Tom Neely-Last Art Show on the Left

Born from a horror podcast, entitled The Last Podcast on the Left, comes The Last Book on the Left: Stories of Murder and Mayhem from History’s Most Notorious Serial Killers. The book, written collaboratively by Ben Kissel, Marcus Parks, and Henry Zebrowski, takes a thoroughly researched deep-dive into the history of America’s most infamous serial killers and their perverse and highly grotesque habits, back-stories, and fetishes. To illustrate their book, the Last Book on the Left crew chose esteemed visual artist and illustrator, Tom Neely. Neely brings the book to life through his ability to delicately balance gore with poignancy – haunting atrocity with dark comedy. His attention to detail, his keen eye for visual narration, and his comic wit while dealing with heavy subject matter is what sharply illustrates the absurdity in the horror and the wry humor in the twisted violence.

Tom Neely is an artist living and working in Los Angeles. He is best known for the cult-hit indie comic book Henry & Glenn Forever, which he created with his artist collective, The Igloo Tornado. Neely’s art has been featured in galleries in California and New York, in magazines, literary journals, and on album covers for bands including Isis, Melvins, Groovie Ghoulies, and Green Day. His debut graphic novel, The Blot, earned him an Ignatz Award and made it onto several of the industry’s Best of 2007 lists as well as The Comics Journal’s Best Graphic Novels of the Decade 2000-10. Neely created artwork for three stories in the Roger Langridge scripted Popeye series for IDW, as well as a handful of comics for Phineas and Ferb Magazine. He authored the Melvins comic book, Your Disease Spread Quick, and a collection of comic strip poems called Brilliantly Ham-Fisted, before completing his second graphic novel, The Wolf. This will be Tom Neely’s second solo exhibition with La Luz de Jesus Gallery.