Fleen: The Awkward Christmas Dinner Of Our Obligation To Existence

So Panda Express is a year old. It’s a story being told from multiple perspectives that involves a missing father, a possibly megalomanical goat, ninjas, an American roller-disco afficinado, a girl, and her (possibly nuclear-powered) panda. We’re not going to talk about it today.

We are going to talk about [Insert Title Here]; with PX reaching its first birthday and nearly 100 installments (click on “read the comic” to get the pop-up), the creators have decided to start a second strip, written entirely by their readers. As long as you adhere to the guidelines, you can contribute to this undertaking. So far, there are two pages up — the first sets an odd stage, with potential story hooks everywhere. The second (same page, just scroll down a little) was written by somebody named “Gore of Gorilla”, and has caromed off into even more random territory. The third will be up sometime after the next round of submissions closes, which will be the end of the day tomorrow.

This is an oddly interactive approach for creators, letting the audience have full collaborative rights (and it’ll cause lit-crit types to go even crazier than usual on the topic of authorial intent). Maybe not so weird, considering that [ITH] doesn’t let readers anywhere near the ongoing PX story or characters, but still … it’s hard to imagine an experiment like this being even possible (much less succeeding) in just about any other medium. The update schedule will necessarily be a bit random, and it’s going to be tough to evaluate or review the comic itself, with so many different hands in the effort. But for sheer, ballsy, let’s see what works effort? Hard to beat.

Edit: The creators don’t name themselves on the PX website, so I emailed asking who should be getting the credit and praise here. They replied that they keep their names to themselves so as not to overshadow the work, so all of us should be directing our love towards the individuals sometimes known as Art Monkey and Grammar Cowboy. Good job, guys!

Although… isn’t the same thing, in spirit, as strips like Slow Wave (http://www.slowwave.com/) or Pathetic Geek Stories (http://www.patheticgeekstories.com/)?

Maritza
CRFH.net

Those are cool links. Thanks Maritza.
What we’re doing is similar. Slow wave seems to be about submitting your dreams to be illustrated while pathetic seems to be asking for events in your life or past.
We drew the first page of short story that will be driven by random people. Each new page progresses the story forward, kinda like the Telephone Game.
While I don’t think we’re super unique or anything. I do think it should be fun experiment.

Gabe (penny-arcade) many moons ago did a strip called The Bench I think. A site that allowed the fans to use the premade art to tell whatever story they want. It was pretty cool.

We hope this will allow our fans to feel involved. Thanks for pointing those 2 sites out.

Any others that do a similar thing?

-PX! Crew

The novelty lies, I think, in the serial nature of the cooperative effort. That has NOT been done, at least that I know.

Cool. Well, here’s to hoping that it proves a cool jumping off point for us and maybe others.

Maritza, by the way, I dig your comic.

Thank you! Yours is quite eye-popping and interesting. Mmh, one of these days you’ll have to make a tutorial so I can steal your secrets.

It’s a deal.

This reminds me of the game where you go around the room, and everyone contributes one sentence to an ongoing story. I can’t wait to see where this kind of collaborate effort leads. Color me interested!

Viva la innovation!

It is cool to see people taking to this idea. When we began it, we asked ourselves why no one had really done this. (on a side note: we are looking, cuz i’d love to find someone doing long form sequentials written by fans)
After starting it, we realized very quickly why most creative types don’t do this.
Cuz it can be very hard. As soon as we made page 1 we had tons of ideas and wanted to flesh out the characters. But we couldn’t. We had chosen to let our fans drive the comic. Then after Gore of Gorillia named the snail Seth Cargo, we desperately wanted to make the comic so we could tell that story. It’s really fun to do, but reconciling that the story would go wherever the fans wanted it to go is the wall that is very hard to get over.
But now that were into it, we both are having a blast.

[…] Good: pandaxpress! was picked up for distribution by Image Comics: Following in the footsteps of LIONS, TIGERS AND BEARS, LEAVE IT TO CHANCE and other graphic novels enjoyed by both children and adults comes Shadowlineâ€™s latest offering; PX! BOOK ONE: A GIRL AND HER PANDA. […]

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