Warning: SPOILERS for The Nice House on the Lake #12At the conclusion of what seemed to be the series' final issue, James Tynion IV and Alvaro Martinez Bueno's acclaimed horror series, The Nice House on the Lake. Nice House has been making waves since its first issue in 2021, and it's no surprise DC and the creative team are planning for more.
The confirmation that the first twelve issues were part of a first arc—instead of a singular contained story—comes at the end of The Nice House on the Lake #12 by James Tynion IV, Alvaro Martinez Bueno, Jordie Bellaire, and AndWorld Design.
The final page of the issue features Walter, Nice House's alien quasi-antagonist, speaking to the "camera," much like the openings to the first eleven issues. Walter summarizes the events of the story by calling them "the early days. The easy days." Implying, of course, that there would be harder days ahead, which appears to be confirmed by the small caption at the bottom right of the page: "end of CYCLE ONE."
The Nice House on the Lake Will (Eventually) Return for a Second Cycle
The Nice House on the Lake debuted in 2021 to great critical and reader acclaim, standing out as one of DC Comics' most compelling offerings. The series—superhero-less, despite being part of DC's Black Label line—begins with a gathering of loosely-tied friends, all connected by their relationship to Walter, who asked the group to spend a long weekend at a gorgeous Wisconsin lake house. Before long it's revealed that Walter had ulterior motives; despite knowing some of his friends since high school, he is part of an alien species who has destroyed the outside world. Only the lake house and its inhabitants are protected: a group of "outstanding" humans preserved by the destructive aliens to study human society and culture in perpetuity.
The Nice House on the Lake's Complex Character Relationships Makes It Deserving Of Another Arc.
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.
When The Nice House on the Lake returns for its second "cycle", these human relationships will certainly take center stage again, and hopefully happen before too long, despite James Tynion IV's packed 2023 schedule. Readers will also likely see more of the fire-and-brimstone that happened mostly off-page in the first twelve issues. But each issue opened with a character narrating their past in the house while surrounded by an apocalyptic landscape, and sooner or later readers will need to know how the group ended up divided and in such danger. Walter himself promises more action to come in his final words of #12; now it's only a matter of waiting for DC Comics to publish more Nice House on the Lake.
Check out The Nice House on the Lake #12, available now from DC Comics!
