“How do you think the world will end?”
The next book in my “reviews for graphic novels Elizabeth got me for Christmas” series is the deluxe hardback edition of The Nice House On The Lake, and it’s little more recent than the one from my last review. And also darker. Not just darker than the last book, it’s darker than most of the graphic novels I’ve read. Ever.
The apocalypse is in full swing. (Or it’s already over. Or about to begin. The story jumps around in time, and every character has a chance to play Unreliable Narrator.) The book starts with a young woman named Ryan, bandaged and ragged, sitting in a place that seems to be both drenched in rain and also on fire. And no spoilers, but this is pretty much how every issue in this 12-issue (so far) series starts; a different character in a once-lovely location, speaking directly to the reader and all apparently answering the same question: So how do you know Walter?
The bulk of the story takes place during a vacation at a lake house that’s almost too beautiful to be believed. Everyone invited to the retreat at least knows about everyone else, and many of them have been friends for a while: high school buddies, college pals, work associates. They’re from all different walks of life, and the one thing they have in common is their friend Walter, who planned the entire week. And I mean planned; he’s got a whole schedule set up of movie nights and karaoke and afternoons boating on the lake and group meetings to discuss grocery shopping. Walter even has nicknames and cute little icons designed for everyone. It’s maybe a bit much, but Walter’s always been a little odd. The first evening is shaping up nicely, with a poolside dinner of steaks cooked up on the grill, and everyone is starting to get past the awkwardness of not knowing your friend’s friends quite as well as you know your own circle.
Then someone checks social media and finds out the world just ended.
Mayor of New York: THERE IS SOMETHING IN THE SKY BEHIND THE FIRE. LOOK BEHIND THE FIRE, AT THE COLOR THAT HURTS YOUR EYES.
The apocalypse is revealed in a double-page spread of frantic social media posts as the world burns, rips itself apart, and kills everyone on the planet horrifically, in ways that don’t follow the laws of physics. The group of friends is only just starting to process what’s going on and wonder how they can get back to their loved ones when Walter tells them he’s sorry, they can’t leave. There’s nothing left outside of this forested retreat he’s created for them. He loves them all, and he promises they’ll never want for anything, and they can just be happy and live out the rest of their lives in safety.
Also, Walter has only been pretending to be human for the entire time he’s known them. And he demonstrates this in a way that also doesn’t follow the laws of physics.
REPORTER: He said..he said his people.
REPORTER: What did he mean by his people?
SCIENTIST: I think… I think Walter’s family is Irish way back?
REPORTER: I’M PRETTY FUCKING SURE this isn’t the fucking Irish!
All of this goes down in issue one, setting us up for one hell of an epic story. The viewpoints jump from one character to another, going backward and forward in time, leaving the reader floundering sometimes when you realize that something is off, but you can’t tell exactly what, and gradually revealing how Walter has been caught up in everyone’s lives for years and lying the entire time, and nobody knows why. The author James Tynion IV supplements the scenes of panic and acceptance and paranoia with group texts, emails, transcripts of conversations in the house, and the notebook pages from everyone testing out whether they really can ask for anything they want. All of it shows an intricate web of childhood friendships, and romantic relationships going boom, and college comradery, and young people finding their place in the world, and a whole group of twenty-to-thirty-somethings trying to figure out if they’re going to eat-drink-and-be-merry or just collapse in despair.
Álvaro Martinez Bueno does an absolutely dizzying job on the art. There are zero shortcuts, every panel is dynamic and expressive. Bueno is equally good at portraying the inside of a sumptuous lakeside home, or a cluttered dorm room, or a cityscape dissolving in Lovecraftian transformations and fire. And there’s always something to go back and look at again to see what’s been hidden (pay close attention to the title spash pages in each issue). The covers are even more intricate, and they have an appealing dark humor about them; a leisure activity that’s slyly turned to horror. I think one of my favorite pages is the one showing the characters taking a boat across the lake at sunset; the colors and the shading done in pencil hashmarks somehow look more realistic than a photograph would be. And speaking of colors, Jordie Bellaire adds just the right touch, with normal everyday coloring morphing to a wash of fire-orange, or morning-before-sunrise grey. A scene of confrontation snaps to stark black-and-white, right up to the moment there’s a startling splash of red. Or one person’s utter fury is portrayed in an entirely black page, with just enough reflected light to show that they’re screaming.
This book was a Christmas gift, but I have to say that the deluxe edition would have been well worth the money if I’d bought it myself. The graphic novel comes with all the alternate issue covers, the original series pitch, a detailed description of each character (I thought I was going to need to consult this a lot, but the writer brings you up to speed on all the characters surprisingly quickly), several pages of development sketches, and concept designs of each of the several buildings that feature in the lakeside property.
If I have one complaint about this series it’s that the first twelve issues finished in December 2022, and as of the time of this review there still haven’t been any more. Elizabeth was able to find exactly one article that confirms that, yes, the ending of issue twelve does mean that the story is still going to continue. Which is good, because the ending leaves a lot hanging. We still don’t even know exactly what happens to put the characters where they are in the opening intros: alone, and walking through the ruins of something which started out as a carefully-designed paradise.