Exclusive: Steven T. Seagle talks House of Secrets

It's been more than 16 years since the release of Steven T. Seagle's House of Secrets, and the Vertigo title is getting an all new hardcover omnibus release this week. I recently had a chance to interview Steven, who talked about revisiting the story after all these years, working with Teddy Kristiansen, new material that's includes in the hardcover edition, and the possibility of a live-action version of House of Secrets:

The first issue of your House of Secrets was released in 1996. Was reprinting all of the issues together in this new hardcover omnibus something DC approached you about or was it something you went to them with?

Steven T. Seagle: Back when the series first came out, DC/Vertigo seemed to be reprinting everything. HOUSE OF SECRETS got one volume out called FOUNDATION, and even though it sold as well as some other things that got more volumes later, DC never put out another HOUSE OF SECRETS collection. We never understood that. So for the last decade plus, only the first five issues were readable. We had a major movie deal erupt, went into pre-production and still nothing came in support from the publishing side. So once I was contractually able to do so, I approached DC about returning the rights to Teddy and me so we could put out a series of three collections and get the book back in print – albeit under a different title. Instead, DC opted to reprint the whole thing themselves in one volume. I can only speculate about why.

The original House of Secrets was similar to Tales From the Crypt in structure. Were you a fan of the original House of Secrets series and EC's horror comics?

Steven T. Seagle: I was a little young to know those EC books in their heyday, but I did get into the Marvel versions of similar series like CHAMBER OF CHILLS and DEAD OF NIGHT when I first got into comics. So, yeah, I had an imprint on those kinds of books in my formative years. I eventually went back and looked into the ECs and there is some great stuff in there. I paid tribute to those books with issue 24 of HOUSE OF SECRETS – Rain is the narrator of three short stories about her own fate. The first story is kind of classic EC, and then we started playing with that form in weirder and weirder ways for the other two chapters.

For those who are not familiar with your version of House of Secrets, can you tell us how the original project came about?

Steven T. Seagle: I started writing for Vertigo when their hallmark was taking old DC properties and finding modern approaches to them – SANDMAN, ANIMAL MAN, DOOM PATROL. I did – and still do – really like that kind of transformation of iconic material. So I set out to reinvent old horror comics as a fusion of courtroom dramas and ghost stories. Rain Harper, a habitual liar and runaway with a difficult past, winds up squatting in a Seattle mansion haunted by a jury of ghosts hell-bent on putting people on trial for the secrets they’ve kept. I pitched my beloved editor, Shelly Bond – then Roeberg – HOUSE OF SECRETS. She loved it, but when I was done, I hadn’t really used anything that related to the DC series except the title. Paul Levitz and Karen Berger suggested that since I’d made up all the concepts, the book could be creator-owned and we would just “license” the title.

I understand that your childhood served as an inspiration for some of the story elements. What was your inspiration for Rain and the story that unfolds in House of Secrets?

Steven T. Seagle: I have always had a strong fear of authority and authority figures – which is odd, because I’m also the first guy to stand up to an authority figure when I feel like he/she is overstepping his/her bounds. So the legal system holds some terror for me – it’s like a place where outside influences can have a direct impact on your freedoms for better or worse. I’m also a former speech and debate teacher/coach, so I know that you can make a valid case for and defend any side of any issue in a convincing way – which means that sometimes justice is just, and other times it’s wrong, but well-argued. Scary. I decided to fuse those two ideas with an interpersonal communication concept called The Johari Window which has to do with what others know about us vs. what we know about ourselves. And HOUSE OF SECRETS was born.

Were you happy with how the issues were received when they were originally released?

Steven T. Seagle: I was very happy with our response from fans and readers. People who read the book were effusive and really liked the risks our storytelling took. HOUSE was a very experimental project. We did a lot of stuff that other people did ten years later and got mad credit for, but we were there first! We did some other things that people still haven’t gotten around to yet. So on that level, HOUSE holds a warm spot in my heart. Do I wish the book had “caught fire” more? Sure. I think we were as interesting as any Vertigo book of our time, but we just didn’t get the nod from the tastemakers to propel us into being the buzz-book of the moment. I used to accept that it was just us, but now that I’ve been looking back on what we put out there? I’m blaming others! It was a cool comic!

Was it always the plan to stop after 25 issues? Looking back at the series, would you have liked more issues or have done anything differently?

Steven T. Seagle: The truth of the matter is that we were falling further and further behind on our schedule month after month and that wasn’t doing Shelly any favors at her weekly editorial meetings. I think if Teddy and I would have kept the book on schedule, it would have lasted longer. But Shelly and I cooked up the idea to end it at issue 25 and shift to a series of annual specials that could be fully painted, and scheduled only when they were finished. We put out the first of these, FAÇADE, and then Teddy and I wanted to pursue other ideas, so HOUSE was vacated.

With the House of Secrets Omnibus being introduced to a new generation of comic book readers and horror fans, do you have any interest in revisiting this world and working on another House of Secrets series?

Steven T. Seagle: I created HOUSE OF SECRETS specifically to work with Teddy. When HOUSE ended, Teddy and I worked on it’s a bird… together. That book was a critical success and won Teddy an Eisner for his art. Then we started on a new book called GENIUS which comes out from First:Second this July. Then we did a freaky mash-up comic called THE RED DIARY/THE RE[a]D DIARY . This was a European album Teddy put out in France and Denmark that I “translated” by looking only at the art and keeping the balloons in the same places and guessing what the story was about (since I don’t speak French or Danish). My company MAN OF ACTION was kind enough to let me put the book out via our amazing publishers Image Comics last year and Teddy is, once again, nominated for an Eisner Award for his painting on that this year. Teddy and I have now got about 20 pages of our next book together completed. So going back to HOUSE isn’t necessary, we’re still experimenting and creating together which was the intent all along.

Aside from House of Secrets 1-25, the omnibus also includes Winter's Edge and Facade. Are there any other materials included that will interest fans that already own the individual issues?

Steven T. Seagle: I went back through my files and dug out every artifact I could find. And aside from one cool thing which was way too long to include, I put in almost every scrap of art/story/ephemera that I could. There’s lots of great images no one has ever seen floating around the volume. I wrote a new narrative for Rain to “host” her own extras and that was a lot of fun and kept even that part of the project “meta”. I also worked closely with DCs excellent designer, Louis Prandi, to create a book that looks like it’s in a state of construction – all rough edges , very little “finish”, blueprints of sketches – so that the architecture of the book would show through. And collected editions editor Scott Nybakken was kind enough to let me order the series in the book the way I’d imagined it initially rather than the way it was eventually printed, so it’s kind of a new reading experience too.

With so many comic book properties being turned into movies and television shows, is there any interest from you and/or DC in seeing a live version of House of Secrets?

Steven T. Seagle: As I mentioned, we did a development back in the day with Marc Canton for Warner Brothers for a feature film. We got through two script drafts before the teen horror market collapsed and the movie went on the shelf. But the story is still creepily relevant to these times to be sure. But now that I’ve moved into working as a writer and producer in television, I think I see HOUSE OF SECRETS working better in that space.

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The hardcover edition of House of Secrets contains House of Secrets #1-25, along with Vertigo: Winter's Edge #1, and the 2-part Facade miniseries:

"In the fully painted psychological thriller and horror story HOUSE OF SECRETS, teenage runaway Rain Harper becomes part of a supernatural justice system when she takes up residence in a haunted Seattle mansion. Holding court within the abandoned house, five otherworldly ghostly spirits known as the Juris hypnotically summon people to the house and judge them for the secrets that they keep. Acting as a "witness" that binds the Juris' trials to this plane of existence, Rain is forced to validate the decisions of the Juris as she simultaneously tries to save the defendants from their sentences and keep her own sequestered secrets from falling under the notice of the arcane court she serves."