Bob Callahan is the creator of The Dark Hotel. He writes all the stories. Some of his previous projects include, as cofounder and editor, with Art Spiegelman, Neon Lit (Avon Books); as editor, The New Comics Anthology, (Collier MacMillan); as author, Who Shot JFK, (Firestone/ Simon and Schuster); as columnist, Shelf Life, (San Francisco Examiner); and, as editor, The Big Book of American Irish Culture (Viking Penquin). He is currently working on two new comic strip serials.

The man who taught the world how to look at Drago Drugilovic, Spain Rodriquez's comic strips began to appear in counter cultural publications such as The East Village Other as far back as the 1960's. With R. Crumb, Spain was one of the regular contributors to the "mother of all underground comics," the mighty Zap Comics. Fantagraphics has published two of his collections, Trashman Lives and My True Storyfrom that era With writer Harry Kamper, Spain has just completed a new graphic novel called Boots.

R. Crumb was among the first to praise the art of Hal Robins. Robin's early strips were an important part of Crumb's pioneering comics magazine, Weirdo. In addition to chronicling the early years of the Dark Hotel character "Buttons," Robins's most recent work can be found in the underground comics Grave Yarns and Tomb Tales.

Hal Robin's house mate, the amazing Paul Mavrides's most recent project is the Ron Mann film Grass. As the Art Director for that film Mavrides becomes perhaps the first truly great cartoonist of our era to emerge from the underground's, where his work with Gilbert Shelton on The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers has already proved legend, to full mastery of the new digital and computer arts. Mavrides contributed the "Boris Kirov" panels for the first part of The Big Dream.

Special thanks to Patrick Corcoran for colorizing the Dark Hotel entrance, registration and history panels.