Steve Niles
Horror comics legend and author of 30 Days of Night, Criminal Macabre, and Mystery Society — credited with bringing horror comics back to prominence.
📍 Los Angeles, CA
Before Steve Niles, horror comics were a punchline. After him, they were a movement. The man Fangoria named one of the “13 rising talents who promise to keep us terrified for the next 25 years” didn’t just write scary stories — he rebuilt the genre from the ground up, one vampire apocalypse at a time. His collaboration with Fiona Staples on Mystery Society is the hidden gem that led straight to Saga.
From Punk Rock to Pulp
Niles grew up in the Washington DC suburbs, playing bass in the post-hardcore bands Gray Matter and Three on the legendary Dischord Records label before trading punk rock for pulp fiction. He self-published through his own Arcane Comix in the mid-80s, adapting and editing comics and anthologies for Eclipse — including work by Clive Barker, Richard Matheson, and Harlan Ellison — before landing his breakout hit.
30 Days of Night
That hit was 30 Days of Night (2002), the story of a remote Alaskan town that plunges into a month of darkness — and the vampires who descend on it like a biblical plague. With artist Ben Templesmith, Niles created a snowbound siege thriller that sold out instantly and spawned a film franchise, putting horror comics back on the map for a new generation. He followed it with Criminal Macabre, the ongoing saga of grizzled occult detective Cal McDonald, and Simon Dark, as well as Frankenstein Alive, Alive! and Batman: Gotham County Line for DC, plus Kick-Ass: The New Girl for Image.
Mystery Society and the Staples Connection
In 2010 Niles teamed with Fiona Staples — then still a rising star from Calgary — on Mystery Society, a rollicking five-issue series about a secret couple of do-gooder thieves who right supernatural wrongs. The pairing paid off twice over: not only did the series win fans, but Niles recommended Staples to Brian K. Vaughan, leading directly to her legendary work on Saga.
Niles still lives in Los Angeles, publishing through his own Bloody Pulp Books label and keeping fans updated through steveniles.net, Twitter, and Instagram. Start with the book that changed everything — 30 Days of Night, or check out his collaboration with Staples in Mystery Society, and see why horror comics have never been the same.
