STURGES & WILLINGHAM ON THE NEW HOUSE OF MYSTERY

[MattBrady]

by Vaneta Rogers

As revealed in yesterday's DC solicitations, Vertigo is bringing back House of Mystery.

First published as a horror anthology series in the '50s and continuing in several versions over the years, House of Mystery this time around will be similar in approach, having a different complete tale each issue, but will also have a continuing story and characters from issue to issue that the creators hope will keep readers coming back.

Launching with a new #1, the ongoing series will be co-written by Matthew Sturges and Bill Willingham, who plan to apply the same type of world-building to the ongoing mysteries in the new title as they do in Jack of Fables. While the stories within the pages of the comic will involve guest artists, each issue will feature art by newcomer penciller Luca Rossi and cover artist Sam Weber.

Newsarama talked to Sturges and Willingham about the title and what readers can expect as they enter the new House of Mystery.

Newsarama: First off guys, how did you end up getting this job? Something you pitched or something DC wanted and thought you'd be right for?

Matt Sturges: You know, like many good ideas, this one came about at a bar late at night. And I'm not sure who had the initial suggestion.

Bill Willingham: I don't remember. We were at the San Diego show two years ago, in one of those bars, drinking, and this came up and fell into place quickly. I think there's even a slight chance that [Vertigo editor] Shelly Bond may have made the initial suggestion.

MS: All I know is Shelly walked up to me and said, "Guess what? We're doing House of Mystery, and you're going to write it." And that was it. That was the beginning of my involvement.

BW: Matt, who does everything we tell him to, just said very meekly, "yes."

NRAMA: Did you guys read the old House of Mystery? Does this new series hearken back to that?

MS: It is in fact the same exact house, and one of the things you see at the very beginning of the story is that Cain, who has up until now been the proprietor of the house from the original House of Mystery series, and also appeared as a recurring character in Sandman, comes out his brother Abel's house, the House of Secrets, to find that his house has disappeared, then he exclaims, "Blood of the gods! Somebody's stolen my house!" That is the beginning of the series, and what has happened to the house is the major mystery of the first part of the series.

BW: The crux.

MS: Yeah, that is the crux.

BW: I like the word crux. But yes, we both read the old House of Mystery. One of the nice things about this particular time in comics is they're reprinting the old House of Mystery in those giant Showcase phone book things, which meant we both got to delve back into the earliest House of Mystery stories. So yeah, that did indeed inspire and inform the new series.

NRAMA: What's the premise of the new series?

MS: Well, what's the premise that we can admit to, is more the question. How much can we give away? It's a mystery! It's a mystery, so we can't give everything away.

NRAMA: You've got to give us something to go on.

MS: [laughs] Well, Bill has a spiel.

BW: Oh, I have spiel? OK. I'll take your word for it.

The premise of the House of Mystery is that there are five people who seem to be trapped in the house -- they cannot leave at all -- and they don't know why. As they arrive to it, they arrive like many people do to this place, and when they attempt to leave, they find out that their ability to leave the house is gone. To make up for this, the house provides them with the things they need, like food and of course liquor -- because everyone has to have liquor.

NRAMA: Of course.

BW: But five cannot leave, however other folks can come and go as they will, which only adds to the consternation of the five characters. It's like, how come these guys get to go and we can't? Being clever people, they think, well, we're going to use what we have to make some kind of life for ourselves. And since the house provides all the free food and drink they need, they open a bar and restaurant for all those folks who come and go.

What the house won't provide or allow for is any type of outside news or entertainment. No TV, no books, no journals -- nothing like that. And so they decide, well, since money's no good to us, we're going to charge stories from the people who come and go for our hospitality so that we don't go bat-____ crazy living here all alone in this house for an eternity.

NRAMA: And there’s the premise. They need stories from their customers...

BW: That's the premise. The first arc is called “Room and Boredom,” see, 'cause it's how they deal with their boredom. And that's basically it in a nutshell. Isn't that the premise, Matt?

MS: It may even be the crux.

BW: [laughs] It may even be the crux.

NRAMA: If these stories are told by the visitors, then is this title going to be strictly done-in-one stories? Or is there an ongoing story linking the issues?

MS: No, this thing works on two levels. In each issue, there's a story that is told by a patron of the bar in exchange for their food and drink. So, within each issue, you get one complete story that will be illustrated by a different artist each time. And those will be complete in that they will have a beginning, middle and end right there in that issue. The overall story -- the major arcs in the book -- have longer lasting mysteries. But the promise we make to the reader is that each of these mysteries will have an actual resolution and we know what that resolution is. And it will be provided to the reader in a timely manner. So there's not going to be this sort of endless chain of mysteries that don't make any sense and won't ever resolve.

NRAMA: So it has continuing mysteries from issue to issue, but it's not some never-ending mystery?

MS: No. One of the things we wanted to make sure of when we started the book was that each mystery had an answer. So we'll see, over the course of the series, these mysteries get resolved one by one and new mysteries arising from those resolutions. So hopefully, this will be something to keep people going for a long time.

NRAMA: One of the mysteries is why they can't leave the house and why they're in there, right?

BW: That's the big one.

MS: That's the first big mystery, yes.

NRAMA: Can you tell us anything about these five characters that are stuck in the house?

BW: Yes, we can.

MS: We can, and we will.

The main character of the first arc is a young lady by the name of Fig Keele who is an architecture student at the University of Texas at Austin, which is a complete coincidence of the fact that I went to the University of Texas at Austin. And she is the latest person to find herself drawn to this house, and the first story tells us about her experiences finding that house and discovering that she herself is one of those who is unable to leave. But she is unique among the people who have become trapped in the house for reasons that I can't tell you because they're mysteries.

We have a bartender named Harry Bailey. What can I say about Harry?

BW: There are mysteries about each of the characters in the main cast, and he's the most mysterious of the bunch. He's certainly got a past, and it's a past he's either unwilling to talk about or he doesn't quite remember.

NRAMA: He's got a familiar name.

MS: Yes. People can Google that one.

So we've got Harry. And we've a character named The Poet, who's also a little bit of a mysterious figure. He comes from an alternate 19th century France who was a celebrated poet among other things. We find out much later that he's also handy with a rapier, but that's a whole other story.

BW: He's also handy in the kitchen, which turned out well for our folks. He is the cook.

MS: We also have the bouncer of the bar, who is there in case anything gets out of hand. And she's a lady pirate by the name of Ann Preston, who is one of the most renowned and feared pirate captains from her home world, about which we will learn quite a bit when we get her backstory.

BW: We could probably reveal that her homeworld is chock full o' pirates.

MS: It is.

NRAMA: Aargh.

MS: [laughs] Yeah, the ratio of pirates to non-pirates in her home world is significantly higher than in ours.

NRAMA: OK, that's four. Who's the fifth one?

MS: The fifth one is the waitress, Cress, who is one of the best waitresses who ever lived. We learn pretty quickly that she and Harry have a history together, and this history is not a particularly good one.

BW: Now wait. They had good times. It's just not good anymore.

MS: It's currently definitely not good. It didn't end well. For reasons which are mysteries.

NRAMA: Is this version of House of Mystery in any type of continuity? As you mentioned before, we've seen Cain in Sandman. Does this comic interact with that or any other universe?

MS: It appears ripped away from the sort of Sandman "continuity" on the first page of the book. So there is some kind of metaphorical separation happening there. It's not to say none of those Vertigo characters will ever be referenced or mentioned or maybe seen in the background somewhere, but that's not really the point of what we're trying to do.

NRAMA: You say it's ripped away from that reality. Does the house then go to another reality? Or is it sort of a portal to many realities?

MS: Well, that's a really good question. But in response to the second question, it exists in a crossroads between many worlds. And so you can get there from a lot of different places -- not just our world but other worlds as well. Many different kinds of worlds at many different times and many different types of places.

NRAMA: So that implies that we're going to see a lot of different types of stories from a lot of different types of patrons who enter this bar.

MS: We're going to see a lot of different kinds of stories. One of the things we really wanted to do with this was create, well Bill used the phrase, "a story-telling machine," wherein we could justify telling as many different types of stories as we could possibly get away with.

BW: Anything we want to.

MS: Yeah. Anything we want to. So anything from classic horror story, which is what is kind of what's in the first issue, to something kind of silly and foolish, to a story about gangsters, to a story about spacemen from a 1950s visualization of what the future is like, to psychic detectives in 19th century London ... and the list goes on.

NRAMA: So you said there are different artists. How are the art chores broken up? Is there one artist who is doing the larger story arcs of the bar scenes?

MS: Yes, there is one artist who does the framing story...

BW: About whom we should crow for awhile. He's a wonderful artist.

MS: His name is Luca Rossi. Not Luca Brasi, who sleeps with the fishes. This is an entirely different person. Luca is an Italian artist who doesn't speak a word of English. Fortunately, our editor, Angela Rufino, speaks fluent Italian, for reasons unknown.

BW: Well, the reason's known.

MS: But it sounds more mysterious if I say it's unknown. I'm trying to create an atmosphere. [laughs] But yes, this is his first American work in comics, and he's a really wonderful artist and I think people are going to be pleased with his work.

The stories that are told by the bar's patrons are each told by a different artist. So far, the ones that we've got lined up that we know for sure are Jill Thompson, who's in issue #1, and Bernie Wrightson, who's in issue #3, and issue #1 is drawn by Ross Campbell. And we have others in the queue who we aren't allowed to mention because DC will not have us using names until they've locked themselves in and said they are definitely doing that, but there are some pretty exciting names.

NRAMA: And Sam Weber is listed as cover artist. He's credited as an illustrator who has worked with The New Yorker, The New York Times and Time Magazine, but not in comics before, correct?

MS: He's a brilliant artist who has not done, I believe, comics before. His background is in commercial illustration, and his covers are very distinctive. They're a perfect fit for the book -- and a little bit disturbing, which is of course what we wanted for this.

NRAMA: Now, Bill, you've pulled away recently from Salvation Run and Shadowpact, citing health reasons, but now you're announced as a new writer on this series. For your fans, why get involved with this series and not those?

BW: As we hinted about earlier in the conversation, although I was involved in the original drunken discussion that launched this series, when we paraded over to Matt and dumped it into his lap and said, "Here, you're writing it," that's pretty much what happened. It's Matt's book. He's writing it. The big important thing each issue is what he's calling the "framing sequence," but we should probably find a better word for that because it's not just a framing sequence; the bulk of every issue is the ongoing story. And that's all Matt. Granted, I throw in ideas where they occur to me or where he allows them.

I am writing the first five inset stories, but formally, that's the extent of my involvement in this book.

MS: You're writing, at the bare minimum, the first five stories.

BW: Well, what I'm saying is that I write the first five stories and then I go away to let others play with it. But yes, I would like the opportunity to come back as often as I can and work with this story as I am able to.

NRAMA: Is there someone lined up to write the sixth issue's inset story? Is that what I'm hearing?

MS: Well... that's a mystery. [laughs]

BW: We will mention every name we're allowed to mention, but people who aren't locked in, we can't say until they sign on the dotted line.

MS: And I have stories I want to tell as well, so I will be one of the people in the rotation. So some of the issues will be entirely written by me.

NRAMA: Is it one of the goals of this series to have guest writers and artists who have a story they want to tell?

MS: Absolutely. One of the things that makes this book so appealing to us is that it gives us the opportunity to work with people who might not ever have the time to be able to. So there are a lot of people that we'd love to have the opportunity to work with, and if we can get them on the book, so much the better.

[jza1218]

Awesome.

Next...bring back Seagle's House of Secrets

[Ye Olde Iowa]

I may pick this up solely based upon the fact that the bartender is named after the Host from the Canterbury Tales (I'm a sucker for all things Chaucer)...Well, that and Willingham and Sturges have a very cool idea going here.

[vbartilucci]

from wiki

Harry Bailey (1925 - September 8, 1985) was a controversial Australian psychiatrist. He bore the primary responsibility for treatment of mental patients via Deep Sleep Therapy, and other methods, at a Sydney mental hospital.

Very interesting...

[serge0]

looking forward to this

[Kevin T. Brown]

I'm on board for the first 5 issues at least.

[J.D. Lombardi]

Vertigo=Willingham

[target242]

Terrific idea. This reminds me of the 'good old days' of Vertigo: Taking a previous 'regular DCU' concept and putting that Vertigo spin on it. I agree...brink back House of Secrets as well...Seagle is free from Amercian Virgin now, right?

BTW when is the Madame Xanadu thing coming out as well?

[Big Bad Wolf]

I'm definately on board for this. The premise is pretty damn cool, and I've always liked these old horror anthology comics. Now we could just get someone to do justice to Tales from the Crypt...

[ShinAkuma666]

Never read any of the previous House of Secrets, but the premise on this new one sounds great !

[MattBrady]

Originally Posted by vbartilucci

from wiki



Very interesting...

he was also George Bailey's brother and war hero in It's a Wonderful Life and "died" in the alternate reality Clarence showed George...

and...according to a lot of folks, in the public domain...well, the film is, but not the story per se.

MattB

[Dunc]

This is a really, really good idea.
Just hope Cain isn't too marginalised, what a great character.

[izzatrix]

was used quite well in the World's End collection of Sandman stories and of course has been used effectively in classic literature long before that. This is the perfect vehicle for
writers who have a story to tell that doesn't fit in regular DC books and doesn't want to do
an extended series. It should be a lot of fun and with it being in the Vertigo line, hopefully they'll let it run for a while even if it isn't a top seller.

[ljacone]

Oh man, this sounds very interesting. The setup is pure Vertigo, as target242 says, and the idea of a return of (essentially) an anthology title makes me very excited. And the fact that it seems to be pushing the traditional HoM boundaries of Mystery/Horror and branching out into other types of stories only piques my interest more.

[phylemon]

I'm on board. I'm saddened that the old HoM could get five stories in an issue and this version will get one or two, but that is the state of modern comics.

I hope that the writers get that these stories work best when they are cautionary tales, modern day urban legends, and not pointless exercises in gore.

[kaykordeath]

...Harry Bailey = Chauser innkeeper, crazy deep-sleep studies shrink, George's brither in It's A Wonderful Life...

I'd guess that it's the Chauser reference they're aiming for, but I think all three aspects make a rather interesting inspiration point for a series like this...

I'm on board.

[pez dispenser]

I love the premise. You've convinced me.
I'm in.

[Blackbeard]

Oh, happy day! I am so excited to see House of Mystery make a return!

[Tomwaitsfan]

It was one of those pleasant suprises from those solicitations ear;ier.

[Papercut Fun]

This is the perfect story format to encourage a monthly pick up Vs a wait for the trade decompressed tale. Almost "done in one" tales connected by a larger story. World's End came to mind immediately for me as well. I'm looking forward to picking this one up each month.

[Jason A. Quest]

So we've got Harry Bailey the host of the Canterbury Tales, the heroic brother of George Bailey, the Aussie deep-sleep shrink, the California painter/etcher, a writer and a director from the 1930s, the former CEO of Ameriana Bancorp, and somebody who got a swimming pool in Saskatoon named after him.

But even better than this particular mystery, this series has something I haven't seen in a long time: an actual storytelling reason for being published once a month in 32-page booklets.

[Poe]

Really looking forward to this series. The premise sounds interesting, and I've been looking for a good Vertigo title to get into.

[Eli Katz]

I want me some I ... Vampire.

[TheJerkle]

I love that cover by Berni Wrightson. Anyone remotely interested in this title has to buy every issue or it will be cancelled before you know it!

[samnoir]

I wonder if there will be any other "Easter Eggs" tying it into the old series (and to Sandman)!

I bet Elvira stole it back from Cain...


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