Locke & Key

Series: Locke & Key
Words: Joe Hill
Images: Gabriel Rodriguez
Issue Number: 1-3
Release Date:
Format: Trade Paperback

 

I am a little late to the Locke & Key party since it started coming out in 2008. But it is a comic that is new to me.

A horror comic that starts out by naming issue one Welcome to Lovecraft gives itself some pretty big boots to fill. Luckily for Joe Hill and Gabriel Rodriguez Locke & Key seems to be a hit. It has only just come to my attention that on top of writing Locke and Key Hill also writes books with out pictures. I may have to also pick up one of those.

If you like to read horror then Locke & Key is well worth checking out. If you like reading speculative fiction or weird fiction I would also suggest checking it out. I would describe Locke & Key as existing some where in the borders or those three groups. At times it verges on disturbing and a little on the violent side. There is some blending between that and an engaging supernatural story.

You get to watch the characters deal with both real life evil (the murder of their father) and trauma and then also deal with the supernatural evil (the thing that lives in the well house) and the just plain weird (the keys that change reality slightly). Following the murder of their father the kids move to their father’s childhood home in New England with their mother. Each character is imperfectly dealing with their father’s death, their own sense of survivor’s guilt and PTSD. They are all flawed, broken and just trying to keep it together.

By the end of the first trade I was hooked but I had a hard time thinking that the series would continue to live up to expectations. Three trades in and each one has impressed me more and more.

Well worth reading even if you do not usually go for graphic novels.