The comic strip has been entertaining the masses for ages, usually driven by the creativity of an individual artist. Now, a new Seattle startup called Cheese9.com is hoping to create the next incarnation of this powerful storytelling device, relying on the humor of the masses rather than the individual.

Cheese9.com essentially is an open canvas, an online playground of sorts where anybody can add their two cents to a series of images. Think your caption might be funnier than the existing one? The online editing tools allow individuals to tap their inner Seinfeld and quickly add a few lines. Meanwhile, other users can vote on whether the new caption makes the grade, with the most popular panes rising to the top.

Of course, community-generated humor has the potential to devolve rather quickly. And many of the comics on Cheese9.com are sexual in nature and somewhat childish, though I found myself laughing out loud as I scrolled through some of the panes.

"We know everyone has a different sense of humor, and only sort the content by what the community as a whole thinks is funniest," explains Kelsie Greear, who co-founded Cheese9.com along with Jim Beaver.

Greear and Beaver were early employees at eNom, the Bellevue domain registrar which sold to Demand Media in 2006. Greear said he got the idea for Cheese9 -- a name which was inspired by the books "Cat's Cradle" and "Who Moved My Cheese?" -- at a weekly coffee meetup with former eNom employees who would talk tech and often share a funny story or two.

"We thought, man, everyone loves funny stuff, and deep down we believe everyone wants to be funny themselves," Greear said. "The hard part was thinking up something funny from scratch. We thought we could remove the barriers for people, by providing a ‘seed.'"

That led Greear back to a game he used to play in the first grade, dubbed Fiddlestick. In the game, someone would start a story and then pass it on to the next person who would add their commentary. Greear imagined that the same thing could be done online for comic strips.

"It's kinda like when you are sitting around with your buddies and start rolling on an idea, and the funny just flows," he says. "The best part is, what’s the first thing you do when you find or create something funny? Share it. Well, at least I do."

At this point, Cheese9.com -- developed using Amazon Web services -- is just entering a test phase. There are a limited number of comic strips with titles such as "Family Fun" and "Living Large," with the most popular comics rising to the top of the page. You can also measure which comics are getting the most user submissions by checking out the stack effect.

The startup also is testing a service where users can add captions to individual photos. In that way, the site incorporates elements from popular user-generated content sites like I Can Has Cheezburger and Fail Blog.

"The competition is really for mindshare on the Internet, and that mindshare is searching for more interactive media," says Greear. "I believe the fact that our site and content has been designed to be interactive, plus its funny, will appeal to users."

Greear said the company plans to incorporate advertising over time, and it also will generate revenue by allowing users to incorporate their designs on T-shirts, coffee cups and other merchandise.

Cheese9 put together this video of the service, which goes into great detail on how it works.

John Cook is co-founder of TechFlash. Follow on Twitter @johnhcook.