Taken…(three panels) @threepanelcrimes x @fuelstains

Editorial is open for submissions: [email protected]

“Taken…”  is a collaboration with Nikolay Georgiev aka @fuelstains that came about from meeting through my webcomic @threepanelcrimes on Instagram. @threepanelcrimes is a different crime story told each week in just three silent panels. 

The project is a triptych, consisting of three separate panels of a cyborg unaware of an intruder in her home. The third panel is ambiguous, they know what happens but leave the viewer to ask questions and share theories with others. Emphasizing a major part of the human fascination with crime, not only what happened but why? 

So, did she fight the robot off? Was she kidnapped? Or perhaps the bot just wanted its headphones back ;)…

Tony @threepanelcrimes:

I was drawn to Nikolay’s work because of his skill at drafting images that are hyper-detailed but don’t ever have a sense of crowding. I’m a big fan of early broadsheets and engravings from the 19^th century and there is a bit of that in his line work but it’s with cyborgs which is just fucking badass! He really hit it out of the park with the colors, bringing a sense of impending doom along with a cozy feeling depending on what part of the image you’re looking at.

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 and focused on completing a story from class, which I set out to self-publish as a calling card book.

After a few false starts, I managed to put together the money, find an art team and finish a single-issue comic. It took a long 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 realized 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 realized 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 different from the beginning as his art skills would improve over the years. Or finding plot holes that he’d missed for years and now had hundreds of possible rewrites.

Lars had a great piece of advice: “Fail faster.”

He advised that people just starting out (people like me) should do as many small projects as possible to hone their skills. He made the point that the smaller something is, the easier it is to find out why it’s not working and find a solution.

I wrote some single page stories and learned quite a lot from my mistakes.

At the time I was reading Will Eisner’s “Contract with God”. I wondered who influenced him and stumbled onto Lynd Ward’s work. Lynd Ward did a series of “Wordless Novels” that were made of woodcuts. I tracked them down and was fascinated by how much story he could get into a single image on a page.

The idea for @threepanelcrimes popped into my head. A complete crime story, once per week, told in just three silent panels.

I wrote eight scripts and started making it a daily practice to write at least one per day. I reached out to an artist (Dexter Wee) and a colorist (Chris Northrop) and we set out to finish and post at least one comic strip per week. No matter what. 

In the last few years, it’s been a great motivator for staying focused on longer projects. Getting that sense of accomplishment from putting something out and engaging with an audience.

We’ve grown to over 30K followers on Instagram and I’ve had the opportunity to collaborate with about 200 different artists, animators and musicians from all over the world. I’m really grateful for the community and the great people I’ve met because of @threepanelcrimes and I look forward to continuing with it!

Nikolay Georgiev @fuelstains:

What attracted me to the project was mainly the interesting challenge of the format and how easy it was to work with Tony. From working in concept artwork and my Biopunk personal projects, I am used to storytelling in a single image. There are many examples of longer form sequential art, but having to tackle a sequence of 3 panels to tell a story was quite unique and distinctly challenging. 

I went for a futuristic art deco luxury design to sell the idea of tastefully rich for the girl, but I also wanted a sense of loneliness with the large and sterile space. The colors were meant to be decadent and slick with a club-like atmosphere to communicate the coldness of artificial life and the isolation of extreme wealth. Oh, and obviously the red robot eye was classic alarm/danger choice.

I enjoyed the script and followed it closely, reading into the character of the girl a lot. Like listening to music/being a musician is the only way for her to feel at ease and that she matters as she’s alone in an expensive apartment with very few things in it. It’s why I’m glad we didn’t show her reaction to the robot – maybe she was content with it, or maybe she was terrified.