Small Press Spotlight is closing out June with a look at SLG Publishing’s (Milk & Cheese, Johnny the Homicidal Maniac) release of Mr. Butterchips. The publisher is now relaunching the long-running monthly webcomic by Alex Schumacher as an ongoing weekly feature on its website.
Schumacher’s work includes The Unemployment Adventures of Aqualung, Defiling the Literati, and work for Arcana Studios, Viper Comics, and DreamWorks TV. The creator also has an essay on being a cartoonist in the upcoming issue of Monkeys Fighting Robots as well as an anthology entry in Fabrice Sapolsky’s Mutiny Magazine.
Read a synopsis of Mr. Butterchips here:
Mr. Butterchips illustrates the day-to-day antics of a prickly organ grinder’s monkey set in a surreal fictional West Coast town, which is populated by an array of quirky characters. It’s through this satirical hallucinogenic lens that the pitfalls of a “gig economy” are examined while touching on such timely issues as class disparity and intolerance; amplifying the absurdity of what it means to be alive in a world which seemingly becomes more insane by the second.
The webcomic first appeared in the online literary magazine Drunk Monkeys in April 2016. In 2020, SLG Publishing released Mr. Butterchips: A Collection of Cantankerous Commentary, which included the initial run along with a 22-page standalone “acid trip of a story” called “Psychotropic San Francisco Sojourn.”
“When offered the opportunity by SLG Publishing, I decided to retrofit Mr. Butterchips for a new era and a broader audience,” said Schumacher. “While the comic will now be set in the hallucinogenic fictional town of Los Puritanos, readers who enjoyed the salty simian’s tenure at Drunk Monkeys Magazine will be pleased to know his low threshold for stupidity and intolerance remains wholly intact.”
With new installments every Wednesday, readers can enjoy the series for free online. Click here to begin reading. To purchase the collected edition, click here, and for those looking for a nifty new t-shirt to wear while they read, check out it here.
