Brain-Eating Zombies Invade Disney in Iger Plan to Win Boy Fans

When Walt Disney Co. asked publisher Dan Vado to make a series of comic books based on its Haunted Mansion theme-park ride, he worried that the empire built on the likes of Snow White and Tinker Bell would reject his brand of creepy humor. Vado gave Disney skeletons dangling from nooses, scattered corpses and a ghostly poodle that says “crap.” To his surprise, Disney signed off on his vision.

“Everything we did was really strange,” says Vado, founder of San Jose, California-based SLG Publishing, as in Slave Labor Graphics. “The interesting thing about Disney is, for a company perceived as being stodgy, they do a good job of reinventing themselves.”