Steve Niles (born June 21, 1965) is an American comic book author and novelist, known for works such as 30 Days of Night, Criminal Macabre, Simon Dark, Mystery Society and Batman: Gotham County Line.
He is credited among other contemporary writers as bringing horror comics back to prominence, authoring such works as 30 Days of Night, its sequel, Dark Days (IDW Publishing), and Criminal Macabre (Dark Horse Comics) with frequent artist collaborator Ben Templesmith.
Niles was born in Jackson, New Jersey on June 21, 1965. He was raised in the Washington, D.C. suburbs, developing various creative interests in music, writing, and making amateur films. He worked in several comic book stores and played in the punk bands Gray Matter and Three, both of which released records on Dischord Records label in the 1980s and 1990s. He often credited late night television horror host, Count Gore De Vol, who was the local horror host on Channel 20, as an early influence. In 2004 Count Gore wrote the introduction to the graphic novel Aleister Arcane, which is about a horror host. Other influences included Richard Matheson's book I Am Legend, and the works of George A. Romero, John Carpenter and Bernie Wrightson, the latter two of which he would later work with. He had no formal education in writing following high school, explaining that he learned to write through copious reading.
Niles' start in the comics industry began with the formation of his self publishing company, Arcane Comix. Niles published, edited, and adapted several comics and anthologies for Eclipse Comics, working on I Am Legend in 1991. He then wrote several titles for Fantaco in the early 1990s, including Bad Moon, Fly in My Eye, and a set of lithographs for Clive Barker's Book of Blood. He worked for a year on Disney's Toy Story Web Adventures, and later worked for Todd McFarlane Productions where he wrote several issues of Spawn, Spawn: The Dark Ages. He also collaborated on Hellspawn with illustrator Ashley Wood after Brian Michael Bendis's departure, and did journalism work for Kiss Magazine, interviewing members of the band Kiss.
