Back in 1994 Partin Powel a well known and successful writer for comic books asked me if I’d like to be involved in a Caliber Comics new comic named, “Beyond Communion”. Martin had a deep interest in the subject and was working with Whitley.
One night the phone rang. I picked it up and I was asked if I was Steve Neill. I said yes and the person said, “I’m Whitley Strieber”.
I laughed and said, “Who is this really?” thinking this was a prank by one of my friends who knew I always wanted to make contact with Stieber. I had tried in the past to no avail. But then the man insisted in a rather rough tone, “This is Whitley Strieber!”. We had a good laugh and quickly became friends for over 30 years.
He was very interested in my art. In particular that of the greys that were being seen in publications and TV. He asked, “How did you know?” which led to my explaining that I have these experiences.
I was asked by Martin and Whitley to make up a prototype comic in which I was to illustrate and letter the entire mockup. My late wife Gilly created the lettering and positioned the lettering in the hand illustrated pages. This was done old school with rubber cement.
As it turned out the comic book company did not like my art style for a comic but did like the whole concept and went ahead with making the comic with Martin writing the stories with Whitley’s experience. They used a straight black and white illustrator for the inside content while I would make the covers.
They did ask me to make up a couple of pages of just straight black and white inside illustrations as a second test but still passed on my art. I didn’t have that comic book plain style they preferred.
So we flash forward to today and Mary and I are at the studio when she is looking for something in the filing cabinets and shows me these clear folders that contain the original prototype Communion Comic I made in 1994. It was in perfect condition and I had no idea it survived the flooding of our house in 2023. I was in shock and pleased at the same time.
So I immediately scanned them into documents that could be shared with you on the web for the first time. No one has ever seen these with the exception of old pictures I had of them taken by a film camera back in the 90’s. The resolution didn’t allow you to read them and the color was poor.
To see and read the comic you will have to be a paid subscriber. To date I have many paid subscribers and I thought it was time I start offering paid subscriber content in appreciation of their love and support.
I have started another illustrated short novel with illustrations about the evolution of this experience. This is all hand illustrated without the use of CGI or AI. I plan to finish the first one in a few weeks to be followed up by more. And eventually they will be offered in illustrated novel form as comic style books. More on that later.
Thank you all for your continued support of my SubStack page it is deeply appreciated.
My substack page. It’s free to subscribe just scroll down to the free option when prompted or you can become a paid subscriber and have access to the comic to read and other publications to come.
The Art of Steve Neill 
Awesome!
LikeLike