Comic Book Series Turns Ethereum NFTs Into Unrestrained Anarchy

Using the open-source IP, Titan Comics will publish a series backed by tangible NFTs.

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It has already appeared in a Super Bowl commercial, the annual Rose Parade, and elsewhere around the physical and digital world as part of Nouns, the Ethereum NFT based project that builds open-source IP. Bookshelves and comic shops are their next stop.

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As part of its licensing program with IP like "The Simpsons" and "Blade Runner," Titan Comics will release "Nouns: Nountown," a six-issue series in April based on Nouns. A graphic novel will be published by Penguin Random House in the future, written by Titan Senior Editor David Leach and illustrated by Danny Schlitz.

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Comics projects like this are often backed by DAOs, or decentralized autonomous organizations, which are popular online groups comprised of Nouns NFT holders, who control a substantial treasury to fund IP development. ETH worth $46 million is currently managed by Nouns DAO.

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During the August blockchain election, Adam Fortier's Comics DAO organization and SharkDAO teamed up to propose the comic project that received $210,000 worth of ETH. As part of the Nouns IP propagation effort, this is one of the latest efforts.

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"Many people reading it might not realize it was backed by NFTs, but the on-chain incentives to get this thing produced came from NFTs," pseudonymous Nouns co-founder 4156 told Decrypt. The end user is never aware of that.”

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Nouns DAO isn't just playing with licenses. As Nouns itself is under CC0 license, everyone can freely use and commercialize its assets. Titan Comics has established distribution channels with retailers so that anyone could create a Nouns comic book.

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As well as releasing the printed comics, the Ethereum NFTs of "Nouns: Nountown" will offer access to digital issues while also representing ownership of the printed comics, including a limited-edition variant.

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Several NFT rarities are available in the project, such as mosaics at 0.069 ETH (about $115), and generatives at 0.3 ETH (nearly $500).

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A 4K startup specializing in NFTs backed by physical items will hold the first 420 comics Titan Comics pull from the presses (and film the process for proof) in a secure vault. The artist will also draw any Nouns character requested by issue owners for each NFT presale.

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Experimenting with CC0

Among the NFT platforms, Nouns stands out for its daily auction of a colorful pixel character. The glasses come with a version of the brand's familiar Nouns glasses (or "Noggles"), but have other amusing features like pineapple heads, skateboard heads, igloo heads, flamingo heads, etc.

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The Nouns comic book seems to be about a mishmash of avatars, huh?

The official synopsis describes it as "a deeply moving coming-of-age drama about a small-town thimble salesman caught up in a political espionage plot.

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Therefore, I would describe it as absurd and chaotic. A character who grinds up Noun characters to create an alternative to Beyond Meat is one of the adult elements in the game, Fortier told Decrypt. The tone is "so over-the-top" and "so Looney Tunes" in nature, and he described it as "unconstrained anarchy with good intentions."

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Laughing, he likened the process of featuring so many Nouns characters to herding cats, as someone who read the first issue described it as exhausting. The creative team also has to build around characters that other people own, and may feel a bond to, in an open-source property based around already-minted NFTs. Fortier admitted that Nouns owners have already sent him angry emails over their interpretation of such characters.

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As an example, we put the author and artist in a room and told them not to go on Twitter. He recalled telling his son not to engage with people. A character's appearance or behavior can be detrimental to the creative process when people advocate for it."

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The CC0 model is tested in this interesting experiment. Furthermore, the comics will be based on open-source characters, and the art files will be released to the community so that derivative works can be developed.

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The software is open-source from top to bottom, but it also has a broad audience appeal. Fortier believes that enticing people with tales is a good way to point them towards the crypto elements that helped make the adventure possible.

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It is often the case that people's eyes glaze over when they hear the words 'Web3' or 'crypto'. Of the challenges of onboarding the masses, he said, "you feel a sense of fear or confusion." “All it takes is a funny story to get them in.”