In The Nice House on the Lake, James Tynion and Álvaro Martínez Bueno took the classic "group trapped in an isolated location" setup from Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None, gave it a dark sci-fi spin and exploded it into a genre-bending comic book triumph. Following a group of friends who are invited to a secluded and beautiful location for what seems to be a harmless reunion, the crew soon realizes that they've been brought together to wait out the end of the world. Chosen by their friend Walter, who's really an interdimensional eldritch being, we learn over the course of the series that the ragtag group was selected for survival because they were so deeply loved by their unusual friend. However, that was not how the selection was supposed to work.

In Tynion and Martínez Bueno’s follow-up, The Nice House by the Sea, we get a glimpse at what was supposed to happen when the world ended, as we’re introduced to another stunning house run by another nightmarish alien who, unlike Walter, actually followed the rules laid out by her leaders.

Alien invasion stories have long been a staple of comics, movies and TV, but in The Nice House by Lake, we got something entirely unique—a compelling hybrid of slice of life drama, horror sci-fi and experimental mystery that was also a highly emotional story about codependent friendships. The first issue of The Nice House by the Sea lets us know we're in an entirely different situation this time around. Here the house—gorgeously rendered once again by Martínez Bueno—is filled with strangers who were carefully selected to represent the best of what planet Earth has to offer. There's a coldness here, an isolated and strange disconnectedness from what is going on outside the doors of the stately home their host has chosen for them to survive in. It's an instant tonal shift that also poses a big question for those of us who have read the first series: Would we rather know that the world was ending and we'd been chosen or live in temporarily ignorant bliss?

Although Walter claimed that he chose his friends out of love, he also kept them in the dark giving them no choice in whether or not they wanted to "be saved." There was no consent given or received before he trapped them in the house for the rest of eternity. And while Walter occasionally told the truth, he also mind wiped his loved ones multiple times to keep his secret safe and to use them to build his house. In contrast, The Nice House by the Sea’s Max is completely honest with her chosen ones. She tells them the world is going to end, but that as worthy examples of humanity’s best and brightest, they’ll be saved. It's an interesting juxtaposition as Walter continually claimed to make his choices out of love, but Max makes her choices out of rationality and logic and arguably ends up treating and respecting her chosen few far better…if a good deal colder.

Like all of Tynion's work the eclectic characters are at the heart of the story here, but that doesn't mean we don't get some intense world building and lore expansion. Seeing as the group knows their place in the world (or lack thereof), they're exploring things that we never got to in The Nice House by the Lake. Using the environment’s controls, which weren’t even introduced until the very end of Lake, the inhabitants of this new house can change how they look, leading to some members of the house choosing to drastically change their appearance. Suddenly, a sixty-year-old can look like a teenager. A septuagenarian can be built like a bodybuilder. It's an interesting side effect of Max being honest with them—they want to be in the house, they want to utilize the alien technology, they want to live as long as possible and celebrate all that being in the house brings. It's an intriguing angle that makes the book feel fresh and new even as we replay the same setup once again.

And for those of you who are interested in whether The Nice House by the Sea connects in any way to the first series…well, you’ll want to read the first issue. It’s a shocker of a reveal that nicely sets up a new enticing mystery that'll have you screaming for the next issue.
 

The Nice House by the Sea #1 by James Tynion IV, Álvaro Martínez Bueno and Jordie Bellaire is now available to read on DC UNIVERSE INFINITE for Ultra subscribers.

Rosie Knight is an award-winning journalist and author who loves Swamp Thing, the DC Cosmic and writing the monthly gossip column here at DC.com. You can also listen to her waxing lyrical about comics, movies and more each week as she co-hosts Crooked Media's pop-culture podcast, X-Ray Vision.

NOTE: The views and opinions expressed in this feature are solely those of Rosie Knight and do not necessarily reflect those of DC or Warner Bros. Discovery, nor should they be read as confirmation or denial of future DC plans.