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This week we celebrate the Popeye-obsessed, Metal-warped mind of Tom Neely! His new series The Humans, with his pal Keenan Marshall Keller, has become a sleeper hit for Image Comics and is the perfect vehicle for Neely’s action-packed, skull-rattling artwork!

I first picked up some of Neely’s comics(The Blot, Your Disease Spread Quick, a Melvins comic book) at San Diego Comic Con about 10 years ago and I have to say that his comics career has been one of the most interesting to follow. Tom Neely has shown great range & versatility as an artist, from creating the cult-classic underground series Henry & Glenn Forever with The Igloo Tornado artist collective to his time campaigning for, then drawing for IDW’s new Popeye series(a life long dream of his) and then his recent 228-page graphic novel The Wolf, a beautifully raw, bloody acid trip of a story!

With The Humans comic book Neely has(hopefully)found his long-term happy(biker-ape-loitation)home to stretch his ink brush arm in!

Neely earned his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Painting from the University of Tulsa & Master of Fine Arts degree in Painting from the San Francisco Art Institute. He was born in Paris, Texas and now lives in Los Angeles, CA.

His 2007 graphic novel The Blot won him the Ignatz Award that year and was named one of the “Best Graphic Novels of the decade 2000-2010″ by The Comics Journal. He’s done many illustrations and album covers for the music industry including Green Day’s Demolicious, last year.

You can check out more of Tom Neely’s website here, and for fresh updates on The Humans go “like” the official FB page here.

For more comics related art, you can follow me on my website comicstavern.com – Andy Yates

One of the more offbeat titles of the Image Renaissance. THE HUMANS by Keenan Marshall Keller (Galactic Breakdown) and artist Tom Neely (Henry and Glenn Forever) will be collected in March at the popular $9.99 price point. Set in 1070 Bakersfield, it’s about a gang of bikers who are…apes. It’s biker exploitation action as you like with added MONKEYS.

“I just love me some biker flicks and exploitation/genre in all forms,” said Keller in an interview with Comicosity. “It wasn’t like I was trying to do an ape project and settled on them being bikers… The Humans were bikers from the start. It’s my love affair with the fringe, with outlaws and no-good-doer’s and made me focus on biker culture.”

Neely, whose art captures the energy and abandon of The Humans’ life on the road, has relished the chance to draw full-time. “I get up and draw monkeys and motorcycles all day and it’s the best,” he said. “It’s also really great collaborating with another artist – Kristina Collantes is doing the coloring and I love to see how she transforms my pages. I love my black and white drawings for this book, but they really don’t come to life to feel like a real comic book until Kristina’s colors complete the picture.”

THE HUMANS, VOLUME 1 will be in comic book stores on March 11 and in bookstores on March 25.