Part One – The Foundations
It’s one of my earliest memories… thumbing through the weathered pages of a Captain America and the Falcon comic before I could even read. The bold line art, halftone colors and exaggerated fonts seemed to burst off the page. But the deepest, longest-lasting impression my young mind took from those pulp pages was that a Black man and a white man were fighting side by side to make their world a better place. That’s the power of comics.
My name is Christian Lambert, and I’m a lifelong fan of comic books and sequential art as a storytelling form. I dreamed of being a writer/artist like John Byrne, Frank Miller or Walter Simonson, and I spent hours with How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way, trying to master composition and anatomy. In my teens, I was lucky enough to witness epic runs on the X-Men, the Fantastic Four, Daredevil and Thor. But in 1986 I was heartbroken when Iron Fist was killed off and Power Man and Iron Fist was canceled. So I toyed with creating my own “Heroes for Hire” series, with Luke Cage and the others struggling to carry on without Danny. Here’s the cover for Issue #1.
As I got older, I still loved to draw, but other opportunities and career choices took me into music production, graphic design, filmmaking, user experience design, social media and content marketing.
Part Two – Storytelling
I kept reading comics, but I had plenty of other creative outlets, and I even dabbled in screenwriting. I attended workshops led by Robert McKee and Syd Field, and read books like Save the Cat! to become a better storyteller. I was even a panelist at comic cons, talking about character and story.
And every discipline I set out to master, from graphic design to social media marketing, would eventually make it possible for me to build a new kind of comic book company.
Part Three – The Inspiration
The idea for Sideswipe came to me while I was reading an article about Marvel canceling around 30 titles because they weren’t selling enough copies to reach their profitability threshold. This was at the height of MCU mania, with Marvel movies making billions at the box office. I was shocked. Superhero stories dominated pop culture, and Marvel couldn’t move the source material.
I was doing content marketing in the music industry when people moved away from buying physical CDs and Blu-rays because digital delivery was so convenient. So why would anyone still get in the car and drive to a comic shop? On the other hand, comic websites and reader apps are clunky. They don’t have the tactile feel of a printed book or a satisfying interactive experience.
That’s when the spark hit!
What if a comic book company took the legacy of amazing comic book storytelling and packaged it specifically for social media on mobile devices? NOT a paper comic shrunk down and squeezed onto a phone screen, but comics built for smartphone screens. Larger text and illustrations, only one or two panels per screen, stories designed to be swiped, liked, shared and commented on. Today, social media is the community newsstand at everyone’s fingertips.
So I set out to create a comic book company like no other, built on three principles I’ve come to value:
Community
Shared experiences turn individuals into a collective. Comic books used to bring friends together at the neighborhood newsstand. Now, with social media everywhere, we have a platform that should bring the world together. Sideswipe is committed to building community and common ground for positive conversations about entertaining, inspiring and aspirational ideas and stories. We invite input from diverse voices.
Creativity
Freedom of expression, used responsibly, is rewarding, uplifting and empowering for the creator, and it brings a sense of wonder, exhilaration and insight to the reader. Our aim at Sideswipe is to give our readers a dose of positivity, escape and imagination in their social media feed.
Sustainability
Sideswipe’s mission is to build a better comic book: to preserve and build on the legacy of the classic comic book storytellers while growing global appreciation for the art form through innovative social media experiences. We strive to do it with ethical business practices, being responsible both economically and socially. Help us advance the graphic novel and save the trees.