Gideon King
Created by Christopher Mills

Former New York City cop and wounded Spanish Civil War veteran turned Boston private eye GIDEON KING is the tough-as-hell hero of Nightmark, a hard-boiled detective/horror fiction hybrid comic series, very much in the pulp tradition, which runs as a regular feature in Shadow House, a horror comic. Besides the regular P.I. things, Gideon somehow manages to find time for his other duties, as a monster hunter and, more importantly, humanity's sole defender against supernatural evil, in this offbeat but entertaining series. There have also been a handfull of prose short stories featuring Gideon.

Back in September 1998, Shadow House was on indefinite hiatus due to low sales, but artist Fred Harper and creator/writer Chris Mills were working hard on a Gideon King graphic novel for 1999, tentatively titled "Nightmark: Crucible Of Blood." According to Chris, "It's sort of a 'remake' of the Blood & Honor miniseries I did for Alpha four years ago...The new book will be given a extensive rewrite by yours truly and be completely redrawn by Fred. When it's completed, we'll probably offer it as trade paper GN from Shadow House."

Need i mention the best laid plans of mice and men and all that? But you can't keep a good monster hunter down. In 2002, Gideon sprang back to life, in "Children of the Night," a digitally remastered eight-part web comic by Chris "Crimeboss" Mills and Darren Goodhart presented on Mills' Supernatural Crime web site.

Gideon's creator, Christopher Mills, a sometimes-contributor to this site, was also the editor of a very short-lived, but very excellent crime fiction magazine, Noir, which combined fiction and comic stories, and also edited a one-shot comic book special called The Detectives, which featured five different comic book private eyes, including Mike Mist and Johnny Dynamite. The high point of his career, though, according to Christopher, was working as editor with Max Allan Collins and Mickey Spillane on the Mike Danger book. And lately he's been writing a series of short stories featuring Maine private eye Matthew Dain. But his most recent project has been the Supernatural Crime web site, which features Femme Noir, a web comic co-created with veteran comics guy, Joe Staton. You can also catch Femme Noir right here on this site.

COMICS

• NIGHTMARK: BLOOD AND HONOR
  (1994, Alpha Productions)
  Written by Christopher Mills
  .
• NIGHTMARK MYSTERY SPECIAL
  (1994, Alpha Productions)
  One-shot
  Written by Christopher Mills
  ..
• SHADOW HOUSE
  (1997-98, Shadow House Comics)
  Written by Christopher Mills
  Art by Fred Harper

SHORT STORIES

• "Good Girls Don't Die" (1993, Fang; a small-press horror magazine)
• "Devil In Her Eyes (1994, Nightmark: Blood & Honor, No. 3)
• "Kill Me In The Morning" (1994, Nightmark Mystery Special)

WEB COMICS

• CHILDREN OF THE NIGHT
  (2002, Supernatural Crime)
  Written by Christopher Mills
  Art by Darren Goodhart (Retief, Planet Of The Apes, and FemForce.)

RELATED LINKS

• Supernatural Crime
  Here's the place for not only for the latest on Gideon King, but also on the Femme Noir web comic by Mills and Staton, and various other projects Chris has been working on.

Illustration by Fred Harper.

Report respectfully submitted by Kevin Burton Smith.