The Nice House on the Lake: the Deluxe Edition

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Reality Warper: The interface that Walter uses to control the house and everything in it seems to be capable of this, able to conjure practically anything the housemates want, construct entire buildings, and bestow a Healing Factor upon them as well as selectively remove or restore memories. It's limitations haven't yet been shown, but it's undeniably a powerful piece of tech. I liked this more than the first volume actually. It seems to have landed with a thud for most others, but after adjusting to breadcrumb storytelling of long arc comics, it didn’t come as a surprise to me, especially after the first volume, that there would be a twist but not a resolution. I’m still interested in what comes after this major part and think it resolved some things that made it even more incredulous than things asserted beforehand. I’m not entirely sure it can navigate to the future where they’re clearly in a further future, and it’s basically some kind of dystopia hunger games thing, but the journey there, so far, is enticing enough. Affably Evil: Walter tells his friends that he genuinely loves them, which is why he is saving them...but the rest of the world is going to die. 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:

Unfortunately, he fell into the same trap of having set up something so large, so earthshaking, that he had to come up with an explanation-heavy and over-complicated plot device to bring it to a (sort of) ending. I kind of hoped this would be the end of it, but no, these volumes are only 'cycle one'. Means there must be a bicycle coming. I was really excited to try this horror/scifi graphic novel. I saw the art was amazing and was so excited to get super creeped out. Unfortunately I was let down in almost all areas. There are 3 distinct time periods in this story - the past (memories), the present (nice lake house), and the future (warzone). Time jumps a lot in this series which wouldn't normally be an issue except that there are 12 main characters. Having every issue from a different POV it meant I learned a little about each character but not enough to be invested in them.

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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.

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. All of the characters are a little hard to keep apart from one another, which is the main reason I'm only giving this 4 stars: I think a cast of characters this large doesn't work well in a graphic novel unless the art style lends well to telling everyone apart, and that isn't the case here. (They're also mostly obnoxious and fairly unlikable people, which is something I weirdly enjoy in stories, but if you don't, YMMV on the overall storytelling.) Stars Volume 2 collects issues #7-12 of the comic. This was supposed to be a limited 12 issue series but the ending of this leaves so many questions unresolved that I have to assume there will be more issues. Will I read them though? Probably not.

Success!

Driven to Suicide: The guests can request items from Walter by writing on a notepad. Molly requests a gun, a rope and then a straight razor when her requests for her husband and parents alive and well aren't granted. Walter repeatedly refuses these requests, until David gets the razor for her by asking for it on his own notepad. Although it turns out they can't actually die, so it doesn't matter whether she gets the razor or not. Shout-Out: In Issue 4, David is wearing Ferris Bueller's Iconic Outfit, having apparently requested it from Walter via the notepad. The pieces are there to make The Nice House on the Lake, Volume 1 a fun book but James Tynion IV fails to assemble them into anything more than a narrative that’s unfortunately more often boring than not. A mutual friend, Walter, invites ten people to stay in a fancy lakeside house in the country for a weekend getaway. A nice house, far enough away from the hectic pace of modern life to make you think you were the last people on Earth - and then it turns out that you are! Because “Walter” is an alien who has saved his nearest and dearest from the end of the world. What next - imprisonment in some hellish mystery box? Oh… read this amazing essay "Fragmentation of the Self" that has nothing to do with a nice house on a lake, but I stole some phrases and ideas from it anyway: