House of Mystery is an occult and horror-themed comic book

Comic book

A comic book or comicbook is a magazine made up of comics, narrative artwork in the form of separate panels that represent individual scenes, often accompanied by dialog as well as including...

 anthology

Comics anthology

Comics anthologies collect works in the medium of comics that are too short for standalone publication.- U.S. :- UK :British comics have a long tradition publishing comics anthologies, often weekly...

 series

Ongoing series

The term "ongoing series" is used in contrast to limited series , a one shot , a graphic novel, or a trade paperback...

 based on the classic House of Mystery

House of Mystery

The House of Mystery is the name of several horror-mystery-suspense anthology comic book series. It had a companion series, House of Secrets.-Genesis:...

series that ran from 1951 to 1983. The writers, Bill Willingham

Bill Willingham

Bill Willingham is an American writer and artist of comics.-Career:Willingham got his start in the late 1970s to early 1980s as a staff artist for TSR, Inc., where he illustrated a number of their role-playing game products...

 and Matthew Sturges

Matthew Sturges

Matthew Sturges is an American writer of comics and fantasy novels.-Biography:Sturges is best known for the Eisner-award nominated Jack of Fables from DC/Vertigo...

, debuted the series in July 2008 under Vertigo imprint

Imprint

In the publishing industry, an imprint can mean several different things:* As a piece of bibliographic information about a book, it refers to the name and address of the book's publisher and its date of publication as given at the foot or on the verso of its title page.* It can mean a trade name...

 of DC Comics

DC Comics

DC Comics, Inc. is one of the largest and most successful companies operating in the market for American comic books and related media. It is the publishing unit of DC Entertainment a company of Warner Bros. Entertainment, which itself is owned by Time Warner...

.

Plot

Cain (of Cain and Abel

Cain and Abel (comics)

Cain and Abel are a pair of fictional characters in the DC Comics universe based on the Biblical Cain and Abel. They are key figures in DC's "Mystery" line of the late 1960s and 1970s, which became the mature-readers imprint, Vertigo, in 1993....

) attempts to return to the House of Mystery, his home in the Dreaming

The Dreaming (comics)

The Dreaming is a fictional place, a comic book location published by DC Comics. The Dreaming first appeared in the Sandman vol. 2 #1, , and was created by Neil Gaiman and Sam Kieth. The Dreaming is the domain of Dream of the Endless....

, and finds that it has disappeared. Seven years later, in Texas

Texas

Texas is the second largest U.S. state by both area and population, and the largest state by area in the contiguous United States.The name, based on the Caddo word "Tejas" meaning "friends" or "allies", was applied by the Spanish to the Caddo themselves and to the region of their settlement in...

, a former architecture student named Bethany "Fig" Keele flees her burning house, saving only a handful of sketches she once made of a house from her dreams. Keele is pursued by a "Pair of the Conception", agents of an entity known as the "Omneity"; they are two people, a male and a female, always holding hands. If they let go of one another, they will disappear. The pair chases her through a door and unwittingly into the House of Mystery, where she meets the inhabitants of the house bar and discovers the terms of what is apparently her imprisonment. Everyone must pay for their drinks with stories, and no one can leave without being picked up by the house's mysterious coachman. None of the house's occupants are sure why some people might get to leave and others not, so each person's stay is at least ostensibly eternal until the coachman inexplicably turns up to take them away. This doesn't stop some of the inhabitants from trying to get out, nor does it stop Cain from attempting to get back in.

Collected editions

The series is being collected into trade paperback

Trade paperback (comics)

In comics, a trade paperback is a collection of stories originally published in comic books, reprinted in book format, usually capturing one story arc from a single title or a series of stories with a connected story arc or common theme from one or more titles...

:

• Room and Boredom (collects House of Mystery #1-5, 128 pages, January 2009, ISBN13 9781401220792)

• Love Stories for Dead People (collects House of Mystery #6-10, 128 pages, June 2009, ISBN13 9781401222765)

• The Space Between (collects House of Mystery #11-15, 128 pages, January 2010, ISBN13 9781401225810)

• The Beauty of Decay (collects House of Mystery #16-20 & Halloween Special 2009, 160 pages, released July 2010, ISBN13 97814012275622)

• Under New Management (collects House of Mystery #21-25, 128 pages, released January 2011, ISBN13 9781401229818)

• Safe As Houses (collects House of Mystery #26-30, 144 pages, released May 2011, ISBN13 9781401231545)

• Conception (collects House of Mystery #31-35 & Halloween Special 2010, 160 pages, released January 2012, ISBN13 9781401232641)