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Underground > Comic Books >

House of Secrets

15:19 / 09.03.04

Anyone read the short lived House of Secrets series from Vertigo? Does it tie into House of Mystery/ The Dreaming / Sandman? Artwork looks cool but Ijust don't know what is the premise? Thoughts and critiques.

16:20 / 09.03.04

I loved House of Secrets, and thought Teddy Kristiansen's art in it was absolutely fantastic. The book got a little heavy on the "grunge scene" setting, which dated the material pretty rapidly, but the atmosphere still holds up.

There was no connection to the Sandman/Dreaming/House of Mystery stuff at all - this was basically a stand-alone book (and all the better for it, if you ask me).

It also featured some of the most complex characters ever to grace a Vertigo book (outside of Shade, the Changing Man).

16:44 / 09.03.04

Seconding that. It was a great, great book.

17:30 / 09.03.04

Havne't been on the board for a long loooong time, so am quite happy to see House of Secrets as a post.

No relation to the whole Sandman Universe, but House of Secrets is an amazing amazing series of 25 issues that basically served as a storytelling playground. I hadn't known of Steven Seagle until I picked up that book, but the writing is engaging, at times poetic and definately memorable. On top of that you have the amazing art of Teddy Kristiansen to boot. Vertigo has only collected the first story arc, which probably isn't the best of the series. "The Road to You: getting there" was one of my favourite story arcs, and the story being told in such a cerebral way makes it a must read in a lot of respects. Also check out House of Secrets: Facade, the two issue stand alone released... last year?

Can't recommend it enough.

18:38 / 09.03.04

Other than the re-use of titles (so common to Vertigo) there is no connection.

And it *did* look like an interesting series. Tell me more about it, if you've got the time....

03:30 / 10.03.04

The low-down: A confused young compulsive liar of a woman finds herself pressed into service as the living juror in a court of ghosts. She is essentially forced to witness the accusation and trial of several people who have kept guilty secrets, and is expected to render judgement on them. She rapidly susses out that the system is skewed and reacts appropriately...

17:23 / 10.03.04

To me, House of Secrets was extremely hit and miss, at least while it was coming out -- I haven't done it, but I'm guessing it reads a lot better all at once than in monthly installments.

(For example, The Road to You storyline was five issues that gave the "secret origins" of the Juris one at a time -- while charting the progress the series' *main characters* in a monthly five-page backup story! Great googly moogly. By part two, you pretty much get the gyst of the Juris stories; interesting as they are, they all have the same damn ending...i.e., with the protagonist dying horribly and becoming a Juror...and at the same time, you have the main plot of the book unfolding at roughly the pace of the Spider-Man daily newspaper strip.)

As noted above, the book was also dated pretty much before it even started: Though it was released in '96-'98, the entire series (judging from clothing, hairstyles, and the pervasive grunge milieu) appeared to take place sometime in late 1993. Because 1993 actually went on for me until 1999, I did not realize this until considerably later. On the other hand, this probably means that the series will be completely culturally relevant again within about six months.

Um...but did I mention that I really loved House of Secrets? The art was great, the characters charming, and the dialogue was always pitch-perfect; there was hardly an issue that didn't have at least one one-liner that cracked me up (usually from protagonist Rain, who was kinda like a grunged-out twenty-something Daria). I think the book suffered most from its meandering pace (I don't know for sure, but I always got the impression it had been proposed as a mini, judging from the intense plot focus that basically vanishes completely around issue #6, never to return), but at the same time, some of those tangents lead to weird experiments in form wholly unlike anything else happening in mainstream comics then or now (too bad nobody noticed).

The two-part prestige wrap-up (Facade) is indeed worth it, though it perhaps appropriately doesn't really tie up a whole lot of anything.

20:05 / 10.03.04

hmmmm... Eddie definately has it there with how the monthly installments may have harmed the series. Earlier plot elements though, as revealed in the early issues, were subsequently concluded, and I didn't ever really feel that the book didn't have a definately direction.

And while for me the subject of the story takes on a far lesser role when seen in the light of *how* it is told. (For example, and just to use the given one, while the "The road to you: being there" story arc did keep to a set formula for each of the judges, the last of the judges addressed literally read like the writer was indulging the contemplation of an abstract idea, which was extremely mindbending.)

Plus, I liked how the whole story did indeed centre around the house, and it was nice how each story kind of opened up more about it to the reader. Well, I guess with a name like House of Secrets you'd expect that, but I just thought I'd mention it. See covers here: http://www.teddyk.dk/galleries/GalCovers/GalCovers.htm

Each character has a strong uncompromising identity, regardless of whether you liked them or not. Rain, mentioned by eddie, really just pissed me off at first, and that personality doesn't really let up even as you learned more about her, though the reader's judgement probably does.

Facade... not a good idea to pick up for first time HoS readers, it definately adds more depth if you've read the initial series. Man... I don't usually get nostalgic about a comic book... but with HoS it happens quite often... might just wander down to the local shop later this week...

06:14 / 14.03.04

eh, made a mistake, it's the three issue arc 'Basement' that's the coolest. Yeah, bloody nostalgia and 15 dollars later...

03:58 / 16.03.04

count me in as a fan of House of Secrets. That last Juris issue with the flame hand thing was totally amazing I thought, and is a great standalone issue to track down regardless if you're into the entire series or not. Its particularly special methinks...

00:12 / 17.03.04

Yeah, I too will pipe in as saying HOUSE OF SECRETS was seriously one of the best books Vertigo ever published. Seagle never did anything that good before or since; I anticipated his X-MEN run with Morrisonian levels of excitement, based on his HoS work, and ended up very disappointed.

If you can track down the trade (FOUNDATION) and the back issues, buy buy buy. I need to fill out my run m'self, I read a lot of it from friends' copies and never finished getting my own...