A Hotel Clerk Confronts Her Mortality in an Excerpt from Machine Gun Kelly’s ‘Hotel Diablo’ Comic

A frazzled hotel employee finds herself in the midst of a horrifying first night on the job in this new excerpt from Machine Gun Kelly’s upcoming graphic novel, Hotel Diablo.

The book is based on MGK’s 2019 album of the same name, and he co-wrote the comic with Eliot Rahal and Ryan Lady. The story centers around the titular “Hotel Diablo,” a kind of purgatory where “your deeds in life are the keys to eternity in the afterlife.” While Hotel Diablo boasts an anthology feel, delving into the grizzly tales of various guests, it all revolves around a new front desk clerk named Lidia Lopez.

In the excerpt, Lidia is tasked with cleaning the room of a guest who has just left, but when she opens the closet, she finds herself face-to-face with a skeleton wearing her uniform and name tag. The skeleton’s touch triggers a surreal flashback where Lidia finds herself in a hospital, dying of cancer. When she wakes up suddenly, she flees the room and, in a panic, knocks over a vase.

While being reprimanded by the Hotel Diablo’s concierge, Lidia tries to explain the flashback (“These memories I didn’t even know I had”) and asks if that was indeed her skeleton in the closet. The concierge cooly replies, “That couldn’t have been your skeleton,” before pulling out another one and proclaiming, “Because yours is right here.”

Hotel Diablo features art by Martin Morazzo, Amilcar Pinna, Victor Ibañez, Nelson Blake II, Roberta Ingranata, and Rachel Smartt. It’s available to preorder and will be published on September 28th via Z2 Comics.