When publicity for Warlord of Io was pointing people toward our website and, specifically, to our digital comics section, I was a little chagrined that our offerings there were a bit slim. I've been trying to remedy that by adding more items. I'll be working more on it over the next few weeks, but I'm happy to tell you that the first five issues of Rex Libris, which make up the first volume of the series, are available for download now. Check them out at the James Turner Digital Comics page.

We've also started a new chapter of Die, Byron, Die by Karl Christian Krumpholz in our web comics section. The first four chapters are available to download as well.

There are two more pages to read of Die, Byron, Die! up for your reading pleasure. Don't forget that the first three chapters are available to download as PDFs in our digital comics section.

Karl Christian Krumpholz is a man chained to a drawing table. Not only is he working on a mega-collection of portraits of drunkards (and you know how many drunkards are in the world!), he's also working on the web comic Die, Byron, Die!, a sequel to his graphic novel Byron: Mad, Bad, and Dangerous. But! He took some time to do an interview with The Journal of Lincoln Heights Literary Society*.

Karl's interview has a common question with another interview that I'm going to link to next post (ooh, suspense): How did you decide on doing comics? It is an intriguing question, and sometimes, though not in these cases, it carries the subtext of "Are you crazy or something?"

Die, Byron, Die! is updated every Thursday, so check it out and check back every week. Byron: Mad, Bad, and Dangerous is available at comic book stores and at the SLG webstore.


*Man, that sounds fancy. Their slogan is "Ontology on the go!" -- I'm not much into metaphysics, so I'm going to start a society with the slogan "Epistemology in your face!" and rumble with them. Who wants to join my gang?

Check out two more pages of Die, Byron! Die! at the SLG Web Comics page.

Sorry we're a day late updating Sparko by Karl Stephan -- we were out for the Labor Day holiday. But there are two new pages for you to read today.

Be sure to check out our other web comics, too --


Updated Tuesdays!


Updated Wednesdays!


Updated Thursdays!

Argh, don't you hate it when you get caught up being enchanted with sweeping of all the damn things and being amused with Internet-aggressiveness and then you realize, "CRAP! I have a doctor's appointment and need to leave in five minutes and I still haven't told people that Die, Byron, Die #4 is available at the SLG website and it will be updated every Thursday!"?

Yeah, I hate that too.

OK, consider yourself told! Die, Byron, Die, in which everyone's favorite goth poseur discovers all sorts of weirdness, as if his last adventure weren't weird enough, what with his pickled brother in a jar and the nuns and the vampires.

Remember, the first three chapters of Die, Byron, Die by Karl Christian Krumpholz are available to purchase as downloads on the Eyemelt section of our website. Eyemelt.com will be shutting down at the end of the month. We'll be putting all the comics that were available now on our site soon.

We're in the process of moving our digital comics to our main site, but that's going to take a while, and in the meantime, you can still download digital comics at Eyemelt.com. The third installment of Die, Byron, Die! by Karl Christian Krumpholz, is now available for download:

"I Walked With the Zombie... I Drank With the Zombie..."

"Tiki Zombies!!! Attack!!!"

Byron and his MySpace date fend off hordes of zombies and take refuge in a dingy back room of a long forgotten tiki bar. With a mad bartender and rum-fuled zombies at the door, how long will they last? Does Byron have a cunning plan to make their escape? Not really, but things are never quite as they seem.

Byron: Die, Byron, Die! at Eyemelt

Dave Baxter at Broken Frontier conducted a two-part interview with Byron creator Karl Christian Krumpholz. The series about the clueless goth poseur and the supernatural scrapes he manages to stumble into is in its second part, and the third chapter will soon be posted on Eyemelt.com. The first part of the interview is here, and the second is here.

The first volume of the series, Byron: Mad, Bad and Dangerous is available now.

LiveJournal's rich text posting mode turns links into void javascript, incidentally. I am typing html tags by hand. How quaint.

Part two of the Byron story arc "Die, Byron, Die!" is now up on Eyemelt.com for download. Only 89 cents!



Byron: Die, Byron, DIe #2 by Karl Christian Krumpholz
Still on the road looking for his brother (who knew a two-headed pickled punk in a jar could be so difficult to track down?), Byron meets up with a Bettie Page admirer in a very odd tiki bar. Tiki Revival? Yeah, you'd better take that literally.

The first volume of Byron, Byron: Mad, Bad and Dangerous is available for download at Eyemelt.com, and also is in printed form, available at SLGcomic.com

A Creepy Cross-Country Trip in Byron: Die, Byron, Die
New Series Available at Eyemelt.com

The adventures of Byron, a goth poser pursued by supernatural forces, continue this January with a new serialized story appearing at SLG Publishing's digital comics site, Eyemelt.com. Byron: Die, Byron, Die by Karl Christian Krumpholz takes Byron to the depths of truck stops and rural trailer parks as he searches for his brother (a two-headed fetus in a jar). The first installment is available now as a downloadable PDF at Eyemelt.com for $0.89.

Also available at Eyemelt.com is a free short story, "Sympathy from the Devil." This nine-page interlude bridges the story between Die, Byron, Die and the first volume, Byron: Mad, Bad and Dangerous, published in print in August 2007 and also available at Eyemelt.com.

For more information about comic book publisher SLG Publishing, visit their website at www.slgcomic.com.

Karl Christian Krumpholz, creator of the SLG graphic novel Byron: Mad, Bad and Dangerous will be signing in the Philadelphia area on December 28.

Here are the details:

December 28, 1-4 p.m.
at Showcase Comics
874 Lancaster Ave.
Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania 19010

Bryn Mawr is where that famously exclusive liberal arts university is. I know this because of Mad Men. I love that show.

Karl Krumpholz and his creation Byron: Mad, Bad and Dangerous have been keeping The Onion, in its various incarnations busy lately.

First, there is the review at The Onion's A.V. Club: "a loving deconstruction of the vampire-comics glut." It's the last review on the list.

Then there's the interview with Karl in the Denver edition of The Onion, which he has reproduced for you over at his blog. Karl discusses the ongoing controversy: Is Byron a "goth comic"? We encourage lively discussion on this subject, both broadly and specifically.

Byron: Mad, Bad and Dangerous is available in printed book form at www.slgcomic.com or in individual chapter digital form at www.eyemelt.com. But you get an extra story in the book, so choose ye wisely.

A new installment of the adventures of our hapless goth poser Die, Byron!, Die! (which of course German for "The, Byron! The!"--in this story arc, Byron learns the correct usages of the various definite articles in the German language.) will be up at Eyemelt.com soon. We will tell you when. Oh, yes we will.

(I was kidding about the definite article thing, by the way. And ripping off The Simpsons. Still, it is a pressing question. When to use das? Or die? Or der? MEIN GOTT! How many definite articles does one language need? Aren't you glad we did away with gendered nouns in English? Far more efficient. You'd think the Germans would go for that.)

From the very depths comes SLG's newest graphic novel, Byron: Mad, Bad and Dangerous, in stores at last after going through untold trials in the underworld.



Byron: Mad, Bad, and Dangerous by Karl Christian Krumpholz
136-page graphic novel, $10.95

The black-clad club-goers are out for night of drinking, dancing, and drugs. However, others also lurk in the night, dark creatures that are NOT the glamorous things others wish they were. Lord Byron, poser and Vincent Price worshiper, craves the attention of his peers, but soon finds the attention of something far more dark and insidious.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE – 6/7/07

I missed these reviews of SLG's digital-exclusive comics, Byron and Whistles, when they were published at Broken Frontier, but I came across them just in time to coincide with the "soft launch" (doesn't that sound dirty?) of Eyemelt.com, SLG's digital comics site.

Dave Baxter reviews both enthusiastically, noting that these comics are a mere $0.89!

In his review of Byron by Karl Christian Krumpholz, Baxter writes, "Karl Christian Krumpholz has... crafted a wry and ofttimes truly terrifying book." Baxter compliments Karl's development of his spookily clueless protagonist: "The protagonist Byron is characterized with a complexity of ambition and insecurity that has only ever been handled properly in the best of small press gems (such as Blue Monday or Strangers in Paradise), though the self-defacing humor of the book gives it its own, unique flavor."

Issue one of Byron is now available at Eyemelt.com, and issue two should be available shortly. (We have it; it's just a matter of formatting it and getting it on the site.) It will be collected into a graphic novel in August 2007!

Does Baxter recommend Whistles by Andrew Hussie? "Holy god, yes – yes, yes, yes!" Wow, I guess he liked it, eh? In his review of Whistles, he writes, "The story isn’t just a series of uncanny spotlights, either; Whistles achieves far more than most blackly humorous, quirky comic books by imbuing every character, no matter how seemingly tertiary and one-dimensional, with a continually evolving landscape of psychological depth and character conflict."

What else? "Whistles comes across as one of the strongest and most instantly winning and winsome dark fables I’ve read since Johnny the Homicidal Maniac, with a similar level of stark and unexpected horror, but a heftier dose of heart and honest character evolution than even that aforementioned classic managed to achieve." Oh, yeah, he went there.

Issues one and two of Whistles are currently available at Eyemelt.com, and issue three will be available soon. (Also a matter of formatting and uploading.)

They come out at night: black-clad creatures on the prowl for drinking, dancing and drugs, each looking to cut a dramatic figure in the pulsing, dimly-lit world of the gothic night club. Among them is "Lord Byron," dressed to the nines and craving the attention and approval of the club crowd. He really doesn't know anything at all about the poet Lord Byron--he just think the name sounds, you know, spooky--and he tries just a bit too hard to impress: Byron is living the unfortunate life of a poseur. But lurking in the night are real dark creatures, monsters who don't care who is club royalty and who is a poseur. They give Byron a great deal of attention, but it's not exactly the kind he's been wanting. When he's confronted with drugs, vampires, conspiracy, unnamed horrors, a three-eyed toad, and a two-headed pickled punk named "H.P.," will Byron run in terror or will he embrace the monsters as he has always claimed to embrace what is dark and frightening?

Byron: Mad, Bad, and Dangerous, the new SLG Publishing comics series by Karl Christian Krumpholz, tells a story of growing up, discovering who you are, and learning just how foolish it is to glamorize dark things that very well might be real. "I wanted to do a story where you take this sort of self-obsessed character, put him through the ringer, and see how he comes out," said Krumpholz. "He discovers that nothing is what it seems and that new rules apply. I wanted Byron to grow up and accept responsibility for his actions and the world around him."

Besides being the story of the main character's transformation, Byron has another element to its story that is popular with SLG's readers. "Byron is a sub-culture satire in the tradition of GloomCookie and Emo Boy." said SLG's editor-in-chief Jennifer de Guzman. "Byron finds out that there are perils in taking nothing but yourself seriously."

Byron will be a digital-only comic book in PDF and CBZ format, available the week of November 20 in SLG Publishing's webstore. It will be published as a print graphic novel in Summer 2007. Byron is SLG's second comic to be released digitally. The first was Whistles by Andrew Hussie, the first issue of which was released in October. A preview of Byron is available at www.slgpublishing.com, and a promotional trailer can be viewed at SLG's blog, slg-news.livejournal.com, and on YouTube.

Established in 1986, SLG Publishing is a San Jose, CA-based publisher of comics books and graphic novels. Operating under its imprints Slave Labor Graphics and Amaze Ink, SLG Publishing has published graphic novels by such notable cartoonists as Jhonen Vasquez, Roman Dirge and Evan Dorkin. More information about the company can be found at its website at www.slgpublishing.com.