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I’ve been reading and enjoying House of Mystery since its relaunch by Vertigo two years back and reviewing it continually in the Vertigo Title Review Thread, where others like CJ Taylor enjoy it as well. I thought this issue particularly deserved its own thread to draw some attention to it because I think many of you might enjoy it.
First, a spoiler: the issue contains several old favorites from Sandman including Cain & Abel (and Eve, their mother) as well as Lucien, Lord of Dream’s Library and the namesake of a certain glamorous LMBer named Bevis (he is Lucien Lad after all). It’s just one issue with them, but you do get to see Lucien swordfight with the avatar of the hunter, so its pretty cool for any Sandman fans who have been dying for a Lucien appearance for 10 years.
More importantly, this issue is unique because of how the story is told. House of Mystery is a comic book about stories with a larger storylne involving its regular cast of characters, while each individual issue has a story within the story, a short story told in the middle, and its those short stories that I love and often find incredibly quirky and interesting.
Here, in #25, the writing team is doing this classic, old idea: a writer starts the story, does some things to the characters, essentially boxes the story in, and then passes it on. Another writer comes in and picks up from there, adds their own twist and then passes it on. Each new writer increasingly makes it harder and harder to figure out a way out of this story. I have to say, its rather ingeniously done and quite a fun experience to read! Certainly worth the $2.99 price of admission! I’ll also add you do not need to have collected this comic before to enjoy this story.
The first writer is Bill Willingham, writer of the best comic in comic books, Fables, and co-creator of this series. Next is Dave Justus, then our own favorite Paul Levitz, then Alisa Kwitney and finally regular series writer Matthew Sturgis who has the incredibly difficult and fun task of figuring out how to wrap this story up and write himself back out of the corner he’s been boxed into. Series artist Luca Rossi provides fantastic artwork to add a level of balance and stylistic continuity to the entire thing.
I think anyone who loves different types of story-telling and quirky ideas should check it out. Each writer does a great job, but I especially like how Alisa Kwitney totally goes for it and leaves Sturgis really cornered and then how he figures out a way to end the story.
From: If you don't want my peaches, honey... | Registered: Sep 2003
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Btw, this literary device is called The Exquisite Corpse and could fill it's own big thread. I suggest anyone not familiar with it research it further!
From: If you don't want my peaches, honey... | Registered: Sep 2003
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