Review: ‘The Nice House By The Sea’ #1 Surprises & Unnerves

After over a year away, DC Black Label’s Nice House franchise returns. The setting and characters may have changed, but it’s the same cosmic horror. At least, that’s what you want to think…

James Tynion IV, Alvaro Martinez Bueno, Jordie Bellaire, and Andworld Design begin the next chapter of the horror epic.

In another house in another place, another group of survivors are under the care of another otherworldly presence. These are the best of the best, elite scientists, musicians, actors and thinkers. Everything is idyllic, even though the rest of the world has died violently. Cracks are beginning to show though, and the residents of the nice house by the sea are about to discover they’re not humanity’s only survivors…

I knew I was going to like this issue, but I was surprised by just how much. Tynion spends much of the issue building the new characters. We get a very quick sense of who everyone is, what we need to know about their character and personality, and the interpersonal dynamics that have been built over the two years (?!) since the world ended.

As all that character work is happening though, there’s an incredibly sinister undercurrent to what we see on the page. The alien overseer, Max, has given the group full control of their prison to the point they don’t really understand they’re in a prison (like their lake house counterparts do). The body modifications, the environmental control are going well now, but what happens when things turn… I also wasn’t expecting the final pages, which I’ll try to say without fully spoiling, established a much more firm connection to its predecessor than I expected so quickly.

The art continues to be fantastic and the team steps back into the world without missing a beat. Martinez Bueno is able to make even the happy moments unsettling. The exhilaration as the 56 year old Quinn Thomas has her youth restored is underscored by her vanity. The tranquility of Oliver Clay’s boat ride is interrupted by his host’s disturbing true form, and then a completely disorienting teleportation. It’s all set in perfectly normal angles, until the alien elements of the story step in.

Bellaire does an amazing job at setting the mood with her colors. She casts the opening rainstorm in heavy greys with only slight highlights and small pops of color until the opening rainstorm breaks. Then the colors as the alien events happen are disorienting (I wonder if they intentionally are meant to mimic the aura that many migraine sufferers like myself see).

Andworld steps it up with the lettering. While the dialogue is good, the captions and data pages continue to shine. The character introduction captions are simple and direct, presenting the information in it in an incredibly cold manner, while Oliver’s narration is able to convey the sadness through not just Tynion’s script but how Andworld puts it on the page. The two emails that are the only full page data pages are simple, but effectively convey a lot of exposition while inserting Oliver into the existing narrative of The Nice House is a human but equally unsettling way.

The Nice House By The Sea #1 is available now from DC Comics/DC Black Label.