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It is the discipline of form. Not unlike writing in pentameter, Seagle tells the five stories of “Blueprint” in single-panel exposition, only allowing only two panels per page. Like his fictional architect William Babcock, Seagle weaves these five tales into a single work, a perfect narrative line. For readers to easily join the panels to their correct stories, Seagle writes each tale in distinctive narrative form, and unique captioning style. Babcock’s story around his occul inspiration for the Mansion’s design, takes the form of a letter captioned in ornate penmanship.
Through Babcock’s letter, the story of a love affair between construction foreman Ed and Missus Reichuss, and the story of a power-struggle within the Duwamish tribe who originally used the Mansion’s property as a place of exile and punishment, Seagle unfolds a prehistory of horror around Reichhuss Mansion. Along with the more esoteric vignettes wherein Babcock’s blueprint and the Mansion relate their ‘own’ stories, Seagle unveils a supernatural conspiracy by which unseen forces influence events to ultimately make the Mansion’s construction inevitable.
The richness of “Blueprint” lies in exactly this lingering sensation of the unseen winding its way through coincidence and happenstance. Seemingly unconnected events intersect each other until a perfect chain of consequence leads to the Mansion being built and the ghostly jury being ‘awakened’ to take up residence. Just as each panel is nothing more than a segment, luring the reader into the false sense of being momentarily afforded a glimpse of a fully-developed world, so too do the unseen spirits become the central characters animate the lives of Babock, Foreman Ed and Audrey Reichuss.
Originally detailing the story of Rain, a refugee of the Seattle grunge scene of the ‘90’s, House of Secrets’ seventh issue provides readers not only with an origin for the possessed Mansion, but also a comment on comics crossovers as the tales of Ed, Babcock, Audrey and the Duwamish intersect to produce something of enduring horror.
