The series is being printed by Broken Press in Seattle. The silkscreen prints will be available at the ISIS show on June 24th at the Henry Fonda Theater in L.A. They will soon be available through Broken Press, and directly from me through my store or at upcoming conventions. My poster for Wolves in the Throne Room is also available from Broken Press, and direct from me soon.
I'm very proud to do some artwork for ISIS and to be a part of this series alongside some really great artists.
This is probably the most "METAL" thing I've ever drawn, but it's roots go way, way, way back. My piece is directly inspired by two of my favorite paintings by Pieter Bruegel:
"The Triumph of Death" And "Fall of the Rebel Angels"
"The Triumph of Death" or "Dance of Death" was a common theme throughout Art history. Here's a few others.
Alfred Rethel:
Geoffrey Tory:
Italian fresco attributed to Buonamico Buffalmalco or Francesco Traini:
MoCCA was really great! Really, really great!* For me, this was actually the most successful indie comics festival I've ever attended.
I love going to New York because I get to go to The Met and lots of great vegan restaurants around town. Hanging out with all my cartoonist pals is always wonderful. I saw a lot of great art, saw a couple of great bands (pictured above: Hinges), met some new people, and got a lot of good new comics.
(I got this picture from this blog. Behind us, somewhat appropriately, was a mural of the Civil War.)
I was also a part of a panel called "Making Good Comics in a New Era." The panel went well and the audience was packed. It's hard to remember everything I said in that panel (I know I'm embarrassed by at least two stupid things I said). Unfortunately, I feel like I came off as more pessimistic than I intended. My mind has been swirling all week as I've been thinking a lot about what I wanted to say, but was unable to articulate properly. Meanwhile, I guess some people thought i should be congratulated. I'm thinking about writing a blog essay to clarify my ideas soon.
Huge thanks to my table-pals Willow Dawson and Jesse Reklaw. Thanks to everyone that stopped by our table. I'll post more soon.
* Okay... it wasn't ALL great. Everyone's complaining about the heat all over the internet. I wasn't as hot as I was allergic to the cave-like atmosphere of the Armory. But my main complaint is about MoCCA raising the table fee for next year's festival. Looking around the festival floor, I saw a lot of unused space. For example: I was on the back row of tables and there was about 30 ft of unused space behind me. My two cents to the MoCCA festival organizers: Instead of raising the price of a table, which excludes a lot of small publishers and individual artists who are the heart of these festivals, the price should be lowered and more tables should be added to fill out the space.
Saturday and Sunday I'll be at MoCCA. I'm sharing a table with my friends Jesse Reklaw and Willow Dawson. I think we're table #813 (which appears to be along the back wall) and we're listed under Sparkplug Comic Books in the program.
Also, on Saturday at 2pm, I'll be part of a panel called "Making Comics in a New Era" with Brett Warnock (Top Shelf), Alvin Buenaventura (Buenaventura Press), Dylan Williams (Sparkplug), Mats Johnson, and Julia Wertz. It's moderated by Heidi McDonald (The Beat). I have no idea what I'll be talking about. It should be interesting.
Check the MoCCA website for address, schedule and other info.
Saturday Night there is an art opening and book signing party at Giant Robot NY: I should have 4 of my comic strip poem originals in this Panelists show. This is the first time I've shown at a gallery in NYC! And there are lots of other great artists in this show, too. Also, this is a "Future Shock" book signing party for several new comics from Sparkplug Comic Books, Secret Acres and more. Two parties in one! Check the Giant Robot NY website for more info.
And one last thing, since I won't be able to blog about it while I'm away...
There's an auction benefit happening in Los Angeles on June 10th. I've donated two of my prints to be auctioned off. The proceeds go to help support anti-gang, youth-oriented parks programs and is hosted by Eric Garcettti. Check out the flyer for more info:
If you had said to me ten years ago that I'd be in Wizard Magazine, I woulda laughed in your face and told you you don't know anything about the comics. Why would a big super-hero magazine care about what I'm doing? Well... I would have been wrong.
There's a nice little "Spotlight" feature about my upcoming book The Wolf in issue #213 (which hit the news stands and comic shops today). Sean Collins interviewed me and Aaron Turner about the project and our "Bromance."
Click image to read it:
I'm really glad to see Wizard has been including a lot more indie comics coverage recently.
You can now order these items direct from me: Your Disease Spread Quick Brilliantly Ham-fisted Skinwalker Letterpress Print BUT WAIT, THERES MORE: I've lowered the prices on all of my other prints.
STORES: Please e-mail me for wholesale orders, or contact Tony Shenton.
AND: I've added a section to the links on the left side of this blog for stores that usually carry my books. More links will be added soon. If you see one of your local stores on the list, please support them. It's tough to run a small business these days, and comic shops are a very special place where awkward young kids can lose themselves in their imaginations and maybe even grow up to be a cartoonist like me! I'd hate to see any of these portals close up due to this depression.
(If you carry my books, but don't see a link, please let me know)
Hey Everybody- Go bid on the original artwork (seen above) for my Kitty Pryde poster for the Full of Pryde show at Floating World Comics. The artwork is being auctioned for charity.
Three things happening this weekend that I will be a part of...
For those of you in L.A., there is a group show at GR2 called Free To A Good Home 2: DOGS! Along with artwork by great artists and cartoonists like Andrice Arp, Jeffrey Brown, Shawn Cheng, David King, Kiyoshi Nakazawa, John Pham, Aaron Renier, Daria Tessler, Steve Weissman (and many, many more), there will be dogs from local animal shelters available for adoption! So get some new art and a new pet at the same time. Here's my painting for the show:
Floating World Comics in Portland, OR, is having a benefit art show and auction for the hemophilia research center of OHSU. The theme of the show is the X-men character Kitty Pryde. I made a Nancy-esque comic strip based on the X-men #143 comic. You can get posters of artwork from all the different artists for $5. And the original artwork will be auctioned off. Here's my Kitty Pryde: You can see other artists' Kitty Prydes at this blog.
And finally, I'll be in Toronto this weekend... I'm exhibiting with my friends Sparkplug Comic Books at the Toronto Comic Arts Festival. I'll have all my books and maybe some prints for sale, too. If you're in or near Toronto come check it out. (that's me at the Sparkplug table at TCAF 2007)
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!
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.
I'm really excited to have just completed a poster for one of my favorite bands Wolves in the Throne Room. (click to enlarge) The posters will be screen-printed by Broken Press in Seattle. This poster is for three shows in Hamilton and Toronto, Ontario, and Montreal Quebec in May. They should be for sale at the shows, and I'll also have some available at future conventions.
This poster features a character that I've been using in a lot of recent and upcoming artwork. This character will also make an appearance in my upcoming graphic novel The Wolf.
"...The world is lousy with artists that have no vision; what’s the point of drawing a pretty picture if you have nothing to say. Tom Neely’s work overflows with imagination. Books like “The Blot” are why I created this site! Tom deserves a huge fan base."
This weekend, I'm heading up to Portland, OR, where April is officially "Comics Month." I'll be there for the Stumptown Comics Festival!
Friday Night, I'll be doing a "reading" of my mostly wordless graphic novel The Blot at the Guapo Pre-Stumptown party. (click this flier for more info)
And Saturday and Sunday, I'll be at my table selling books, prints and records and whatever else I can drag up there on the plane.
I was really surprised to find out from this blog that I was ranked #5 on a list of "Top 25 Indie Books of All Time."
I finally have a copy of the magazine in my hands. It's Wizard Magazine #211 Platinum Edition. Apparently there is another issue #211 that is completely different- get the one that looks like this:
I'm honored to be included along side some of my favorite cartoonists. Wizard doesn't cover indie comics very often, so I'm amazed to be included here.
Here's the broken translation courtesy of Google translator:
If the "Metamorphosis" Kafka's Gregor Samsa woke up turned into an insect, in "El Borrón" your character is attacked by a stain of ink you want to grab him, his gestures and his words. I put in two parallel stories that despite different paths followed by the start of the two is the same: The Stigma of fantastic proportions that turns its victims into a pariah. The anomaly is Esperpentos dimensions in both cases relate to social rejection.
An exaggeration that borders on absolute absurdity (a stain that spreads across the face, mouth, the flooding, which destroys everything it touches) suggests a continuum of existential doubt and, what is most remarkable, the unusual origin and meaning of "disease" becomes the perfect vehicle to draw a fairly rational interpretation of our reality.
The nightmare of the "blot" structured in three parts and with little dialogue, distinguished by the ability to surprise that generates your reading but it all seems to be on the front pages, Tom Neely manages to turn the nut of the "most difficult" in each one of the chapters with a staggering ability to reach a level of sadism-attention to the brutal beating that is dispatched to the player himself, perhaps one of the most violent in the history of comics, which fortunately falls sharply for a final hopeful that obviously does not reveal here. Although, by the way, the end is the least of which in this story (as in "Metamorphosis"), what matters is the journey, the trip to the horror, rather than the destination or termination of same.
Halfway between the first drawings of the Disney factory (the main character has an air to Mickey Mouse in his eyes and actually looks the same gloves that famous character) strips the EC Segar and stunted silhouettes of Giacometti, "The stain is the first work of astonishing Tom Neely. An author heavily influenced by impressionism and surrealism of Magritte, as evidenced by the approach of powerful graphic vignettes of this disturbing story that is now a benchmark title in the ninth art.
UPDATE: lowering the prices. Come on people- by some art so I can pay some bills!
Here's another chance to get some original art for a low price. If you would like to purchase any of these, please e-mail your request (my e-mail is on my homepage) and I'll send shipping price and payment info. First come first serve.
These are most of the drawings from my S'super-mini Comic from a couple of years ago. At the 2005 San Diego Comic Con, I was sitting right next to Rob Liefeld's booth all week. I've never been a fan of his, but I eavesdropped as he sold sketches to his fans at "$60 for a bust, $120 for a full body." Whenever he did a sketch, I did one of my own. And these were the result.
First are some one panel gag strips featuring Superman, Wolverine, Batman, Spider-man and The Flash. Ink on paper. 9 x 12" $75 each (Click on images for larger view)
And here are 8 D.C. heroes, inspired by some of the awesomely bad home-made costumes people wear at SDCC. Superman, Batman, Hawkman, Wonder-Woman, Martian Manhunter, Green Lantern, Aquaman, and The Flash. None of them are directly inspired by people I saw at SDCC, but if you've ever been there, you know this isn't that far from reality. Ink and watercolor on paper 5.5 x 8.5" $50 each (Click on images for larger view)
UPDATE:
Wonder Woman: MISSING (i think i lost her at a convention)
I found another review of the Spanish version of The Blot online. This one isn't all positive. It seems that the reviewer unfavorably compares me to the great cartoonist Jason. The review calls me a "Jason Minor" and says my narrative reminds him too much of something by Jason. I've read several of Jason's books, but I'd be curious to know which one the review is comparing me to. I also find it interesting that this might be the first review that calls my book "funny." Anyway... Here's the link. And here's the broken translation:
With a desire to contradict the spirit of my blog, namely that of a comic book blog ever talks about comics, I will start a series of brief minireseñas some of the comics that I read lately. Start:
I will not deny that I enjoyed with the original proposal of Tom Neely and its striking use of the expressive possibilities of the comic. Nor deny that the history of The blot holds human interest, which can even think that this strange relationship of these strange people. But I just do not convince. The story of Neely, style aside, reminds me too much to the narrative of Jason, but Jason a minor, with a rate less able to give the impression sometimes gum stretched over the account and also a bit bland. And that issue may well have been signed by the Norwegian, but to reach the level of a Jason Neely lacks irony and sobran pages. Many pages. In short, a funny comic but somewhat disappointing.
I'm defying the downturn in the economy and it's effects on the comics industry by publishing a new comic book!
This is a collection of my comic strip poems. I previously had xeroxed minis of this book available at SDCC and APE, but this is a new official printing. Plus it has 4 new strips that were previously unavailable. That's 23 comic strip poems + a snazzy new cover for you to enjoy!
It will debut at the Stumptown Comics Festival in Portland, OR, later this month. After that, I will be offering it for sale in my webstore and through select distributors.
The above image is a triptych of drawings I did for a group show last year. They didn't sell in the show, so I've decided to offer them for sale here. And CHEAP, too!
Title: Evolution Ink on paper approximately 8 x 10" inches each wood frame and matte 12 x 15" each
They are $175 for the set + shipping. Includes frames. UPDATE- SOLD!
E-mail me to find out payment information and shipping costs. My e-mail can be found on my homepage.
These drawings are smaller versions of the first 3 paintings in the Werewolf Fugue series from 2007. They are also part of my upcoming graphic novel, The Wolf:
But I have to post the article cause it's funny. Every time i see the words "Freedom's Stain" I think it has to be something like a Hot Richard.
What sounds cooler than a blues-hard rock song full of guitar riffs? One with patriotic lyrics that benefit military families.
The Los Angeles-based indie rock band Bridge Of Sighs recently partnered with Operation Homefront, the parent organization to OH Online, to donate proceeds from the tracks “Freedom’s Stain” and “The General Speaks” to the organization’s Wounded Warrior Program. Band members Trent Stroh (bass/vocals), Tom Neely (guitar) and Mike Taylor (drums) wrote “Freedom’s Stain” following six concerts performed during two separate trips to the U.S. Naval base on Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. After a performance, the band befriended members of an Army Reserve unit. “We got to go back to their barracks. We were hanging out with them, and we started to write the song (“Freedom’s Stain”) that night,” Neely said. Neely, whose father served in the Marine Corps, said that in that setting, the lyrics easily came to the trio: “Where eagles fly And Heroes die This is freedom’s stain While angels fly And Mothers cry Can you feel their pain?” “We started playing it (“Freedom’s Stain”) live at our shows and it turned out to be our biggest hit,” Neely said. Donating the proceeds was an obvious step, Neely said.“It seemed like a no-brainer to hook up with Operation Homefront,” he said.
The track “Angry Clouds” was also inspired by Bridge of Sigh’s interaction with the troops. The album of the same name is dedicated to the men and women of the armed forces, according to the band.
Prior to forming Bridge of Sighs, band members performed separately with numerous world-class musicians including Eddie Money, Robert Palmer, Nancy Sinatra and Patrick Simmons of the Doobie Brothers. In 2004, Neely won the Los Angeles Indie Rock Guitarist of the Year award. The album was produced and engineered by Grammy Award-winner Neil Citron, and features Grammy Award-winner and Hammond Organ player Bob Carpenter. It’s available now on Amazon.com and at iTunes.
I'm gonna have to use "Angry Clouds" as the name of my autobiography.
Supporting the troops is great. But anyway... Reminds me of this old infomercial:
I love that "Freedom Rock" includes a song by the satanist-hippy band Coven.
