SLG Publishing Announces San Jose Comics Festival 
Free Outdoor Comic Convention To Be Paired With Annual Charity Zombie Crawl. 

SAN JOSE, CA – 4/26/2012 – SLG Publishing, the San Jose, CA comics & graphic novel publisher best known for it’s quirky and offbeat offerings, will be sponsoring it’s first outdoor comic book convention when it puts on the San Jose Comics Festivalon September 1.

The San Jose Comics Festival was up this point and twice yearly event that SLG Publishing sponsored and held in it’s warehouse/gallery space. Those events played host to local comic artists and were casual, informal events that placed a premium on giving readers and creators a chance to connect in a more substantive way than they could at most comic book conventions. In expanding upon the event SLG president Dan Vado took inspiration from the very successful Los Angeles Times Festival of Books and decided to move the convention outdoors, closing off a street adjacent to a small park in downtown San Jose. SLG and the San Jose Downtown Association haves used the same location for a yearly charity zombie crawl and movie night called Zombie-O-Rama (www.zombieorama.com).

The San Jose Comics Festival will be combined with Zombie-O-Rama to form a two day event that will have some crossover appeal to vendors and fans. The zombie event, which is a food drive for a local food bank, will be held the evening of Friday August 31st. The San Jose Comics Festival will be held  the next day in the same space as the Zombie-O-Rama. Established in 2009, last year’s Zombie-O-Rama drew an estimated 3,000 people to downtown on a Wednesday night.

Along with artists and other comic related vendors, The San Jose Comics Festival will also feature a stage of live music featuring both San Jose based bands and a few from outside of the area. The event will be free to attend and will be supported by the sale of vending spaces as well as by local sponsorships.

“Many literary events have outdoor settings”  noted SLG President Dan Vado “When I decided I wanted to expand the San Jose Comics Festival the last thing I wanted to do was to put on another comics convention in some convention center somewhere. The success we had with Zombie-O-Rama out in the street and in the park gave me the idea that we should do the comic book show outdoors and leverage our zombie event’s success to attract people and to save money on street closures and all of the other permitting that goes into an outdoor event of this nature.”

Vado also noted that the great year-around weather that San Jose enjoys lends itself to outdoor events “It’s my hope that The San Jose Comics festival can become a yearly tradition alongside the Jazz Festival and the many other street fairs and events that take place downtown.”

The San Jose Comics Festival is not SLG Publishing’s first comic book convention having founded the Alternative Press Expo in 1994 (which  is currently run by Comic-Con International) and produced two Los Angeles area conventions called IPEX (Independent Publishing Experience) in 1999 as well as a series of collectible convention in Northern California called Americon. The charity Zombie-O-Rama event was started in 2009 and attracts thousands of people to downtown San Jose.

Exhibit space will go on sale soon and is expected to sell out very quickly. Contact Dan Vado for exhibitor and sponsorship information at dvado@slgpubs.com. Additional details on the event will be released at the event website www.sjcomicsfest.com.

SLG Publishing is a San Jose, CA based publisher of comics books and graphic novels. Established in 1986 itis best known as the publisher of Johnny the Homicidal Maniac by Jhonen Vasquez.
www.slgcomic.com

Zombie-O-Rama is an annual zombie crawl/outdoor movie festival put on in conjunction with the San Jose Downtown Association. Serving as a food rive benefitting Silicon Valley food banks, Zombie-O-rama has collected literally tons of food for people in need.