SPX this weekend

I'm heading to Bethesda for the Small Press Expo this weekend.

I'm sharing table space with Sparkplug Comic Books

and the amazing Zak Sally.

Please come out to the show and support independent comics!

Here's what I'll have with me:

The Blot:

read a review here and here.

Your Disease Spread Quick - The Melvins Comic Book:

read a review here and here.

Brilliantly Ham-fisted - A Collection of 23 Comic Strip Poems:

read a review here and here.

Self Indulgence limited edition mini comic

with custom hand-drawn covers:

read a review here.

I should also have some t-shirts and prints with me, depending on whether I can pack them safely for the plane.

Update!

I will have some prints with me:

Moby Dick, Isis, Wolves in the Throne Room, and Skinwalker

Also, some original artwork for sale.

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I'm on the Covered Blog again...

Another one of my Horror Comic Covers is posted up at the Covered Blog.

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sunday.

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SUGARBOXX!

My good pal Cody Jarrett made a new movie.

It inspired me to do this:


Here's the trailer:

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"Tom Neely is one sick puppy"

Another positive review of Your Disease Spread Quick:

"I wish I could say I was more of a Melvins fan, but I’m not. I don’t NOT like them, just haven’t listened to them enough. Regardless, if their music is anything like Tom Neely’s artwork, then they’ve gotta be worth checking out. Neely’s comically macabre illustrations are amazing and the sporadic bubbles of Melvins lyrics are thrown in just the right places. My favorite part by far was the bazooka-joe-esque panel comic on the back where the Melvins defeat Satan himself with the help of some special pastries. Tom Neely is one sick puppy!"

Buy it directly from me here! Buy it from Hydra Head Records here! Order it for your store from Tony Shenton or e-mail me for more info.

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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.

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Happy Birthday Jack Kirby!

Today woulda been his 92nd Birthday.

Here's a drawing of The Inhumans I did back in 2004 when I was drawing everything "Fleischer-Popeye Style":

But stop looking at that, and go look at some art by the King!

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Inkstuds Mix Tape #666: CORPSEGRINDER

Robin McConnell is asking several cartoonists to put together a playlist of songs for The Inkstuds radio show mixtape series.
My mixtape is #6(66) in the series and I've named it "Corpsegrinder" after my favorite song on Zak Sally's new album.

Making a mixtape is something I've done hundreds of times. I think I probably made my first mix tape around the 3rd grade. I've always taken these things seriously. I dig through stacks of c.d.s and records and listen to hours of music trying to figure out what I want to do. This list started out as a diverse mix of jazz, country, punk, pop and (of course) metal, but the original cut was over 4 hours long. So, I started weeding things out for various reasons. Eventually I decided on a theme that leaned more towards the aggressive side and centered mostly around what I've been listening to the most this summer- grindcore, crust punk and avant garde jazz.

And because I'm a bit OCD with these things, I decided to make this virtual online playlist as an actual mixtape with a carefully selected musical arc on both Side A and Side B. I even timed it all out so that it would be exactly 66 minutes 6 seconds long*. I have always made cover art for my mixtapes, so I did the same here. If you are so inclined, you can print out the cover and dub the mix onto a blank tape and rock it on your walkman.

Anyway... I spent way too much time working on this, but it was a lot of fun. I don't really expect anyone to enjoy it (I can think of only a handful of friends who might also enjoy this mix), but maybe you will. Check it out.

*don't worry mom, I'm not really a Satanist, I just like the music.

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a couple more convention sketches...

I know these are all kinda violent, but your mind goes to strange places while sitting at a booth for several days selling comics.

Groo:


See more of Matthew Brady's Groo sketchbook here.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles:


Don't miss Levon Jihanian's turtles and more of Jacob Covey's ninja turtle sketchbook here.

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sketches...

At conventions, people often ask me to do a sketch in their artist sketchbooks. These are sketchbooks you take to conventions with you and have all the artists do sketches in them. It's a great way to collect art by your favorite artists, and usually they don't charge you anything for it. Sometimes the sketchbooks have a theme like "eating" or "moon knight." I prefer when someone gives me a theme, because it pulls me out of my own head and forces me to draw something in a different way.

Here are a few of my sketches that have been posted to flickr:

Nancy:

(see more Nancys by many great artists at Matthew Seidan's flickr)

and a very disturbing Yoda:

(see more Yodas at Mike Baehr's flickr)

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Inkwads review

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

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Inkwads opening at Grass Hut

I'm back from a wonderful weekend in Portland, OR.

Here are pictures of the Inkwads Opening posted on my Flickr.

THANKS to everyone who came out to the show. And everyone who hung out with me. And thank you Dylan's bicycle. And thank you Emily's doll-house. It was really fun to feel like Portland loves me. A huge thanks to Scrappers and Bwana for asking me to do this! And to everyone else at Grass Hut, too. I hope to see you all again soon.

UPDATE: whoops, i had the wrong link posted for purchasing the artwork... it's fixed now. Go here to purchase art from this show.

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Horror Show Tonight!

TONIGHT!

Grass Hut Gallery in Portland, OR.

Opening reception 6-9.

For those of you who aren't in Portland,

Here are all 10 of my paintings:

Self Portrait as Horrific #3.

See original comic cover here.

Creepy #79.

See the original cover here.

Weird Tales of the Future #8.

See the original cover here.

"The Kiss of Death" Adventures Into Weird Worlds #23.

See the original cover here.

Adventures Into Terror #21.

See the original cover here.

Forbidden Worlds #24.

See the original cover here.

Black Cat Mystery #45.

See the original cover here.

Beware #14.

See the original cover here.

Astonishing #30.

See the original cover here.

Creepy #46.

See the original cover here.

(This one does not have the text painted on it- it's just the image)

If you are interested in purchasing these, here's the info:
Horrific #3 and Creepy #46 are 18 x 24 inches and $500 each
The other 8 are 11 x 14 inches and $300 each
They are all watercolor, gouache and ink on paper and framed.
contact Grass Hut at 503-445-9924
or grasshut.corp@gmail.com

Also- Check out Hellen Joe's pieces for the show.

She made some beautiful Asian ghost story paintings.

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Horror covers...

Another one of my horror covers is up over at the Covered blog.
Check out my Adventures Into Terror #21!

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Grass Hut show in Portland!

I'm in a group show opening this Friday at Grass Hut in Portland.
I'm showing 10 reimagined classic horror comic book covers. Above is my Forbidden Worlds #24. See the original by Ken bald here. You can see another one here. And here.

INKWADS
Hellen Joe, Kiyoshi Nakazawa, Brent Wick, John Black
and ME- Tom Neely!
at Grass Hut
811 East Burnside
Portland, OR 97214
Opens Friday, August 7th from 6-10 pm
The show will be up all month.

I'll be there. If you're in Portland, come by and check it out.

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Only 6 Moby Dick prints left!

I still have 6 Moby Dick prints left after Comicon.
These are the last of the edition of 30 giclée prints.
Order them now from the iwilldestroyyou store.
$200 includes shipping.

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"...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.

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Tattoos?

I'm curious if anyone else out there has any tattoos based on my artwork. I'd love to see them. Please send me pictures.


This guy has a tattoo of a drawing I did of Ahab from Moby Dick.
Thanks for putting my artwork on your body forever!
It's always nice to meet another Moby Dick fanatic.
Here's the original drawing and a close-up of the tattoo.


I have more photos from the con on my flickr.

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Thank you San Diego

I will miss you...

IMG_0091
Originally uploaded by Reliable Comics

It was fun. See you next year!

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Comicon Exclusives! (sure, what the hell...)

NEW: Self Indulgence mini comic
signed and numbered limited edition of 83.
All come with a personalized drawing on the cover. Yep- I'm drawing all the covers by hand. I've completed a few for you to choose from, or you can request a body part and I'll draw it on the cover of your personalized copy.

ALSO: Only 8 Moby Dick prints left!
My Moby Dick seems to be one of the most popular things I've ever drawn. This is a limited edition of 30 giclee prints.

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5 Questions from Herospy

There's a short interview with me over at Herospy.

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San Diego Comic Con 2009

Here's your checklist of everything I'll have available at San Diego Comic Con this week.

COMICS:

The Blot
Your Disease Spread Quick
NEW Brilliantly Ham-fisted

NEW LIMITED EDITION MINI COMIC:

Self Indulgence
signed and numbered edition of 83

PRINTS:

ISIS silkscreen tour poster
Wolves in the Throne Room silkscreen tour poster
Skinwalker Beast letterpress print with watercolor
Rise Above giclee print
The Wolf giclee print
Reborn giclee print
MOBY DICK giclee print (only 8 copies left!!!)

NEW POSTERS:

6 Classic Horror Comic Book Covers
Kitty Pryde comic strip poster

T-SHIRTS:

New SKULL t-shirt
Black Metal Logo Tom Neely

I will also have some original artwork for sale and will be signing/doodling/sketching on whatever you ask. Please come by and say "hi." I'm sharing space with Sparkplug Comic Books at Booth #1531. Here's a handy map that marks all the great indie publishers. Be sure to check out the small press areas and support all the indie artists!

And please don't forget to pack your Star Wars pajamas:

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San Diego Comic Con

Here's a video I made of some of the stuff I'll have at San Diego Comic Con.



I will be joining Sparkplug Comic Books at booth 1531 with lots of new and old stuff. I have new prints, new posters, new t-shirts, newish books, and even a new super-limited edition mini comic! Please come by and see me.

Also, I'll be blogging about it all week over at the Komics Pump with David King, Michelle Borok and Dylan Williams.

UPDATE: Dylan Williams posted this handy map that shows where all the best indie stuff can be found at SDCC this week.

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Upcoming Stuffffffff...

I'm super busy getting ready for San Diego Comic Con next week.
AND my first art show in Portland, OR, at Grass Hut in August.

More details coming soon.

Here's one of the paintings for the Grass Hut show:

That's my "cover" of Weird Tales of the Future #8. The original can be seen here.

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Happy 4th of July!

The best tattoo I've ever seen in my life!

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ISIS show tonight with my poster

The posters I did for ISIS arrived today. They look great! They almost killed Andy from Broken Press. The show is tonight at the Henry Fonda Theater in Los Angeles. The posters will be for sale at the merch table. After tonight, they will be available for sale online and at my booth at San Diego Comic Con next month.

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2 Years Old!

My first born is two years old today.
Happy Birthday Blot!

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The Triumph of Death over Los Angeles

This is my design for the ISIS tour poster series:

(click for larger view)

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:


Not sure who did this one:

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MoCCA!

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.

Also: Flickr pics from the trip here.

* 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.

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MoCCA and Giant Robot show in NYC this weekend (plus something next week)

I'll be at the MoCCA Comic Arts Festival this weekend! Plus I'm in a group show at Giant Robot NY.



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.

I'll have The Blot, Your Disease Spread Quick and Brilliantly Ham-fisted for sale. And if I can fit them in my suitcase, I should have some prints and other stuff for sale as well.

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:

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