The Nice House on the Lake 1

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Unfortunately, with the cast so large, I felt like I didn't really get to fall in love with all of them enough. The casts' relationships with Walter were explored in depth and, strictly by association, with each other, to a point. But when it came time to really feel something for a couple of them, they were still too much removed to feel what needed to be felt for the story to slap me around like it should have. Hidden Depths: As Walter points out, David can be "pretty stupid" a lot of the time, but he is a remarkably perceptive individual who understands people. David is the first to realise that the guests can't remember how they arrived at the Nice House, and that they can't die. He also gives Molly an empathic speech about her suicidal tendencies. This was interesting to read directly after plowing through three volumes of Something is Killing… in a weekend. The two are quite different in tone, while both being horror, and this one is less fun and boisterous but more atmospheric and tense. While the art is fantastic in both, I prefer his art style in Something and this one can sometimes be hard to tell characters apart but also things being fairly obscured is part of the intent. Walter is very similar to the boy in the first arc of Something, and not just that both are drawn fairly similar with their big glasses you never see through but both have an element where in high school they were encouraged to ask their best friend to be their boyfriend, were rejected, and still maintain a friendship that is making them awkward. Comparatively though, this one felt a big of a slog, starting strong and ending strong, but sort of languishing in the middle (though Dave being goofy is pretty charming). Each issue being told in what appears to be a present set decently into the future where they all seem like battle hardened dystopia vets leads me to think this is only going to get epic. This reads like it's supposed to be a character piece, but we only get to see the characters in reference to Walter. I know almost nothing about the characters.

In the time since being brought together at the end of the world, the survivors of The Nice House on the Lake #12 (by James Tynion IV, Alvaro Martinez Bueno, and Jordie Bellaire) have all but fallen apart entirely. After the accidental death of Naya, the group are split between finding some way of taking revenge and coming to terms with the post-apocalyptic world. As their alien captor Walter explains to his favorite artist Ryan, this tragedy also provides a glimmer of hope, as it has brought the number of people in this enclosure to what his fellow overlords expected. Apart from every other development, the idea that the survivors under Walter's purview aren't the only ones left is more surprising than anything else. It also opens the door for horrors yet to come. And, the very last line of the book? Yeah, to me, it felt cheap. It's the whole, "stay tuned, there's more to come" when we should have just been left with a "holy shit, what are they gonna do now?" ending. Razorblades: The Horror Magazine #1–5 (with Ricardo Lopez Ortiz, Andy Belanger, Martin Simmonds, Fernando Blanco, Josh Hixson, Liana Kangas, 2020–2021) Not to mirror the issue of ecosystem/balance/longevity too closely from the comic’s own plot but I think the whole model would need to change to keep things running.Tynion is just not quite clever enough to pull any more twists out, or at least at this frequency, as the few here feel a bit thin or frayed compared to the earlier ones (maybe it’s just the downside of reading a collected volume as opposed to the floppies). Intrepid Reporter: Sam 'the Reporter' is the one most determined to solve the mystery of the House and its separation from the world.

Now, imagine that friend was in fact a ghoulish alien “flesh-tornado” masquerading as a human being in a bid to exterminate humanity, and they’ve chosen you as one of a handful to survive. For the protagonists of The Nice House on the Lake, writer James Tynion IV and artist Alvario Martinez Bueno’s horror series at DC Comics, this hypothetical is an all-too-terrifying reality. Laser-Guided Amnesia: Walter can simply make people forget things. He's mindwiped his friends before when he accidentally said too much to them, and he mindwipes them again after they find Reg and Reg tries to convince them they can break out of the House and save the world. Eisner Award for Best Writer for Something Is Killing the Children ( Boom!), Wynd ( Boom!), Batman ( DC), The Department of Truth ( Image), Razorblades (Tiny Onion) [41] Trans Tribulations: Norah being trans isn't usually a source of angst, but towards the end of Cycle One it's revealed that she feels Walter never fully got over the fact she's not the "boy" he had a crush on in high school and hasn't really accepted her, on top of her realization about how much he's manipulated her entire life from the moment they met. Walter also transparently uses her dysphoria to manipulate her into helping him by offering her access to the reality controls that can alter the guests' physical forms. As everyone prepares to leave the house, however, Ryan realizes this is why Walter brought them there. Walter tells them they can't leave — he loves them, so he has made sure to spare them from the genocide his people are doing. They will survive the apocalypse...but they can't leave the house on the lake. Ever.

Spontaneous Human Combustion: How the end of the world happens, apparently. Ryan sees through social media that people are just going up in flames. There are bigger firestorms, too, but they are probably caused by people on fire. The reason for this is Walter's "people" — one social media post even says "THERE IS SOMETHING IN THE SKY BEHIND THE FIRE. LOOK BEHIND THE FIRE, AT THE COLOR THAT HURTS YOUR EYES." The human-seeming alien’s eerily calm and bespectacled appearance regularly erupts into a writhing, phantasmagorical mass of gnashing teeth, bone, and flesh. It’s as disturbing as it is visually inspired, made all the more so for the fact that Walter’s eyes, if he even has any, are never seen throughout the series, perpetually obscured behind the eerie reflection of his glasses. Coming out in 2021, it was interesting to see the pandemic briefly alluded to, though reading it in 2023 it was difficult to not compare the opening of the book to the film Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery as both have an extremely similar, mysterious set-up (and oddly both have someone working on a Democratic Party campaign). There are A LOT of characters, but this guide came in handy: Tynion IV and Blanco Expose the Internet's Secrets in New Image Series (Exclusive Preview)". CBR. 2023-03-17 . Retrieved 2023-07-05.Club, Comic Book (2023-10-19). "Raina Telgemeier Teases New Graphic Novel Online". Comic Book Club . Retrieved 2023-10-19. The Nice House on the Lake, written by James Tynion IV (!) and Álvaro Martínez Bueno, with Jordie Bellaire on colors, is part of the Tynion wave sweeping the current phase of comics. Tynion, one of the two or three “it” people in comics now, was just awarded 2022 Eisner Awards for Best Writer, Best continuing Series (Something is Killing the Children), and Best New Series, this one. He’s this year’s Jeff Lemire, I guess. GLAAD Media Awards Nominees #glaadawards | GLAAD". Archived from the original on 2018-01-24 . Retrieved 2018-02-06. The explanation for what is happening is.. unexciting..? I believe the ending of this volume is supposed to be a kind of twist, and it's more of a sigh, really.

Big Fancy House: The book is, after all, called The Nice House on the Lake. It's really nice and includes pretty much everything the characters could want, including a movie theatre. Of course, Walter did this because he knew that they could never leave. This is, admittedly, a fun story that has a lot of heart to it. Walter is an interesting character and we really feel his struggle, though still empathize more with the others who we unfortunately only really know in their context to Walter and never quite get to know as themselves much. I do enjoy how much this series is sort of a critique on millennial friend groups and culture, with some wry and subtle digs that amuse me, and the group dynamic really works though sometimes it’s tough to know who is who. Overall I wanted to like this more than I did and despite some pretty mind blowing ideas and explanations, I think this is where I’ll drop out of the series while still very eager to read his other works, particularly continuing Something is Killing the Children. Not a bad series, but the cumbersome and clunky aspects can drag the otherwise imaginative and creepy fun. Wade, Jessie (2018-07-18). "DC's Witching Hour Event Stars Wonder Woman and the Justice League Dark". IGN . Retrieved 2022-07-13.After they arrive, however, they soon realize the horrible truth: Walter is not human; this trip was the culmination of a decades-spanning plot to eradicate the human race; and everyone they have ever known and loved – save for each other – is dead. Confronted with such an enormous and intimate act of betrayal, each of the ten guests are faced with a defining question: Will they lash out against their benevolent alien jailer in a bid to escape, or make peace with the unforgivable? Pieced together over the six issues, these stories paint a complicated portrait of Walter; a being of immense power conflicted with his own role in the imminent culling of humanity. He admits at one point that he did not think that he would come to like, let alone love, so many of the people he crossed paths with during his time on Earth. Beneath his cool and aloof exterior, there appears to be a war raging inside of Walter; a growing sympathy and compassion for humanity pitted against the ruthless machinations of his unseen superiors. All of them were at that moment in their lives when they could feel themselves pulling away from their other friends; wouldn’t a chance to reconnect be…nice? In The Nice House on the Lake, the overriding anxieties of the 21st century get a terrifying new face—and it might just be the face of the person you once trusted most. Batman Gambit: It's revealed in the final issue of Cycle One that the plan to make the housemates ultimately accept their situation in the house isn't Walter's at all; it's Norah's, and she devised it based on her ability to predict how the group would react to the situation, and what scenarios would lead them to a path of ultimate acceptance. Walter is initially hesitant to use her plan, but after his own attempts to get them on board utterly fail (which Norah also predicted), he agrees to try it her way. And it works. And that is only a basic outline of the otherwise character-driven series. What makes Nice House such an essential story is not its science-fiction-tinged horror plot—Martinez Bueno's body horror is strangely gorgeous and unparalleled—but rather its unflinching look at complicated human relationships. As the characters' relationships to each other and to their old friend Walter unfurl over the course of the series, readers come to understand that the horror doesn't arise from the aliens and the apocalypse. The horror is Walter's betrayal of their trust—and so their betrayal of Walter in return.

A very good but not quite perfect volume for a quality series. I think the pieces of the picture are better than the whole, and the ending left a little to be desired for me personally.Bestselling writer James Tynion IV has changed the face of horror in modern comics! Get ready for the second volume in his most ambitious story yet alongside artist Álvaro Martínez Bueno. Discover the secrets of The Nice House on the Lake! Morris, Jeff (July 9, 2022). "The Dark Side of Nostalgia in James Tynion IV's The Closet". CBR.com. Archived from the original on January 26, 2023 . Retrieved January 26, 2023.