is the first of its particular
kind and we are eager to hear from those who want to be involved in
its creation.
Further questions?
Contact
Scott (MashupsCentral@gmail.com)
if you want to know more about how this works and if you are keen to
contribute.
More
on Creative Commons at www.creativecommons.org.au
Fonts
by Blambot, www.blambot.com
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