Shadows over Lovecraft

Locke & Key is the best comic series out there. You should be reading it.


I must've raved about this before, shirley? I'm sure I've been telling people to buy it for months now. At least, I've been thinking it pretty loudly.

Roughly speaking, it's the story of three children coping with their father's brutal murder and discovering the weird secrets of their new home, the aptly named "Keyhouse". Only, that doesn't really do it justice. I'm not sure any summary can, because half the pleasure is in the wonderful art of Gabriel Rodriguez (gorgeously coloured by Jay Fotos) and the other half is in the sheer....madness. The weirdness quotient just builds and builds: most of the way through the third miniseries and I thought nothing could surprise me any more, but no, there was another brain-melting moment in the last few pages of the latest issue (Crown of Shadows #4). Perhaps if I took some time to step back and reread the whole series more carefully, I'd be able to offer a more constructive review, rather than just gushing with praise, but that's for later. Right now I'm enjoying the ride.

The writer, Joe Hill, first came to my attention when I entered a book review competition a few years back purely to get my hands on a new book before it went to print. The book I was given was Heart Shaped Box and, not being much of a horror fan, I was pleasantly surprised. I wrote my review and didn't win, but I did get an honorable mention, which is what I keep clinging onto whenever I get the crazy idea to start writing reviews again. (If I ever find the review, I'll post it or something. If I haven't already.) So I saw Hill had brought out a new comic miniseries that came highly recommended by the usually reliable SFX, I thought I'd pick up the first copy to see what it's like.

It's now the only comic I buy as it comes out, and the wait between issues is excruciating.

The first miniseries, Welcome to Lovecraft, introduces us to Tyler, Kinsey and Bode Locke, who move, with their mother, to the family estate in Lovecraft, Mass. following the death of their father. There, the youngest, Bode, discovers a door that separates body and spirit when you try to go through it, and meets, and later frees, a supernatural being that was probably trapped on purpose for a good readon. Their father's killer escapes prison, with help of said supernatural being, and goes after the family again. Ok, I know that sounds a little predictable, but trust me, it's a good story, and a good-looking one too. It's now available in paperback, and as well as acting as a prologue to the rest of the series, is probably the most self-contained, so really you have no excuse not to give it a go. Go buy it. Now. If you read it and hate it, you need never listen to any of my recommendations again.

If you love it, though, you can move on Head Games (which will be out in paperback). This is where things start to get really strange. We get hints of things in the Locke family past, and Bode finds another key. If I have one criticism, it's that it just ends too soon and asks far too many questions while answering very few. But again, the art is beautiful, the characters alive and believable, and the world rich and deep enough for me to want to explore much more. (A friend said it's a very game-able setting - I'd love to see what he'd do if he got the licence for a L&K RPG.....) Fortunately, I didn't have to wait too long before the most recent miniseries started: Crown of Shadows. Just read #4 of 6, and so far we've discovered more about the past, realised how awesome and bad-ass Kinsey actually is and had everything go badly for the kids as the bad guy(s) went on the attack. Oh yeah, and another key. Unless you want to scrounge around for back issues, you'll probably want to wait for the collection, but I'll probably be raving about the last two issues before then, if not here, then on twitter. Maybe there'll be proper spoilers at some point. Just warning you.

So that's my not-quite-review of Locke & Key. The one for Heart Shaped Box was probably better.