I’ve been meaning to do some catchup comic book reviews, and since this series has been eating my brain (in a good way) I’ll start here: keep reading for a review of James Tynion IV and Álvaro Martínez Bueno’s The Nice House by the Sea issues 1-4.
Major spoiler warnings, both for this series and The Nice House on the Lake, since I’ve got to set the background first.
First up, I have to say, the apocalypse is the background of the entire saga, but it was never really about the apocalypse. It’s about a group of people shoved into a terrifying situation together, and seeing how long it takes for them to go for each other’s throats.
To set up the history, the ridiculously oversimplified version of The Nice House on the Lake is that Walter invited 11 of his good friends to a gorgeous house for a vacation. He eventually let them know that he’s actually an alien and his bosses have just murdered everyone on Earth in the most horrific way possible. He lied to his friends, messed with their memories, accidentally let one of them get killed, and by the final issue of Nice House by the Lake he let them kill him so they could try and live in peace. (Spoilers, he isn’t really dead.)
But before he dies he drops one more bombshell: he didn’t just save them because they were his friends. His bosses let him pick 10 people to save from the apocalypse, because there’s a plan for them. Problem: he was supposed to pick the best of humanity, the people most likely to survive a hostile world. (And yes, he picked an extra person due to a complicated kidnapping situation, but that got sorted out when one of them was killed.)
When faced with the choice, you’d probably do what Walter did instead: you’d chose your friends. And lovers. And definitely that person you’d been infatuated with for years and never quite given up on. Which in Walter’s case is literally every person he knows.
Walter’s spent his whole human life falling for one person after another, and none of them love him the way he loves them. His friends are very protective of him, but they’re also a little exasperated every time his heart gets broken. He surrounds himself with heartbreak, either his or other people’s, and that informed his choice of people for his house.
And this is where he really screwed up, because his little house of people isn’t the only house. There are other aliens out there with their own houses, and only the best house with the best people will be allowed to live. Walter’s friends are for the most part wonderful people, but not exceptional.
When The Nice House by the Sea starts, we meet Max, one of those other aliens, and she was more methodical in her choices. She really did pick the 10 best people she knows, because she wants her house to win, screw everything else. Who cares that most of them don’t even like each other, they’re all selfish enough to be pretty okay with being the last people on Earth, and she used ruthless logic in her decisions.
Except…Oliver. He’s an exceptional human being, but I suspect (and I think he does too) that the main reason he was picked is because Max is doing a favor for Walter. Oliver could never be the person Walter desperately wanted him to be, and Walter could never let him go. This is just my theory, but I think somehow Walter convinced Max to let Oliver into her house. Maybe Max is fond of Walter. Or maybe she liked having leverage over him. I lean towards the latter.
But it turns out one of Walter’s people is Norah, Max’s ex. Maybe Max isn’t as coldly logical as we think, and she took Oliver in order to have her ex saved by Walter. Or maybe…maybe she’s still mad at Norah and she arranged to have her in Walter’s house because Max is determined to win, meaning Norah will be destroyed with the rest of the losing houses? That would be coldly logical.
You see what I mean? This is just the tip of the iceberg of the complicated relationships in these two houses. The apocalypse is just the background (especially since we don’t know for certain that the apocalypse even happened. It’s complicated!) The chart that Tynion must have made to keep track of everybody’s relationship with everybody else has got to take up an entire wall, one of those conspiracy-theory-crazy-walls with all the pins and red strings all over the place.
Now that The Nice House by the Sea has introduced a second house, filled with people who are much more ruthless than the original house, things have already gotten more interesting. And now Max is planning a visit to Walter’s house to find out why his people are running around between the houses. What is she going to do when she finds out Walter’s dead? If she even believes that. If Walter will even let her believe that if it puts all his little crushes in danger.
Álvaro Martínez Bueno’s art is stunning, this wonderful painted style that’s beautifully expressive. He does equally well with people lounging in lavishly beautiful architecture as he does with what the aliens look like when their guard is down.
It’s not just beautifully painted, it’s beautifully designed. All the alien interfaces, the sculptures, even the flashback images of two friends browsing in a big box bookstore. It’s definitely one of those books you can linger over because you find more details every time you look. (And I suspect the symbols you see in both houses are more complicated puzzles than I originally thought.)
This is also a great series to read now that the nights are getting longer, because a lot of it is flat-out horror. From the brief glimpses of the post-apocalyptic world, to the demonstrations of what Hector’s body-modification app can do if you’re feeling vicious (yikes!), it’s a wonderfully chilling book, and it feels like the story is just getting started.