The Comic Cave – The Nice House On The Lake

 

Originally published on Set The Tape

The Comic Cave is a fortnightly feature where we spin the Wheel of Comics and see what graphic novel story it brings up for us to deep dive into! This week we take a look at The Nice House On The Lake, one of the popular entries in the DC Black Label imprint that took the world of comics by storm.

“How do you think the world will end?” A question that seem innocuous, if a little creepy, as The Nice House On The Lake begins. A question asked between friends, a thought exercise, a way of learning about you more as a person and how you see the world. It’s the kind of ‘what if?’ scenario that I’m sure we’ve all been asked by a friend at some point or another, one of those random questions that you never think twice about. Unfortunately, for the characters in James Tynion IV‘s twelve issue series, it becomes something that they can’t escape.

DC Comics have had a lot of stories over the years that don’t fit into established continuity, from things such as Superman: Red Son or The Dark Knight Returns, that take familiar characters and do something completely different with them, to their Vertigo imprint that crafted series like The Sandman and Hellblazer, stories that could take place within the regular universe, but made more sense being their own things. The already mentioned Vertigo was joined by the Elseworlds imprint, but over the years things changed and Vertigo was folded into the DC Universe, and the Elseworlds label was dropped for out of continuity books. Then, in September 2018 DC launched DC Black Label. Black Label would create darker and more adult stories that didn’t have to follow the continuity of the regular DC Universe, becoming something of an amalgam of Elseworlds and Vertigo.

Black Label enjoyed early success with titles like Batman: Damned by Brian Azzarello and Lee Bermejo, and Dark Knight Returns: The Golden Child by Frank Miller and Rafael Grampá. Many of the early Black Label books involved Batman, thanks to the character being an almost instant guarantee of sales. As time went on more characters like Superman and Wonder Woman would receive Black Label titles, but the series also produced titles that had no connection to the DC Universe at all, that played by their own rules and took place in more real world settings. One of these titles was The Nice House On The Lake, first launched in June 2021.

The Nice House On The Lake begins normally enough, with a group of ten people being invited up to a remote mansion on the edge of a forested lake for a weekend away from the pressures of the real world. Most of the people know each other, though not all of them are friends, but they all have strong connections to Walter, a nice guy who they’ve each known at some point in their life. Walter seems like a bit of a loner, a quiet guy who collects friends and keeps the ones who mean a lot to him, creating a handful of strong relationships that mean the world to him. And it’s these people that he invites up to the lake.

As the group arrives at the house they find a world of luxury awaiting them with a cinema room, a huge library, a pool, and gorgeous countryside surrounding them. It feels like the perfect getaway, even if not everyone there is completely cool with each other. Their friendship with Walter and the gorgeous weekend is what matters. Until one of them checks their social media feed. Post after post detail the end of the world. “The sky looks like it’s on fire. I’ve never seen colors like this before”; “I can pull my skin off in sheets. It doesn’t even hurt. It feels like pudding. My skin is sticking to the phone as I type this. Fuck.”; “My mom just called me screaming that her skin is coming off in pieces.”; “I think we need to start having a reasonable conversation about a painless way to kill yourself, before the fire gets you.”

As the group watch people die, watch cities burn on their phone screens, they realise the end of the world has come, that everything is over. It’s then that Ryan remembers a conversation that she and Walter had: “How do you think the world will end?”; she simply points at him as she comes to the realisation “You picked”. Walter reveals to his assembled friends that he brought them to the house to spare them from the end of the world, from the apocalypse that his people brought. He wants them to survive, to live on, and he’s created a haven for them. In the panic and anger that follows, Walter reveals himself to be more than human, beyond what we’d understand, displaying powers beyond imagining. Vanishing, he leaves his friends to continue on as the world burns around them.

Thus begins a mystery story, and a horror story, as the ten survivors of the end of the world try to figure out what to do with themselves. They discover that their haven has been designed to keep them alive, that they can write down requests for food and supplies which will then appear on their doorstep the next day, preventing them from starving to death or getting bored. However, their haven is determined to keep them alive in other, more sinister ways too. As the group digs deeper for answers they learn that Walter has been testing them for years, making sure that they’re the people he wants to save, making them forget things if they ever get close to learning the truth about him. The more they learn, however, the more dangerous things become for them, and the more Walter becomes involved, determined to prevent his friends from going too far.

The Nice House On The Lake is a dark book, one that very quickly into the first issue enters a realm of existential horror and grief that never really lets up. Its characters watch the world end, via their smart phones and the strange statues around the property that let you see the outside world when touching them. Being the last of humanity, knowing that your old life is gone, and everyone you’ve eve known and loved died in agony and fear is enough to break most people, and we see that in the book. Characters slip into depression, some even become suicidal, and it’s this for me that really makes the book a horror story. It’s a horror for the soul, it’s the emotional pain that seeps in that none of them can do anything about that sends shivers down my spine. Normal grief and depression are hard enough to manage, but when your old life is gone forever, when there’s no end in sight, how do you move past that?

James Tynion IV spends at least one issue of the series focusing on each of the members of the group, members who are picked to be archetypes for humanity, almost reduced to their role in life to fit some kind of alien agenda that Walter is working towards. There’s the artist, the pianist, the writer, the comedian, the accountant, the scientist, the reporter, the acupuncturist, the consultant, and the doctor. Each issue moves the mystery forward, deepening the mythology of the world and revealing more about Walter and his past, whilst also putting the focus squarely on each character, getting into their heads and seeing how the story is affecting them at that point.

The result is that you get a chance to know each of them, but you also feel like you’re not really spending any time with them as well. We get small insights into each of them for an issue, but them most slip into the background for a while. The only characters that seem to get a bigger focus are Walter, who we learn more about each issue as we see flashbacks to his relationships with each of the members of the group, and Norah. Norah is the character that I found to be the most fascinating of the group, and not just because I’m biased because she’s a trans woman. Norah seems to know more than is first apparent, and as the story evolves goes through some extra hardships and trials that the others don’t, and she plays a pivotal role in the ending.

Speaking of the ending, I’m not going to go into the small details of the story, as this is first and foremost a mystery, and ruining that would make reading the book pointless for anyone who hasn’t yet, but I can say that the ending feels like an ending, yet sets up for more to come. Tynion IV has seeded hints that things continue on after the events of the book from the very first page. Each issue opens with the focus character talking directly to the reader, dressed like they’re a character from Mad Max, in ruins and the wreckage of the world; something that doesn’t happen in the book itself. Whether Tynion IV is planning to do more, or if this is his way of adding further mystery, to get the reader thinking about what could happen beyond the final page, is still unknown. There are rumours that there might be more, but this has so far been based on vague statements and fan speculation. But even if it doesn’t go on, the twelve issues that we have craft a fantastic story all in itself.

The art on the series is provided by Álvaro Martínez Bueno, with Jordie Bellaire on colours, and is a wonderfully dark and moody series, one that keeps things fairly visually simple, yet manages to pack a lot onto each page. The art team are at their best when they’re either portraying the beauty of the world around the house, showcasing the rich landscape or the gorgeous buildings, or when things are going horribly wrong for the group. The moments when emotions are high (of which there are many) jump off the page as Bueno and Bellaire flood the characters with visible emotion. You don’t need to be told how they’re feeling, because you can see the anger, the range, and the despair coming off them just by how they’re standing, the looks on their faces, and the way the colours and lighting shift subtly. And each issue has covers that can only be described as works of art. They convey the horror of the story, the destruction and the loss in ways that the book doesn’t always do, and it’s easy to see how seeing these books on the shelf at your local comic book shop would lead you to picking the series up.

With DC Black Label filling up with darker and edgier superhero stories, most of which ended up being Batman, The Nice House On The Lake felt like something new and different. It took a big, bold step away from the world of super heroes and told a much more focused, character driven story that’s part mystery, part horror, part sci-fi, and part emotional drama that has an incredibly simple hook but will keep you reading and guessing throughout. Whilst it’s not the easiest read, and it’s full of dark emotions, it’s certainly never a dull one.

The Nice House On The Lake was published from June 2021 to December 2022 by DC Comics.

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