i will destroy you news: reviews

Showing posts with label reviews. Show all posts

Showing posts with label reviews. Show all posts

Thursday, December 15, 2011

Interviews... reviews... Holidays... etc...

There's a really long, career spanning interview with me over at The Comics Journal. I talk about everything and reveal things I'm already regretting. Enjoy!

Also, there's a couple of really nice reviews that came out:
The "erotic science fiction" magazine Circlet calls me "an exemplar of surrealism!" I like that.

Jordan Hurdler puts The Wolf among his "Best of 2011" books and has nice things to say about it.

Levon Jihanian's Danger Country #1 has a good review up at The Comics Journal. I will be co-publishing this book with Teenage Dinosaur beginning in 2012.

Have a Happy Holiday! Here's a Krampus I drew last night:

Friday, August 05, 2011

Another great review of The Wolf...

More good words about The Wolf over at The Poopsheet Foundation:

"...On the back cover, Tom Neely bills The Wolf as “a painted novel.” Now, ordinarily my knee jerk reaction to verbiage like that would be that it was just plain pretentious, yet here it’s actually spot on. It does feel like you’re witnessing some original blending of mediums here, like some type of sequential portraiture that’s an engaging modernization of those old Gothic triptychs, as Neely transitions fluidly between Fine Art paradigms and the world of self-published comics. The blending of artistic paradigms often yields a muddled composition that reveals its experimental nature. Not so with The Wolf. It is stark, fresh, and original, with a crisp sense of purpose that flows naturally and effortlessly...."

Read the whole review here!
What? You haven't you ordered your copy?
Do that now!

Also- It has just been announced that I will be a "Guest Artist" at
this year's Small Press Expo in Bethesda, Maryland.
See you in September!

Stay tuned for info about my upcoming West Coast Wolf Tour!

_________________________________

And now for something completely different
Two of my heroes, Cy Twombly and Lucien Freud, passed away recently. Both have had a huge influence on my art for nearly 20 years. Here's a few favorites...

Lucien Freud Self Portrait

Lucien Freud

Cy Twombly

Cy Twombly

I urge you to see their paintings in person sometime. The Cy Twombly building at the Menil Museum in Houston, TX, is amazing. But both can be found in most museum modern art collections.

Cy Twombly in front of his painting.

Thursday, July 28, 2011

people seem to like The Wolf...

some reviews...

Sean T. Collins reviews it over at his personal blog:

You can tease an emotional narrative out of the proceedings easily enough — past callousness, cruelty, and self-destruction in the context of a relationship are overcome, atoned for, and healed through sexual connection, and a transcendent future is discovered, a natural world untouched by the taint of the bitter past. But it’s the way each individual stage of that journey is depicted with symbols, colors, and creatures that capture and embody it perfectly

This one from Graphic Eye reviews The Wolf alongside Dave McKean's Celluloid:

For all the pell-mell of the mindbending plots, the creation of altered states and surreal fantasies would be for nothing, if it were not for the sheer virtuoso talent of both creators. McKean has long been established as a master of multimedia imagery and Celluloid represents possibly his finest work.... It’s all the moreso with The Wolf, though, as Neely deliberately breaks the connection to reality with his visual quirks. When the skinless creature first emerges, he wears the mime-gloves of old Disney cartoons as a telling sign that the rules of reality no longer apply, and we are in the realm of elastic physics. This allows Neely’s expressiveness to play and amplify the world of the story

Be sure to read the whole article. To be reviewed alongside Dave McKean is... well... i dunno... doesn't seem like long ago I was just a kid in Texas eagerly awaiting each new issue of The Sandman, not for the comics so much as for Dave McKean's amazing covers... whodathunk this would happen?

Saturday, July 09, 2011

The Wolf is loose!

The Wolf is unleashed and running amok in the world!

Here are a couple of interviews with me about The Wolf:

Sean T. Collins interviews me for Robot 6

And here's an interview with the LA Weekly blog

And this one is mostly about my love of heavy metal

The Wolf release party at SHQ was a lot of fun!

Thanks to everyone who came out to

the book release party last night!

And The Wolf is shipping to these stores this week!

Secret Headquarters in Los Angeles, CA

House of Secrets in Burbank, CA

Bergen Street Comics in Brooklyn, NY

Forbidden Planet in NYC

Escapist Comic Bookstore in Berkeley, CA

Titan Comics in Dallas, TX

Comic Swap Inc in State College, PA

Floating World Comics in Portland, OR

Cosmic Monkey Comics in Portland, OR

Herbivore Clothing Store in Portland, OR

Quimby's Bookstore in Chicago, IL

DOMY in Austin, TX

Coast City Comics in Portland, ME

Tell your local comic shop or independent book stores to

keep The Wolf (and all of my other books) in stock!

They can order through Tony Shenton

or contact me directly for wholesale prices.

Saturday, November 06, 2010

Ambitious...

A really nice review by Rob Clough of 3 books I did this year is up at The Comics Journal.

"he’s released a handful of gorgeous minicomics... In the past year, he’s become really ambitious with regard to his side projects, which speaks to his love of collaboration."

"It’s an affectionate send-up of the testosterone-soaked images of both singers by real fans, replete with lyrics-as-dialogue and all of the familiar iconography for both men. It’s less a poke at them than it is a parody of romance comics, overly-sensitive emo indy comics, and self-obsessed diary strips."

"The Neely-edited anthology Bound & Gagged is a far more accomplished and ambitious work, as 33 different cartoonists were asked to submit single-panel gag strips... All told, this is a beautifully-curated anthology with a clever premise that features cartoonists who raised their game."

"Neely took the idea of identical Popeyes battling each other from an old issue of his comic and turned it into a visceral examination of the ways in which our own id can lead to self-negating behavior."

Read the full article here.

And then you should buy these comics now.

Wednesday, October 27, 2010

Doppelgänger review

A nice review of my Doppelgänger comic

comes from Sean at Robot 6:

"Alt-horror visionary Tom Neely — he of the much acclaimed, mostly wordless graphic novel The Blot — is at it again with another psychologically troubling take on the cartoon icons of the early 20th century. This time he’s putting Popeye through the paces in Doppelgänger, an action-packed reinterpretation of E.C. Segar’s sailor man. The book pits Popeye against his greatest enemy of all: himself. Multiple copies, in fact. It’s not Neely’s most overtly horrific work, to be sure, but doubles have been a staple of the uncanny for centuries (as Freud himself noted), and the scenes of Popeye and his duplicates assaulting one another evoke everything from Dead Ringers to 28 Days Later, all with impeccable linework that recalls the great master cartoonists of yore. You can order it through Neely’s I Will Destroy You imprint. Tastier than spinach and twice as good for you, folks!"

Whaddayoowaitinfor?

Order it TODAY!

Wednesday, June 30, 2010

Check the news stands...

The new issue of Decibel Magazine not only has a cover story on Glenn Danzig, it also has a full page review of Henry & Glenn Forever. Pick up the print version at your news stand.

Tuesday, June 22, 2010

Busy busy busy

Here's a few things going on...

I was a guest on my pal's podcast debut episode. You can here us ramble on about comics, DIY, music, growing up in Texas, and living in LA with gunslinging neighbors. Listen to the first episode of Shakeytown Radio here.

Sean Collins gives my Neely... Creeps! book a really nice review here.

"People ought to be studying that lush midnight blue background in Adventures Into Terror, that sickly purple twilight in Beware the Clutching Hand and Unearthly Spectaculars, the candlelight effect giving way to a rich orange shadow in Creepy #79. That the comic's paper holds them as well as it does is a testament to Neely's skill as a self-publisher in addition to his instincts as a colorist."

Go buy it here.

And I'll be at Indy Euphoria in Sacramento this weekend. I really like this show, and I want everyone near Sacramento to go check it out. Lots of good cartoonists and comics to see. More info is on this site. See you there!

Monday, June 14, 2010

"Neely’s one of the top draftsmen working comics today"

Here's a nice, short review at The Comics Journal of my recent book Neely Covers Comics to Give You the Creeps!

Order a copy from my store NOW!

Tuesday, May 04, 2010

LA Weekly and Robot 6 reviews of Henry & Glenn Forever

LA Weekly reviews Henry and Glenn forever here.

"Henry Rollins and Glenn Danzig are in a loving, committed relationship. Henry (who sometimes looks like Chester Gould's Dick Tracy) loves Glenn dearly, even if occasionally his anger issues get in the way. Glenn keeps a journal about his ambitions and projects, like being in a band wearing corpse-like makeup ("Just be yourself!" recommends Henry). Oh, their neighbors are Hall & Oates, who are just your average neighborhood Satanists with a penchant for D&D.

This is the premise of Henry & Glenn, the new minicomic by art collective Igloo Tornado presented last week at Silverlake's comics mecca Secret Headquarters.

The minicomic, of course, is an unauthorized work of fantasy, but so are the "official" personas of Rollins and Danzig. What the Igloo Tornado guys have done is turned an old metalhead parlor game ("who would win a fight? Danzig or Rollins?") into clever slash fiction, a non-explicit graphic novelette..."

And Robot 6 reviews it here:

"... a collection of romantic one-panel gags starring those famous star-crossed lovers, Henry Rollins and Glenn Danzig. If you've ever wanted to know how the lead singers of Black Flag and the Misfits would maintain a relationship in the face of interference from their Satan-worshipping next-door neighbors Darryl Hall and John Oates, now's your chance. Henry & Glenn Forever comes to us from Igloo Tornado, a collective consisting of The Blot's Tom Neely and his artistic compatriots Gin Stevens, Scott Nobles, and ___ ______, and it's available for $4 from Microcosm."

Wednesday, February 24, 2010

Best Comics of the Decade #19

This blog called Only the Cinema has a list of Best Comics of the Decade and The Blot comes in at #19:

Tom Neely's self-published long-form debut, after a string of minicomics and shorter pieces, is a real shocker, coming out of nowhere to introduce a wholly new and exciting sensibility. His cartoony characters and obtuse symbolism add up to a difficult work, slippery in its meanings and intent, that is nevertheless impossible to look away from. With few words and very little narrative, Neely traces the experiences of a cartoon everyman, with a bulbous, rounded head, comically big feet and Mickey Mouse-style gloves, as he is consumed and pursued by an amorphous black inkblot that sometimes appears as small splotches within his white world, and sometimes threatens to flow across the page, consuming everything in its path. Neely presents various encounters between the man, the blot and a woman who sometimes seems to be helping him and sometimes seems fixed on his destruction. The book deals with conformity, creativity, love and humiliation, all through these enigmatic, nearly silent strips where the blot's seeming meaning and purpose fluidly changes depending on context.

This reminds me... I need to raise some money for future publishing projects, so I'm possibly going to be offering some more Blot-related artwork for sale on my blog soon.

Friday, February 12, 2010

I made it: #90!

The Blot made it as #90 on Rob Clough's list of 100 best comics of the 00's:

90. The Blot, by Tom Neely (self-published). Neely achieves a level of immediacy on each page of his stunning debut graphic novel, creating a powerful emotional shorthand with his ink splotches designed to get across the intensity of a feeling, be it dread, joy, fear, desperation or longing. His iconic imagery acts as dense bundles of emotional information that, when unpacked by the reader, provide a powerful experience and insight into the creative process.

The full list is over at TCJ.com.

Thursday, December 10, 2009

Comics as Poetry

"Like all the best poetry, what a reader gets out of comics-as-poetry is entirely dependent on how willing they are to truly engage the material and articulate the feelings it evokes."

The new and improved The Comics Journal Online has been redesigned, has a slew of new writers and bloggers, and is quickly filling up with a lot of great articles about comics.

And whaddaya know- the writer/critic Rob Clough has written a very good 3 part article on "comics-as-poetry" and he focuses on 2 of my favorite books: Asthma by John Hankiewicz and The Blot by lil' ol' ME!

I can't say enough good things about Hankiewicz's art and comics. He's probably in my top 5 contemporary artists and Asthma is always one of my all time favorite books. I'm flattered to see my work examined next to his.

I also think that Clough's examination of The Blot is one of the most thoughtful interpretations I've read so far. And I really enjoy what Clough has to say about the emergence of "comics-as-poetry" as well as his call for a new way of making, reading and looking at comics.

Read Part 1 here

Part 2 focuses on Asthma

Part 3 focuses on The Blot

If you haven't read Asthma- get it now!

If you haven't read The Blot - what's wrong with you?

side-note: Clough also wrote a review of my comic strip poem collection Brilliantly Ham-fisted and Your Disease Spread Quick here.

Thursday, October 29, 2009

BOO!

Over at Robot 6, Sean T. Collins writes about 6 of his favorite horrific alt-cartoonists who creep him out... among greats like Renee French, Al Columbia and Josh Simmons he included lil ol' me:

"...Sometimes Lovecraftian in scope, other times feeling more like the best heavy-metal album art never drawn, Neely's monsters--wolfmen, ravens and dogs, killers, and particularly the title, uh, thing from his self-published graphic novel The Blot--are all clearly rooted in the mental state of artist..."

Go read the full article here.

Happy Halloween!

Tuesday, October 27, 2009

Self Indulgent Werewolf record reviewed!?

I just stumbled across a positive review of my record!!! And I didn't think anyone had ever listened to it. Anyway, thanks to "gc" who wrote this:

Tom Neely - Self Indulgent Werewolf (self-released)

So this is a case where this super limited record (only 130 copies) is not even available anymore, but I bought a copy from the creator at APE in San Francisco. APE is the indie comics convention, and Mr. Tom Neely is best known as an illustrator who overlaps into the music world, as in his comic "Your Disease Spread Quick" based on the Melvins lyrics. Having struck up a brief conversation with Mr. Neely about Corrupted, I purchased this (there are gold and silver covers-I got gold) which was a soundtrack for Neely's 2007 art installation at LA's Black Maria Gallery. With little expectation or context other than the sick cover art, it starts off with a repeating banjo line that starts to glitch and morph, seemingly influenced by Steve Reich and the Books. The rest of the first side involves a really spaced out tonal guitar dirge, really Thrones-inspired. Though he calls himself an amateur, it's an assured entry into the recorded sphere when too many would-be jack-of-all-trades have failed. It's too bad this is such a limited release, but you could still get a copy if you dig around. (gc)

A slight correction to that review- it is still available. I have about 100 (of the 130) copies sitting on a shelf in my studio. You can buy them from my store or they might still have them at the Hydra Head store. Sorry, it's vinyl only- why are you still listening to c.d.s? Haven't you heard records are back!

And if anyone's interested, I might be recording some new music soon.

Friday, September 04, 2009

Reviews

Here's a couple of nice reviews.

First, a review of The Blot from a blog in Singapore called Power of Pop:

"...Despite not being about anything concrete per se, I felt drawn to Neely’s “hero” to his ups and downs and to his seeming helplessness in the face of cruel and fickle circumstances. There seems so much pain and darkness in these cartoony figures that I found it disturbing and carthatic at the same time. It’s not often that our fiction gives us enough space to insert our own emotions and thoughts into the expression but that’s exactly what The Blot does. And for this reason, I would highly recommend The Blot – its simplicity belies the depth of soul that is plumbed. It will give you endless hours of contemplation…"

Read the full review here.

Next is a round-up of mini-comics that includes a short review of my latest mini-comic Self Indulgence that I debuted at San Diego Comic Con.

"This little mini is a wordless bit of body comedy/horror from an artist who combination of bigfoot drawing and naturalism creates an unsettling atmosphere. The concept is simple: a pair of naked twins faces each other and one starts eating the other whole. As he's doing this, his twin is excreted out the other side, until the original image is duplicated as the book's final panel. With Neely, the fun is in the visceral, inky details and exaggerated body language. The way he elongates arms and legs while drawing pubic hair in exacting detail is the sort of thing that creates the old/new tension in his comics, a visual signature of sorts. I believe he customizes the cover for this comic when purchased at conventions (he did a drawing of the wolf from THE BLOT on mine), which is just a bonus for this beautiful comic."

Read the full round-up here.

I will have the remaining copies of the limited edition of Self Indulgence available at SPX later this month.

Monday, August 17, 2009

Inkwads review

The Willamette Week has a short, but nice write-up of the INKWADS show at Grass Hut Gallery.

Thursday, July 30, 2009

"...why isn't this Neely guy a superstar?"

Somehow my Google alerts missed Tucker Stone's nice review of two of my comics.

Nothing against any of the people at MoCCA, but why isn't this Neely guy a superstar? Some of the stuff that you get at MoCCA showcases this amazing level of talent obscured only by youth and inexperience, but Brilliantly Ham-Fisted is only recognizable to me as what's called a "mini-comic" because I'm buying it from Neely himself. Maybe it's because he doesn't have enough out there yet, or maybe it's because not enough people have checked out The Blot--whatever it is, it's always a great opportunity to see a cartoonist jack around with the format and release "23 comic strip poems", all of which are presented in the sort of four panel layouts you might see in a newspaper that had wider margins. Similar in tone to the idea that Yoshihiro Tatsumi described at the PEN World Voices event earlier this year (honest work in gag strip panels dealing with emotion), each of these "poems" is a scattershot attack on moment, dealing out a random Ziggy-like joke before watching a little cartoon man slam his head repeatedly against the panels that contain him. On his way out of frame, a voice calls out "I thought he'd never leave." His response? "That hurt".

I think that's the first time I've been compared to Ziggy.

He also reviews Your Disease Spread Quick. Read the whole article here.

Monday, May 04, 2009

Review with Sandwiches?

El Borrón, the Spanish version of The Blot, keeps getting good reviews and I keep using Google translator which yields some funny results. This one reviews me along with a few other books. Here's the broken translation:

La Cúpula is also the first who published a graphic novel of the Texan Tom Neely, a bold proposal entitled 'El Borrón' that runs between the everyday and the surreal experience. The various chapters are the emergence of a black stain that spilled on the person and life of the protagonist as a powerful metaphor that reflects the evolution of their fears, their emotional problems or communication and the search for an identity.
Neely exhibited a very fine line drawing characters to highly stylized design, which even in its distortion of the expression kinetics and intent. The story contains just a dozen sandwiches succinct text long its more than 180 pages, all made by the couple's female protagonist. There are no more words, with the exception of onomatopoeia in this long and harrowing story whose development depends entirely on the image. Thus the author uses with skill and originality all visual resources at its disposal to realize when a plot rife with symbols that clearly calls for the active participation of the reader.

I had no idea there were a dozen sandwiches in my book!

Sunday, May 03, 2009

Please don't kill yourself...

A nice little review of Brilliantly Ham-fisted from Inkstuds. I don't think the book is all that depressing or suicide-inducing, but it's a nice review anyway:

I really like Tom Neely’s work and was happy to get his little collection, Brilliantly Ham-Fisted. It’s a depressingly charming collection of Tom doing his best try at a four panel strip. I somehow doubt that Tom would ever get a daily syndicated strip, unless people felt like killing themselves when they first read the paper in the morning. The work in this is beautiful and full of an odd type of empty life. Tom can seem to exact onto a desperate need to find an end to a loneliness. It doesn’t feel pretentious and full of itself, but instead, the strips are nice poetic contemplation, that slows down the pace nicely. Oh and it doesn’t hurt that Tom is a master cartoonist that is really hitting his stride right now.

I should have these available for sale in my store by the end of the month.

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