The Nice House on the Lake vol. 2

Vol. 1 was one of the biggest surprises I read last year, and one of my favorite titles as a result.  I thought I knew what to expect from the series, and writer James Tynion IV, going in only to be completely wrong.  This left me excited to see what the writer, and artist Alvaro Martinez Bueno, had in store for vol. 2.  I mean, now that the title’s wild concept has been unleashed, building on it should provide for a thoroughly entertaining experience.  Right?

Wrong.  Vol. 2 of “The Nice House on the Lake” is more in line with what I’ve come to expect from Tynion in his superhero work.  Which is to say that what we get here is a lot more concerned with observing genre conventions rather than busting through them.

I will say this:  I’m not about to spoil the central premise behind this series.  I think its greatest strength is how it surprises you with what’s actually going on in the first issue.  Plus, if you’ve liked Tynion’s work on “Justice League,” “Detective Comics,” “Batman,” and “Something is Killing the Children,” then there’s a chance you might like what he does in this second volume more than I did.

As for what I didn’t like about this volume, it boils down to two things.  The first is that vol. 1 ended with a “soft reset” for the cast and their overall situation.  I can’t say that the reset button was fully whacked as one character is now in a completely different situation than they were before.  How they adjust to their new circumstances drives most of this volume, leading to (maybe) a whole new status quo for everyone to deal with in vol. 3.

Before we get there, however, we get to see the majority of the cast going through a lot of the same motions we saw in the previous volume.  They know they’re stuck in the title place and they’re trying their best to find a way out.  The problem is that now the reader is fully aware of their situation and a lot of the initial charm is lost without the sense of mystery that accompanied it.

The character writing remains solid and none of the characters are unlikeable in an off-putting way.  This means that following them and their exploits through vol. 2 isn’t completely unenjoyable.  Though, there’s a thread about them having fun with automatic weapons in the volume’s second half that is painfully obvious in regards to how it’s going to turn out.  Aside from that, the escalation of stakes and reveals is competently handled up until the end.

Which brings me to my second issue.  “The Nice House on the Lake” was solicited as a twelve-issue maxiseries.  This led me to expect that the story was going to wrap up by the end of issue #12 in vol. 2.  The further I got into the volume, the more I started to wonder how Tynion and Bueno were going to finish things off as the narrative didn’t feel like it was building towards a proper climax.

So imagine my (complete lack of) surprise when I got to the final page and saw “End of Cycle One” in its lower right-hand corner.  That’s right, “The Nice House on the Lake” has graduated to a series-of-miniseries, or “cycles” if you prefer.  I thought I was getting a complete story with this second volume and that turned out not to be the case.  The kicker is that “Cycle Two” hasn’t been solicited yet.  Given how busy Tynion is with his other creator-owned projects, it might be a good long while before we return to this particular piece of lakefront property.

Which, I have to admit, I’m willing to give one more volume to in order to see if its creators can right the ship after such a disappointing effort.  Vol. 1 was good enough to get me to believe in what they’re doing here, and I want to believe that they can recapture its spirit in the future.  Vol. 2, however, also raises the possibility that they’ve completely lost the thread already and are never going to get it back.  I may be able to generate enough hope for myself that this isn’t the case, I can’t recommend that anyone else invest their time or money in the same unless our feelings are the same.