SLG/Slave Labor

Although we've never been, the Boutiki run by San Jose-based comics publisher SLG has always sounded like a cool place: a storefront and performance space that sold comics and has a tiki theme in keeping with publisher Dan Vado's sensibilities. But now, in a dime-a-dozen story of real estate improvement, the space must close by next summer as the building is being razed to make way for an apartment building.

SLG Publishing is teaming with Horrible Comics and underground comedy-rock outfit Bobby Joe Ebola and the Children MacNuggits for a new comics/record combo pack entitled Meal Deal with the Devil. It includes both comics and a five-song CD (including two story-songs) from Bobby Joe Ebola and the Children MacNuggits with an accompanying read-along storybook, illustrated by Jason Chandler of Horrible Comics. We're old enough to be nostalgic for this format and perhaps you and your kids will also enjoy learning about the origins of pink slime with song and panel:

At his blog, famous realist/curmudgeon SLG publisher Dan Vado explains why he wasn't at ECCC and won't be at C2E2 and "recreates" the experience of the SLG booth:

Almost every time the name of SLG publisher Dan Vado is mentioned, the word "survivor" is appended to it -- surviving over 20 years in an industry that provides indie comics only scant handholds in its forbidding rockface is no mean feat. But you will never know just how much of a survivor Vado and crew are until you read Five things we survived at SLG., an account of rodent, insect and human scourges on their physical offices. The most famed, of course, is the drunk driver that plowed through their office in 2004 -- thanks to a woman who insisted on stealing the keys to someone else's car after everyone deemed her so drunk they had taken away her own car keys.

Slave Labor Graphics continues to publish the unusual, the fun, the quirky! Take a look below, visit the website, and let us know what caught your fancy! Was it the cheap, DRM-free digital comics? The Disney titles? The Drunken Monkeys sports apparel? The mondo Tiki titles?

Download the first issue of Knights of the Living Dead by Ron Wolfe and Dustin Higgins (Pinnochio Vampire Slayer) FREE from SLG. King Arthur vs the Zombies? Why not!

Continuing their moves into the e-world, SLG will be doing digital demos at their Comic-Con booth. Nothing too revolutionary in the means, but another example of how everything is going:

Only a few days ago, SLG announced they would be selling digital comics via iVerse, and, in a sign of the continuing difficult of selling small comics periodicals, they have announced that the final issue of ROYAL HISTORIAN OF OZ by Tommy Kovac and Andy Hirsch will only be available as a pdf download. Although low orders scuttled the final print issue, it will be available in the collected edition, which is due in September.

Meanwhile Slave Labor, the long-running quirky comics publisher which has survived against all odds for over 20 years, has just teamed with iVerse to offer digital comics. We'll vouch for MIDNIGHT SUN by Ben Towle, one of those Antarctic comics we're so fond of, and the other initial offerings are sounds, as well, including the popular REX LIBRIS.

Wow! Lots of great books coming out this month!

February has only 28 days, but is jam-packed with lots of great graphic novels and related titles! Warning... looking at what appears so far on BarnesAndNoble.com, the rest of 2011 is going to be just as amazing! Click this link to discover more! (Sweet Kirby Crackle! Corto Maltese, in English, from Rizzoli?!) Better start shopping for bookshelves now.

Landry Walker and Eric Jones' Little Gloomy, a staple of the goth comics world for years, is being adapted into a cartoon called Scary Larry. Unfortunately, as of now, it is only being seen in France: