He is probably not Creative Loafing’s artist any more than Gary Trudeau is the cartoonist for your local newspaper. Odds are he’s a freelancer: his relationship to CLM would include work on the Straight Dope and that’s it. You’ll notice the SD illustrations on his site are copyright Slug Signorino, not Creative Loafing.
He has at least some other connection to the Reader-- The Chicago Reader calendar a few years back included Slug artwork that wasn’t from Cecil columns.
He didn’t draw the Red Bull ads. I posted a link above to the agency that produced them.
And as other have pointed out, the bulk of Signorino’s work is for other clients. He’s hardly the Straight Dope’s artist-in-residence. A few minutes on the google would show you that his stuff has appeared regularly in other papers (Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, etc.), in magazines (Muse, Business Law Today), and in books. This isn’t really so complicated, folks.
If you guys are determined to keep insisting that this is a pseudonym, feel free… this is like arguing with a dining room table.
But it does suggest that “Signorino” is his real surname, at least, given that the other members of his household are listed as Michele A Signorino and Judith A Signorino.
Are US birth records available to the public? Presumably given the date and place of birth as quoted a few posts up, you sould find his exact birth name if you cared to.
The two possibilities aren’t mutually exclusive. Slug could have been retained by the agency to produce, or to help produce, the ads.
Anyway, now that I’ve been reminded of his website, whereupon one can find his contact information, I suppose the best way of answering my question is to e-mail the guy directly. And in fact, this is what I’ll be doing. I’ll let you all know if I get a reply.
