Comic Info
Comic Name: The Dollhouse Family
Publisher: DC Comics/Black Label/Joe Hill Presents: Hill House Comics
Writer: M.R. Carey
Artist: Peter Gross/Vince Locke
# of Issues: 6
Release Date: 2020
The Dollhouse Family #4
Reprints The Dollhouse Family #1-6 (January 2020-June 2020). When Alice was little, she received a special gift…an antique dollhouse that had been handed down in her family for generations. Alice discovered that the dollhouse was special and that the people inside the dollhouse were really alive. There is also something else living in the dollhouse in a secret room that no one could see…and that something wants Alice and her family!
Written by M.R. Carey, The Dollhouse Family is a DC Comics horror comic book series released under the DC Black Label. The series is part of the Joe Hill Presents: Hill House Comics and features art by Peter Gross and Vince Locke. Not included in the collection are the Sea Dogs back-up stories.
I love creepy toy horror stories and when I heard about The Dollhouse Family, I wanted to read it. I picked up the collection and completely forgot that Joe Hill wasn’t the writer and that Hill House comics was almost a sub-label. With that initial confusion cleared up, I dove into comic and enjoyed what I found. Due to story aspects, a ******spoiler alert****** is in effect for the rest of the review.
The Dollhouse Family #6
The story starts out simple enough. There is a creepy dollhouse and the girl finds that the people inside are alive. In classic horror fashion, they start begging her to be part of their “family” but it has a cost. This is where things get weird. The story is told as a mixing of timelines with Alice “present” combined with Alice’s ancestor. The motivation of the dollhouse’s “Dark Room” are touched upon in the first few pages of the first issue, but they aren’t fleshed out until the end of the series…which keeps you as a reader invested.
When mixing supernatural and science-fiction into some of these classic, gothic horror stories, some of the events feel a little arbitrary. The seemingly random parts of the story do tie into the bigger story, but if you can’t hold out (though it is a rather short story), it might feel a bit over-the-top (I know why explaining a missing leg restored would be tough, but it also feels like there would be enough people to corroborate her story like the doctors and nurses to justify telling it).
The Dollhouse Family was a fun romp into supernatural horror. The series ends rather oddly sci-fi with parallel worlds and lives coming into play as time is rewritten. There is also a weirdly superhero origin type story in the book with the main character being born with a gift. I would be onboard to see the adventures of Una as a monster-slayer type creature…which is something I’d never expect this book to lead to when I started it.
