James Tynion IV and Álvaro Martínez Bueno’s The Nice House On The Lake (along with its follow-up series The Nice House By The Sea) is one of the greatest mind-bending horror stories — comics or otherwise — of the decade. Without spoiling the surprise premise, which is mostly laid out in the first few issues, it’s about a group of 10 people who are invited to their mutual friend Walter’s nice lake house in Wisconsin.

They all know him, but they don’t all know each other. Some grew up in Wisconsin with Walter, some went to college with him, and some met him after graduation when he moved to New York. Some supernatural stuff has happened at this point in the series, leaving the house (and everyone in it) effectively cut off from the outside world. A month has passed, Walter is missing, and the gang is trying to adjust to their unnervingly idyllic life in the — ahem — nice house on the lake.

Each issue has a different POV character, and the POV character for this issue is David, a.k.a. “The Comedian.” As the rest of the group enjoys the house’s seemingly endless supply of books or takes in the natural splendor of The Dairy State, David hangs around and tries to make small talk with the people he’s going to be spending… the foreseeable future with. And, since nearly everyone came in from out of state, he keeps starting off with the same question: “Did you fly in to Madison or Milwaukee?”

A perfectly innocuous question, and yet nobody can give him a straight answer. Some brush him off, some say they don’t remember, and some just shrug and say “Oh, it was probably Milwaukee.” And, reader, let me break the fourth wall and tell you: that really bugged me. I live in Wisconsin, I have flown in to both MKE and MSN airports, and there is no chance whatsoever you could confuse the two of them.

One is in a city, and you’d have to go through a maze of freeways to get to a nice house on the lake up north. The other is just outside of a much smaller city, and — no disrespect to the suburbs of Madison — you’ll be effectively in the middle of nowhere much faster. You’d likely also have to pass through Wisconsin Dells from Madison, and you wouldn’t forget seeing that many waterslides or the Tommy Bartlett Robot World. You might even hug Lake Michigan for a bit if you were coming from Milwaukee. These people should know which airport they landed at!!

And that’s the point. James Tynion IV actually grew up in Milwaukee, and he likely knows that people would know the difference between the two airports. It’s not a mistake, then, which means it’s a clue. A clue to the fact that something is amiss at the nice house, and not the stuff that we already know is amiss from the previous few issues. And, by teasing it out like this, Tynion lets the reader catch on at the same time as the characters in the book. David’s not asking everyone about airports because he’s curious, but because it’s a test. He knows they should recognize the difference between MKE and MSN, and so he knows that it’s weird that they don’t. It’s a plot point!

It’s a fantastic little trick that Tynion pulls off brilliantly, and it’s just one of many little moments that makes Nice House On The Lake so special. (It’s also the moment that convinced me to follow Tynion wherever he goes. Have you read SIKTC? It rips.)

I haven’t decided what I should write about next week. Maybe a little Transformers finally? That’s where I’m leaning, so… let me know if you have strong feelings about that one way or another.