The small and mighty Champaign based label Rat King Records is going to be releasing a comic from local goon and artist Mike Tirehaus called “Cartoon Girlfriend”.

Here’s a statement from him on this project:

“Cartoon Girlfriend” collects comics from the past two years and are a representation of the growth I’ve experienced as a cartoonist since I started really trying to do comics. There are two brand new 4 page comics that no one has seen before as well as newly remastered versions of several of my earlier comics from 2012 that had been published in the “Odium Comix” anthology. The whole thing comes out to 14 pages of content published between a beautiful screenprinted cover that Brian from Soap Scum has graciously offered to print. When Aaron from Rat King Records offered to publish “Cartoon Girlfriend” it was a life saver. If it wasn’t for Aaron this project would still be just a pipe dream. The book should be available at the end of January.

Mike has worked on projects before, such as Gamer Heaven/Day of the Month, which was a self-published collaboration with another local cartoon artist, Brett Freeman. He has been printed in other anthologies, but this is his first solo work- so there you have it ladies, gents and its! Cartoon Girlfriend will be featured at both Dumb Records in Springfield and Error Records in Champaign, so keep your eyes open for that because it will be coming soon! Make sure to peruse the Rat King Records website and facebook page in order to observe their other rad releases.

Our friends over in Champaign who are also involved with Error Records are soon to have a brand new label to put out cool tunes. They are a “Midwestern label focusing on releasing cassettes,” which sounds pretty exciting to us. They even have their first release announced, but they are keeping the release date under wraps for now. It’s going to be called The Presidents of the KULOOLUnited States of America, and will feature a variety of central Illinois bands such Looming, Kowabunga Kid!, and Bad Catman. From the Kuloolu facebook page:

“The idea here is we are putting out a track by track cover cassette of the self titled Presidents of the United States of America album.”

Check the Kuloolu facebook page if you are interested in more information. You can expect to see Kuloolu releases inside Dumb Records as soon as we are able to carry them. You can also check out our community page for a long list of small labels and local businesses in the area that we put together.