It's a good time to be a fan of horror comics. If you're like me and you love all things spooky, you've probably noticed that Dark Horse is doing more to keep the genre of horror alive in comics than any other publisher right now. And it's no accident. In fact, it's a dark and nefarious plot, wrought by Hellboy editor Scott Allie and me, with a couple of our fellow editors in supporting roles.

One of the key elements of this plot is Steve Niles, a writer who burst into the limelight with the release of the miniseries 30 Days of Night back in 2002. Steve's career took off like a bat out of Hell after that, and eventually he found his way back to Dark Horse. I say "back" because few people realize that Dark Horse was one of the first comics publishers to work with Steve, when we published a cool werewolf story called "Hairball"--starring a character named Cal McDonald--in a three-issue run of Dark Horse Presents more than a decade ago.

Steve has been really busy the last few years. Success in the comics industry lead him to film options, screenwriting, and all sorts of fantastic opportunities that would distract most people from the lower-paying, less glamorous world of writing comics.

But that didn't happen with Steve. Instead, he turned into a kind of John Henry of comics. In one year I edited more than fifteen single issues written by Steve and published by Dark Horse, and at the same time he was being published by three or four other companies. It was more than a little ambitious, but somehow Steve managed to write some of his best work at that time, including Freaks of the Heartland and the Criminal Macabre series "Last Train to Deadsville", both which show a writer at the top of his game.

Things are a little quieter for Steve now, but just a little. The movies he wrote are now being filmed, and with most of his work with other publishers complete and making readers happy, he's focusing most of his writing time and attention on the books he publishes with Dark Horse. We had a great chat yesterday, and he told me the name of his next Criminal Macabre miniseries, "My Monster Baby." He launched into writing it the day after finishing issue four of "Two Red Eyes", a four-issue arc that should be on store shelves right about the time this is published.

We're lucky to have an amazing art team on Criminal Macabre--penciller/inker Kyle Hotz and our long-time colorist Michelle Madsen. They're both rockstars in their own right. And speaking of lucky, in another friendly chat I had with Steve about nine months ago, he asked what I'd think if he got a series lined up with the one guy we'd both been dying to work with, Bernie Wrightson. I was so thrilled at the thought I could only say "I think I'd be a very lucky editor."