EXTRACTS: Illustrators Crime Comics Special © 2020 Book Palace Books (144 pages in full edition)

139 I started writing comics scripts in 2014. Inspired by writers like Ed Brubaker, Brian Azzarello, and Warren Ellis, I enrolled in a comic writing class at Meltdown Comics . I concentrated my energies on completing a story from class that I could self-publish as a calling-card book. After a few false starts, I managed to assemble the money, find an art team and finish a single-issue comic. It took time, but now I had something to show people. I printed the book, and after selling a few copies to local comic shops (thank you Meltdown Comics & House of Secrets ) I had a few hundred books left. I went to shows and took a few copies out of the trunk of my car to hand to editors. Nothing happened, no emails were answered; after a few months I thought about giving up. I didn’t expect to launch a career off of a one-shot, but I had hoped for some traction. Neil Gaiman summed up the feeling perfectly: “Getting published is like throwing flower petals over the Grand Canyon and waiting for the boom.” A few months later I looked at the book with fresh eyes and realised the story wasn’t very good. I decided to go back to the basics. I retook the beginner’s comic book writing class at Meltdown Comics . Later that year while browsing on YouTube a video popped up: "4 Time-Saving Tips (from a guy who spent 13 YEARS drawing a comic)" by a cartoonist named Lars Martinson. Lars had spent years writing and drawing his own graphic novel when he realised that if all of his projects took so long, it created a few problems for him. Things like the end of the book looking drastically 1 2 3 The Last Skate Script -Tony Fabro © Three Panel Crimes, Art - Dexter Wee © dexterweeart, Colours Luis Antonio Delgadoo © @luis_the_colorist