Death Bed & Breakfast

...trying to consume even a majority of organics and natural food items seems to be easier by the day. When you are me, it still finds a way in which to be a hassle, even on a good day. When desire to make better food choices runs up against a smaller budget, I find having to leave things behind when not on sale is more common than I'd like. If I were a complete Romney (my brother and I use it as an adjective and noun), I would never think twice about spending $8 for four sticks of certified organic butter. Instead, I find myself sometimes making two to three separate grocery trips to multiple stores to find as much as I can without overpaying.

All of this hassle simply so I can live long enough to read more comic books.

...why I bothered to pre-order my Playstation 4 continues to confound me on a daily basis. The game-system-to-end-all-game-systems rests quietly on my makeshift entertainment cart without a remotely decent title to be found. As it stands, the very first must-have (for me) game in this new console generation is six weeks away at best. Granted, when Infamous: Second Son comes to stores, I will be willing to moonwalk to the nearest Target or Best Buy to get a copy. I just wish that the biggest console launch of a lifetime had come with a game worth owning. Perhaps in the meantime, I will start practicing the worm.

...House Of Mystery has been quietly luring my attention in dribs and drabs for a long time now. Amongst the collective Vertigo lineup, it has never been one to be bandied about verbally. When talking about comics with someone who is a Vertigo fan, you are more likely to hear about Preacher, Fables, Sandman or Y: The Last Man than House Of Mystery.

Best as I can tell, the Vertigo House Of Mystery is a reboot of the older anthology series from the old Showcase series. Having only flipped through the thick black-and-white collections in the back of the Amazing Fantasy shops nearby, the original seems to be in line with some of the old Bob Powell horror stuff I have in my collection. In other words, the original series was DC's answer to the legendary EC Comics line. So, why would the current House Of Mystery be of any interest to me?

Vertigo is well known for being at the helm of an ocean of groundbreaking comic book series'. In addition to the titles I mentioned earlier, series' such as The Filth, Northlanders, DMZ and American Vampire consistently keep the Vertigo line at a high level. When you factor in the lineup of writers and artists that had worked on the recent reboot, House Of Mystery always stood out in the back of my mind as something to investigate.

While I have yet to complete Volume One: Room & Boredom, I find myself being pulled in quickly and without resistance on my end. Rather than simply a collection of random horror shorts, the center of the overall narrative is an actual house of mysterious ends. The House in the book is a bar and meeting place for a strange collection of beings from numerous portals and worlds. As such, it is not uncommon to see a British punk rock kid sitting near an 18th Century poet and across from a demon.

For the most part, the patrons of the House are generally passers through who eat, drink and pay their tabs by telling their own tall tales to cover the bill before heading back to their respective worlds. However, there are a handful of characters that are bound to the House once they enter for the first time. From the outset, there is a young lady named Fig who is having constant dreams of a set of blueprints and she is the architect. Upon being chased by two mysterious beings walking hand in hand, she ends up hiding out in the House. As it quickly turns out, her arrival seems to have been foretold and upon learning of her person becoming bound, she quickly discovers that she was in fact dreaming of the House itself.

Currently, I am halfway finished with Volume One. I am hooked. Of late, I have been actively seeking out strange titles in my comics and House Of Mystery  fitting the bill very nicely. It is superbly written and feels like it can go just about anywhere without detraction. Anyone who has read and loved Sandman or Death (either series) or Lucifer should find a lot to dig through here.

Read: House Of Mystery Volume One: Room & Boredom by Bill Willingham & Matt Sturges

Listen: Godflesh Hymns

Watch: Arrow