NOTES ON THE ARTISTS Stories and adaptations for the Dark Hotel are
written by Bob Callahan. The idea for the Hotel starts right
there. Callahan is the editor of the "New Comics Anthology" and co-founder,
with Art Spiegelman, of Avon Books'
short-lived Neon Lit graphic crime novel series. An excerpt
from the first novel in that series, Paul Auster's "City of Glass,"
appeared in the Norton Book of Postmodern American Fiction, the first graphic novel to be anthologized. Callahan is an
award-winning poet, author and journalist who received
a Creative Writing Fellowship from the National Endowment for
the Arts in 1978.
Spain Rodriguez is the co-founder of the Dark Hotel. He
has created the primary art for the Hotel, as well as the
art for many of the stories that have unfolded, and continue
to unfold, at these premises. With R. Crumb, Gilbert Shelton,
Victor Moscoso, Robert Williams and S. Clay Wilson, Spain is
one of the six granite heads to found the legendary underground
Zap Comix. A Zap show, along with the torsos of some of Zap's
most spiteful enemies, was recently hung in San Francisco, a big
town for both beheadings and hangings back in vigilante days.
Spain's adaptation of William Lindsay Gresham's "Nightmare
Alley" is by far the finest unpublished graphic novel in American
history.
Hal Robins is a true legend of the San Francisco comics underground.
His Professor Brainhard comic strip was first published by R. Crumb in
Weirdo Magazine.
An Archbishop in the newly formed, post-Impeachment Whore Church,
Mr. Robins is currently an active performance artist in the Bay Area.
Special thanks to Patrick Corcoran for colorizing the Dark Hotel entrance, registration and history panels.
NOTES ON THE STORIES
Murder at the Hey Hey Club
When the underground king called Spain began to dream of dead Silicon Valley execs descending upon nude pianos in late-night North Beach strip joints,
Bob Callahan was wise enough to just hook Mr. Rodriguez up
to a tape recorder and let the full narrative begin to leak from
the artist's greater subconsciousn. Oh Sing, Ye Minstrel, Sing. All we can say now is that
lap dancing and laptop computers have much more in common than commonly supposed, and that a specialist in lurid semi-journalism named Nora Smudge is trying to find out more. For details, the world must gleefully turn to the further art and reflections
of the artist we know and love as Spain. Callahan's job here is merely
to interview the models, and try to keep score.
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Lady Blue
Lady Blue has been cobbled together from a number of
different sources. The character of Lady Blue is based on the
character of "Miss Knight," who gives her name to one of the four short stories
in Robert McAlmon's 1923 book, "Grim Fairy Tales." During the
Weimar Republic there actually was a real character like our heroine, whose real name seems to have been Daniel Mahoney. In the strange way
fiction usually comes home, Daniel was in fact a graduate of
St. Ignatius High School here in San Francisco back when
San Francisco was a real Irish town.
In a far more sobering mode, references to the Munich Post's
early and almost singular stand against the rise of Hitler
are based on two brilliant books, "Explaining Hitler" by
Ron Rosenbaum and "Before the Deluge" by Otto Friedrich. Indeed
Salon editors David Talbot and Gary Kamiya's excitement about
the power and drama of the Rosenbaum book, in particular, provided the first seed for this particular telling. Lady Blue remains ultimately a fiction,
but it is a fiction that is certainly rooted in historic fact.
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Notes on the artists and stories from the previous installment of the Dark Hotel
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