The Unexpected Mentor

Dan Vado is a glass-half-empty sixty-something San Jose music venue owner and the founder of SLG Publishing, a comic book publishing company that achieved notoriety in the 90s for publishing popular alternative comics such as Johnny the Homicidal Maniac and Lenore, the Cute Little Dead Girl. Emily Parent is a twenty-something social media content girl and self-published author whose ambitions to be a creative professional are clouded by dreams of being famous. Though Dan is best known for publishing creator-owned comics and providing a platform to new and untried artists, he never intended to be anyone’s mentor. However, when Emily came crashing through the front door of his venue, unwaveringly insistent that she was special, Dan thought it might be satisfying to bring her back to reality. They may have gotten more than they bargained for in this series of weekly conversations that attempt to scale the intergenerational barrier between the way things once were for creative people and the way they are now in the age of social media.