By Martijn Form  Hi Vertigolovers, Today I will focus my attention to one of Vertigo's new series, House of Mystery with writer Matthew Sturges. With my suitcase packed, I'm ready to check into the house mysterious. Got an extra pair of underwear packed, just in case I get scared shitless. Pun intended. House of Mystery was first published in the mid-1950s as a DC Comics' horror anthology, featuring tales of the supernatural as well as supernatural-themed mystery stories. Through different formats and incarnations the title continued well into the mid-1980s. The House of Mystery is indeed a big mystery; its origin is unknown, and its architecture changes constantly. Rooms shift about, and entrances and exits are never the same. You can enter, but you can never leave the same way you entered. In the old series the house's caretaker was Cain, a wicked person with a great appetite for the strange. In May 2008 the first issue of the new Vertigo series demonstrated a re-imagining of The House of Mystery. This incarnation focuses on an ongoing storyline rather than short self-contained stories.  Don't you just love that cover? It seems like the eyes of this mysterious woman are being eaten by some flies. And is that the blade of a guillotine I see? But what I like the most about the cover is the new House of Mystery logo, which was designed by master letterer Todd Klein. It contains Victorian lettering with some letters in decay and some blood dripping down the letters. It's a great eye catcher.Writer Matt Sturges is at the helm of the new House of Mystery with some assistance from Fables writer Bill Willingham. The book opens up with Cain visiting his brother Abel. The visit isn't that pleasant because Able's got an axe in his belly. Did Cain murder his brother… again? The story quickly shifts to the introduction of Fig, the main character of the first five issues. We see her running away from her house that has been smashed to pieces. Whatever has happened there, we don't know. She is being chased by two entities that are definitely not from our world. Nobody can hover over concrete, right? Well there was a guy who could walk on water, but that a totally different story. I wonder who these entities are. A man with a white coat and a white hat holds hands with a veiled woman in black, both of whose faces are hidden from us. What Fig holds in her hand could be the most important item of this series: blueprints of the House of Mystery When the story transitions to the actual House of Mystery, Sturges provides the simple caption: "Somewhere else." Great! Now we still don't know where this house is supposed to be. The most important room in the House of Mystery is the café; all guests roam around in here, sharing stories. The stories they tell will make up "the story in the story" of this comic. Every little 4-5 page story that is being told by one of the guests--or prisoners if you will--is being drawn by a different artist. In this first issue the little story is written by Bill Willingham and drawn by artist Ross Campell. It's a disgusting tale about a girl who is eaten alive by her own babies. Yuk. Campell--who created Wet Moon a wonderful graphic novel series for Oni Press that I highly recommended--provides some great art. So now we are introduced to the rest of the regular cast: Harry, the barman; Cress, a cynical woman with some major issues; Pirate Queen Ann Preston, and finally, the Poet. They all throw a party, because one of the prisoners, Rina, is leaving the house. But leaving the house isn't quite as good as it sounds. When asked about how his thoughts and impressions about House of Mystery so far, Matthew Sturges said "I'm just happy that it's finally coming out. We came up with the idea for the book over two years ago, at San Diego Comic-Con, and the book didn't start until May of this year. It seemed like forever, because everyone involved with the book was really happy with how it was coming along. It just took forever to get it approved, get the first few issues written, and get a place for it on the schedule. Also, the scripts for the first few issues were really difficult to write: getting the tone the way we wanted, figuring out the voices of the characters, that sort of thing. But I'm thrilled with the result so far."  Fig isn't happy being in the house. Some guests like Harry are doing everything to make her stay as pleasant as possible, others, like Cress, despises the new guest. Barman Harry shows her around the house. Fig remarks, "Sometimes it seemed as though the House went on forever. Everywhere you looked, there was always another nook or window or doorway. There was always more House. It tangled around itself like an old length of string." It even has an ocean with a sea monster in it. The House is much more than an indoor labyrinth. It seems to move its whereabouts around a person's perception.After a long day Fig lies in her bed, and the House starts to talk to her. The artist for this series is Italian Luca Rossi, who has a great reputation in Europe but whose work hasn't been seen that much in the U.S. The longest running horror comic in Europe, Dampyr is the only work of his right now that has been translated in English, I think. It's being published by IDW. Sturges told me, "Besides being an excellent artist on his own merits, Luca also has this uncanny ability to read my mind and draw not just a faithful representation of what's going on in a story, but sometimes he actually draws precisely the image that was in my head, down to camera angle, body language, stuff like that. It's eerie sometimes. But Luca was always the guy; there was no doubt about it as soon as we saw the character sketches that he did. He just seemed to really get the balance of horror and humor and elegance that I wanted from the book. And he just keeps getting better and better. The opening page of issue seven is one of the best that he's done yet." When I asked him if there has been any language barrier between him and Rossi, Sturges replied, "No – but only because I've never communicated with him. He speaks very little English, and even though I studied Italian for three years in college, I don't trust myself to conduct a conversation any more complicated than, 'Buon giorno; come stai? Mi chiamo Matt. Di dove sei?' Fortunately our co-editor, the lovely and talented Angela Rufino, was born in Italy and speaks the language fluently. If she ever left Vertigo, we'd be in big trouble. Anyway, Luca has the scripts translated by someone in Italy. I try to be careful to avoid using American slang and idioms because you know that at some point I'm going to ask him to draw a character who's 'green around the gills' and he'll draw the guy to look like Abe Sapien."  Everyone is a prisoner in one way or another, and Fig Keele is no exception. Trapped in the House of Mystery with a quartet of strange companions and a bar full of drinkers, Fig's willing to do anything to escape. She jumps over the fence, and lands right in the spot from where she started. With a long ladder she climbs the walls, but the only thing she can see is a desert full of corpses. The house seems to anticipate her every move, making it impossible to escape.I started analyzing the name Fig, and the only real clue I got is a reference to the Garden of Eden. It is believed that after they ate the forbidden fruit, Adam and Eve covered themselves with fig leaves. Some historians believe that the forbidden fruit wasn't an apple, as is commonly depicted, but a fig. So could the House of Mystery be some kind of weird Garden of Eden? Maybe I'm not that far off because Sturges told me how he gets started on a House of Mystery script: "The first thing I do is consult the 'Bible,' which is a large and ungainly document that contains everything known about the series. I go through it to make sure I know what's supposed to be happening in the overall story, who's supposed to be where and when, that kind of thing. There's a big overall structure to the thing that keeps getting mucked around with by circumstance and new understandings of the characters and their backstories, so it's a pretty fluid thing that probably needs to be overhauled and re-sent to everyone. "The next thing is to go over the outline for the current story arc and make sure I grok everything that needs to happen in this particular issue. Then I go back and read the previous few issues to make sure there aren't any outstanding plot threads or developments that I haven’t accounted for. Then I'm pretty much ready to start writing the issue itself. Over the years I've developed a process of outlining and writing a comic book script that's really boring to someone who's not interested. Anyone who is interested can contact me via clockworkstorybook.net and I'll gladly elaborate."  So the House of Mystery talked to Fig. Is this real? Or is it a figment of her imagination?According to Sturges, "Fig's involvement with the House is the central story of the entire series. I find that there's a lot to like about her. First of all, with Fig you get two characters in one. You get the Fig on the page who's young and almost fearless and full of moxie and life, and who has an odd thought process and even odder way of expressing herself. But then you also get the narration, which is by a much older and wiser Fig; she retains Fig's joie de vivre but adds a layer of maturity and wisdom that makes her a richer character. I'm crazy about Fig." So The House tries to contact Fig through an old typewriter. But Fig--despite possessing the blueprints--isn't interested in the House that much. She just wants to get out of that place. The House doesn't care if people living in it start trashing down some of the stuff in the basement, but when Fig joins the party, she focuses her attention directly onto the walls of the House. With a sledgehammer, she works the walls big time, but the House isn't that pleased, and starts acting up. Rina is kicked out of the coach and left in the desert. The same two entities who were chasing Fig are there for Rina. Are they staff members for Death? So far there's no clue regarding what or who they are. And will we ever see Cain again? Sturges told me, "You don't think Cain is going to take the loss of his house lying down, do you? The House may or may not ultimately belong to him, but he certainly thinks it does, and he's willing to fight for it. We'll definitely be seeing more of Cain in future stories." I can’t wait to see Cain again. He's got a really mean streak.  So could Fig indeed be a figment of the imagination? Why do I think just that? Well, when she was little, she told her father bedtime stories. Her father was a writer wrote down those stories into children's books like "Fig's Adventure in Stuffytown," "Fig's Adventure in the Clown Kingdom," and "Fig's adventure in Cloud Castle of Puffery." So her father made his daughter into a fictional character. Is this a clue or am I way off?In the meantime the House rebels against all its guests. It changes its structure and the rules of the game. Quite frankly, it's going nuts, and it's all Fig's fault. What could be the deeper connection between the House and Fig? Did she design the House in her dreams perhaps? Talking about deeper connections, in the House of Mystery preview we saw characters like The Swamp Thing and John Constantine commenting about the House of Mystery, and I do believe if there ever was a Vertigo book that could contain different characters from different books, it's House of Mystery. So I asked Sturges if we'll be seeing any "familiar faces" around the House of Mystery. Sturges said, "I think in retrospect that the way we did the preview was a bit of a mistake because it gave the impression that these old Vertigo characters were going to be part and parcel of the series. And while there's no reason that some of them couldn't find their way into the bar sometimes, it's not something that's on my priority list. But you never know when those old Vertigo mainstays might show up."  Issue six begins a new story arc, one that emphasizes Pirate Queen Ann Preston. The only reference I could find about a woman with the same name was a professor of physiology and hygiene at the college in 1853. Quite a big thing for that time because woman were not allowed to teach, but is this relevant? Maybe the similarity is that they're both strong women?Could there have been a female pirate captain, back in the day…ehmm of pirates? Is this feminism in optima forma? You tell me. House of Mystery presents some strong female characters who know what they want. And Ann Preston seems to fit in very well with more modern woman like Fig and Cress. This is also the first issue of the series that doesn't provide a small story told by one of the House's guests and drawn by a guest artist. When you think about it, the device of a "story in a story" means less pages devoted to the overall story, so I had to ask Sturges if, or how, he's had to adjust his story's pace because of this device. Sturges replied, "Honestly, that's been a learning experience. Cutting back from 22 pages an issue to fifteen or sixteen was a real challenge at first, and I think readers were getting a little frustrated in the first arc. But I'm getting a better handle on it now. The current story arc, "Love Stories for Dead People" is somewhat faster paced, so I think it feels like we're putting as much into those pages as possible. Also, you'll find that a lot of the embedded short stories will be tying into the main story more." This prodded me to ask who originally came up with "the story within the story" device for House of Mystery. Sturges said, "I believe that was Bill Willingham's idea. The way the book came about is that I was sitting at the other end of a large table at a restaurant in San Diego, and Bill and (editor) Shelly Bond came up to me and said, 'We’re doing House of Mystery and you're writing it.' I think that the anthology-but-not-really idea was implicit in that, but we spent several hours at the bar that evening working everything out, and I don't really remember who came up with what."  The next issue of House of Mystery should arrive in comic stores during the week of November 5th. I can't wait to see what artist David Petersen worked on for this issue. I so much love his work in Mouse Guard. It's very sweet, like an old fairy tale. Mouse Guard makes you feel like a kid again, when mommy read you a bedtime story. How I miss those times. *SIGH*As I concluded my discussion with Sturges, I asked him if he could provide any hint as to what's still to come. Sturges said, "Sure. Watch out for mentions of The Conception, the Thinking Man's Army, the unnamed dragon, and Fig's dad Peter Keele. These will all be important later. There will be a quiz." I'll start studying for that quiz right away. Many thanks to Matthew for taking the time to provide his detailed responses. And to you Vertigo readers, see you next week. |
