Silent Hill (Com.x Novel)

Region: Europe
Release date: cancelled (planned for 1999 november)
Publisher: Com.x
Writer: Jon Murphy
Interior art: Neil Googe
ISBN: 978-1903286005

An original unreleased Silent Hill graphic novel was completed in 1999 by the Com.X comics publisher, but for an undisclosed reason the book was never published, apparently due to a conflict between Konami parent company and its European branch which planned the release.

In 2007, comic's artist Neil Googe released a sample page with the following description:

ok... this stuff has never been seen... with good reason looking back on it

i brief starting of com.x

just before we started com.x, the two guys i ended up starting it with owned a design company who did work for konami. i applied for a job as a designer wanting to move away from comics (i was at 2000ad at the time)

i didnt get the job but about 3 weeks later i was told they would employ me for 6 months as they'd secured the rights to do a silent hill full color graphic novel.

i had six months to do a 70 page full color OGN... which i jumped at the chance.

it never saw the light of day... even though i finished the whole thing.

at the end of the six months we decided to start com.x

anyway about the graphic novel... i was a little too ambitious, i'd never colored anything at that point... actually at that point i didn't even know how to send e mails which shows how mac illiterate i was... and i also wanted to try a new approach... some of it worked, some of it failed miserably

the plan was to draw and color all panels separately, then layout the spreads like a designer would lay out assets.... this approach would work really well if i'd planned a little more in the beginning... but i just started drawing panels one after the other only to have real troubles fitting them on their pages later... if i'd planned it like i now do a comic and approached it in the same way i really think i could have done some amazing work... so its a technique i will use again at a later date... i just think in these early days i did the typical thing of getting carried away with photoshop as its all so exciting... rookie mistake... and its made this a mess

In 2021, a Lost Media Wiki user contacted Neil and asked him about the project. The following was his response:

Hello there.

Thanks for reaching out... sadly that particular project has suffered the problem of so much older digital work. Stored on CDs and those CDs being lost over the years.

The project was indeed finished. As your article says, taken from an interview I did years ago, in all honesty the end result was not that great. I was a much younger artist, in all honesty, in way over my head.

As for why it was never released, even though it was finished and paid for... it comes down to inter company politics at Konami. It was a long time ago now, so I can not remember all the exact details, but I will outline the basics of what I remember.

Konami, as a company is broken down in to regional companies, all self sufficient, all doing their own thing, but all Konami.

We were commissioned by Konami europe (I believe) to produce the comic as promotional material for silent hill 2. It was going to be published separately and in a special edition of the game. Konami japan also wanted to use the comic. Konami europe, who had paid for the project, wanted some sort of payment for that use, from konami Japan.

Konami Japan refused to pay any kind of fee.

So Konami Europe said they couldn't use it.

At which point Konami Japan, who technically own all copyrights on silent hill, then blocked europe from releasing the book under usage rights, not geting proper permission, etc. etc.

And so... it was shelved.

Now as I say, if this is information you plan to put on the site, I would like you to make it very clear that this is just my understanding of what happened from what I remember of a 20 year old project. I wasn't involved in any of those discussions or politics, and have no proof thats actually what happened. I was just a guy hired to do a book, which was then shelved and the client then explained the basics of what took place...