Back when he was studying design and digital arts at
Edinburgh Napier University, one of his projects there was a superhero named “Captain
Sidewalk”. One day, as he was walking to university, a big square of sidewalk
plates looked to him like a blank page from a comic book, and he got the idea
to fill these frames with a superhero comic. He thought: A superhero appears on
a spot out of nowhere, takes care of business, saves everyone and disappears –
and you’re lucky if you manage to see him/her. Same with comics made with chalk
– they appear on a spot in the city, and they disappear after few days just to
reveal themselves in another spot.
Michael Klimczyk in Lodz
Crayola UK even sponsored chalk for this project, and
Unicef UK wanted to become a partner. The idea was to send a box of chalk to everyone
who’s interested, ask them to draw a Captain
Sidewalk story, collect all the stories in a book and sell it. The revenue
was meant to support the Unicef causes. The idea behind is that real
superheroes are the ones who want to use their talent to save children, and
that you don’t have to give money to help, you just have to offer your skills.
Brian Azzarello asked what kind of superpowers Captain
Sidewalk has. Klimczyk told him “at the moment he doesn’t have any superpowers,
but more people will draw him, the stronger he will get.”
Due to health issues, he couldn’t finish the project.
But during his presentation at the Lodz festival, Klimczyk
gave the listeners chalk, told them this story and explained that even the best
ideas may not always work if you’re doing it alone. It’s important to
collaborate, support one another and work together because together, people can
achieve more.
And that is the high concept of COMICSPRING - All of
the website’s stories are free to be picked up and continued. Every artist who
creates a profile will be able to publish their comics, but they will also be
allowed to continue an existing one.
However, the website is also founded on a
profit-oriented idea. It’s a well-known fact that the market for conventional,
printed comic books is shrinking. Finding a full-time, profitable job in comics
isn’t easy. The solution, or at least attempted solution for many, has been to
give web comics a try. The developer COMICSPRING intends to share advert
revenue with its users. The website even has merchandising ambitions, as COMICSPRING
also wants to collaborate with toy producers, and give companies access to
creative people. There are also plans for an online store in
the future, which of course isn’t that unusual for a sufficiently popular web
comic site.
Rough draft of the first comics menu
But since there is some degree of marketing thinking
involved, COMICSPRING have split their existing comic titles into five
categories: Music, superheroes, “real love”, “real stories”, and cities. Some
of these may overlap, since some of the superhero and “real love” stories are
also focused on specific cities (there’s already both a “Captain Edinburgh” and
a “Captain Cracow” comic on the website). Klimczyk was inspired to collect love
stories after reading Joe Simon and Jack Kirby’s famous comic book Young Romance, which claimed to recount
true-life courtships. As far as the music theme goes, the website has
established business relations with people like Pantera-founder Max Cavalera,
producer Lee Scratch Perry and Polish thrash metal band Acid Drinkers.
At the moment when I’m writing this, Michael and his
co-operators have yet only to release a prototype platform, which is not
intended to be available for the general public. Some comic titles and images
are listed, but the comic strips and pages have not been released. The platform doesn't predict profit sharing,
or profit generating options. However, it is being developed with investors in
mind. - Without investors we won't be able to prepare a fully planned,
commercial version, Klimczyk explains.
- To create an environment in which the talent of a vastly growing
number of artists in Europe and all over the world can be put to good use.
- To properly adapt comics to the Internet and develop a mechanism
which allows artists to work together to create bigger things, earn money
from what they do best, and do self-promotion at the same time.
- To exchange information about places and cultures through storytelling – At COMICSPRING, we like to think that when they met at designated places or camps, they used to tell each other stories for entertainment, Klimczyk explains on the website. - Then, some would take the stories to other fire camps, presenting them to a different audience. People from the audience would share these stories with other listeners and so on. That is how stories developed into legends and then into a complex mythological structure.
