All-new comic book published April 2025.
This is a collection of all-new stories set in the imaginary Astorial Hotel, arriving some years after the first “Compendium” (2021) which featured Tamblyn The Secret Architect on the cover. That earlier book was a revisit of stories first authored in the 1990s, which allowed me the chance to explore the “impossible spaces” of the Hotel, with my crazy angles and false perspectives, and develop the notion of the indoor- outdoor paradox which intrigues me.
The Astorial Feature Fables cover is similar to the 2021 book, the Dauphin figure is another elusive barely-glimpsed character who can pass through solid walls, and the perspectives are getting even more absurd. As to indoor-outdoor theme, the ‘Astorial Club’ story leads from a small confined room to a large, unexplored jungle wilderness as it follows the fortunes of the bullet-headed Timbor character. Also we have the Astorial Shower theme surfacing for the first time – it led to a foldout mini comic for Colossive Press, published in early 2025. In the six-pager here we glimpse the “shower app” as one aspect of the modern digital installation in the Hotel; the mini-comic was a fictional instruction manual for it.
Did I mention that that this book is supposed to be themed on “objects” – an inanimate and very familiar object in the room is the starting point, and (if it succeeds in getting its way) acquires a life of its own, taking centre-stage until us humans are merely an irrelevancy. The back cover is supposed to depict a stage in their plan. The Astorial Hotel stories are evidently getting more bleak, depicting a universe that is not only hostile to us, but also supremely indifferent to our suffering. Where have I got that from? I don’t fully subscribe to the concept of an absurd universe, but now and again I suppose I have the need to express something about it in these strange, confusing fables.
44pp, A4 size, colour cover, B/W interiors. Cover price £6.00. Use the PayPal button to receive a copy mailed in a strong envelope.