A Blues for Drago Drugilovic was written by Bob Callahan.

Commenting on the story, Callahan writes: "Our new season at the Dark Hotel began with an unusual request from Salon editors David Talbot and Gary Kamiya. The editors asked for one long story this season, based on the previously unstated and unrecorded background of our Night Manager, the one and only Drago Drugilovic.

"I imagine that Drago came from a mixed ethnic home somewhere in the Balkans,' David said, 'and that there was a girl, and probably one of these vicious paramilitary gangs involved, as well.

"The rest was up to us.

"Talbot's request reminded me a little bit of the story John Gregory Dunne tells of writing a movie for Paramount. One afternoon Dunne and his wife, the brilliant Joan Didion, were called to the studio to talk over ideas for a new film.

" ' We would like something on the Second World War,' the Studio executives asked. 'Fine,' Dunne and Didion replied. 'What about the Second World War?

'We don't know," the Executives replied "You guys are the writers!"

"Frankly I have enormously enjoyed responding to both David and Gary's not-entirely open ended story challenges. Collectively all of us do seem to enjoy literature the most when it has some kind of battle field edge to it. And working this way -- on commission, or so it feels -- has also allowed me to learn a great deal about areas of world history -- the Weimar Republic, last time, with LADY BLUE -- and the Balkans today -- which I don't know how I would have gotten to work on any other way.

"What has challenged me the most about these kinds of stories however, is perhaps best summarized in this following quote from The Witness of Poetry by Czeslaw Milosz.

'A hierarchy of needs is built into the very fabric of reality and is revealed when a misfortune touches a human collective, whether that be war, the rule of terror, or natural catastrophe. Then to satisfy hunger is more important than finding food that suits one's taste; the simplest act of human kindness toward a fellow human being acquires more importance than refinement of mind. The fate of a city, of a country, becomes the center of everyone's attention, and there is a sudden drop in the number of suicides because of disappointed love or psychological problems. A great simplification of everything occurs, and an individual ask himself why he took to heart matters than now seem to have no weight. And, evidently, people's attitude toward the language also changes. Language recovers it simplest function, and is again an instrument of purpose; in such circumstances no one doubts that language must name reality, a reality which exists objectively, massive, tangible and terrifying in its concreteness in the minds of the entire collective.

"This is the situation I first encountered in writing LADY BLUE for Salon. It is the situation I encountered even more powerfully in writing A BLUES FOR DRAGO DRUGILOVIC. When people say but these are only fictions, I still nod yes; yet, I must admit, I have an increasingly hard time knowing what the hell they are actually talking about.

-- Bob Callahan

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The art for "A Blues For Drago Drugilovic" was created by Spain Rodriguez and Joe Sacco.

With R. Crumb, Justin Green, S. Clay Wilson and a handful of others, the Dark Hotel's primary artist, Manuel "Spain" Rodriguez, is one of the giants of the American underground comics movement. Among his peers, Spain is known as a major cartoonist, an artist for whom historical tales have always truly mattered. Rodriguez is, in fact, a living link between the work that Harvey Kurtzman began in books like "Frontline Combat" and "Two-Fisted Tales" in the 1950s and post-Kurtzman, post-"Maus," reality-based noir comic strip projects currently appearing at the Dark Hotel and in a select number of other comic strip venues today.

Joe Sacco, in turn, may be considered his generation's main contribution to this lineage. Redefining graphic journalism for our age, and taking the craft back to the battlefields where it began with Teddy Roosevelt's war with Spanish Cuba, Sacco's groundbreaking works from the Middle East have been collected in important books, "Palestine: A Nation Occupied" and "Palestine: In the Gaza Strip" (both published by Fantagraphics, one of Spain's primary publishers as well). In 1995, after living and working in Palestine for a few years, Sacco moved on to document the Bosnian War. A new Sacco comic book serial dedicated to those stories, called SOBA, was first published in 1998. For more about SOBA, write directly to Drawn & Quarterly Publications, Post Office Box 48056, Montreal, Quebec H2V 4S8, Canada .

The author and both of the artists hope that you, the visitor, the reason for this enterprise in the first place, get a real kick out of this unique season at the Dark Hotel.

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

Notes on the artists and stories from the previous installment of the Dark Hotel