James Tynion’s Nice House on the Lake has one of the best comic book villains

Imagine your childhood best friend. You are a bit odd, weird, and inquisitive. They’re well-liked, but few people can truly call them friends. A confidant; the best man at your wedding, a sympathetic ear and ever-eager helping hand who’s never farther than a phone call away.

Now, imagine that friend was in fact a ghoulish alien “flesh-tornado” masquerading as a human being in a bid to exterminate humanity, and they’ve chosen you as one of a handful to survive. The protagonists The Nice House on the Lake, writer James Tynion IV and artist Alvario Martinez Bueno’s horror series at DC Comics, this hypothetical is an all-too-terrifying reality.

Let’s sum it all with a comparison The Nice House on the Lake is basically Lawrence Kasdan’s The Big Chill by way of Michael Schur’s The Good Place and Stephen King’s ItApocalyptic thriller mystery that feels like an improved version of LostThe story is told in comics. The focal point of these disparate influences is Walter, the series’ antagonist and one of the most intriguing comic book villains in recent memory.

Image: James Tynion IV, Álvaro Martínez Bueno/DC Comics

Vol. 1: The Nice House on the Lake Vol. 1This issue contains the six first issues of the limited 12-issue series. The image shows a woman with a bandage wrapped around her head. A glowing background of orange and red lights up the background. Walter was a close friend who introduced her to Walter. Walter invited her along with a few other friends to stay for one week in a lovely lake house in Wisconsin during the difficult upturn of the summer of 2021.

After they arrive, however, they soon realize the horrible truth: Walter is not human; this trip was the culmination of a decades-spanning plot to eradicate the human race; and everyone they have ever known and loved – save for each other – is dead. Each of the ten guests is confronted by such an intimate act of betrayal.

This series addresses this and many other questions through flashbacks every issue. Each guest narrates a story about their relationship with Walter before the end of time. The tone of these stories feel not unlike eulogies; mourning the death of the world as they know it, as well as the idea of a “person” who once meant so much to each of them.

Image: James Tynion IV, Álvaro Martínez Bueno/DC Comics

The six stories are a complicated picture of Walter, a person of enormous power and conflicted by his own part in the imminent extermination. One time, Walter admitted to having no idea that he would eventually love or like so many of those he met during his brief life here on Earth. Walter’s cool, detached exterior hides a conflict. His growing compassion and empathy for others is being fought against his superiors’ ruthless tactics.

Sympathizing an inscrutable alien “flesh-tornado” is no easy feat; that The Nice House on the Lake accomplishes this is no small credit to the deftness of Tynion’s writing. The most striking visual design is found in The Nice House on the Lake — already populated with a cast of characters unique in form and dress, and a beautiful mid-century modernist home perched atop a hill whose lush grounds are decorated with ominous glyph-like statues rendered with meticulous attention to detail — is none other than Walter himself.

Image: James Tynion IV, Álvaro Martínez Bueno/DC Comics

The human-seeming alien’s eerily calm and bespectacled appearance regularly erupts into a writhing, phantasmagorical mass of gnashing teeth, bone, and flesh. It’s as disturbing as it is visually inspired, made all the more so for the fact that Walter’s eyes, if he evenAre there anyThese characters, which are not seen in the series at all, remain obscured behind his glasses’ eerie reflection.

Walter believes that saving his closest friends is an absurd form of harm reduction. To the guests, it’s unconscionable. What is “harm reduction” in the face of the apocalypse? What is “harm reduction” in the face of the apocalypse? It’s this tension between love and cruelty, friendship and betrayal that drives so much of the drama, mystery, and appeal of The Nice House on the LakeIt is voted one of the best comics series in 2022.