'Locke & Key: Welcome to Lovecraft'

By Don M. Ventura
Locke & Key, Volume 1: Welcome to Lovecraft
IDW
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Over the past six months I’ve been trying to pick up as many of those books that seems to be unanimously recommended.  While it was definitely on my short list, I had often heard Locke & Key described as gothic, a word that rarely elicits a positive response.

 

And it would be apropos to describe the setting of Locke & Key as gothic, but my reaction was nothing short of delight at the original story that unfolded in the first hardcover trade Locke & Key: Welcome to Lovecraft.

Locke & Key is the story of Locke family—three children and their mother—who have survived the brutal murder of their patriarch to the classmates of the eldest son. Tyler, Kinsey and Bode are the Locke children, who move to Lovecraft, Massachusetts, with their mother Nina and their uncle Duncan.   The family have come to stay at Keyhouse, their father’s childhood home. Little time is wasted before we learn that Keyhouse is just oozing with creepy things.

A well that speaks to Bode, the youngest of the Locke children. A doorway that, once passed through, turns you into a ghost while your lifeless body waits for you to return. Another door changes your sex when you walk through it. Pictures can call out to you. The book intimates to many more of Keyhouse’s eerie features, but you get the idea. This is Amityville with genuine chills.

Joe Hill has written a creatively frightening story with this opener to Lock & Key that I was only able to put down by finishing the damn thing.  While the tone remains dark throughout, Hill protects his story from growing too morose by seeing much of the action through the eyes of young Bode, who narrates a great deal of the story. Nonetheless, we only begin to scratch the surface of how truly dangerous Keyhouse really is. By the story’s conclusion the Locke’s are generally still unaware of what they have walked into.

The scenes that carried the most emotional heft in the book are those that feature Kinsey as she tries to adapt to life in Lovecraft by blending in and going unnoticed. She does not want to be known as the girl whose father was murdered. Hill taps into the truest, most honest feelings during these scenes as Kinsey struggles to maintain normalcy while holding people at arm’s length.

The art by Gabriel Rodgriguez fits the tone of Hill’s scripts. I was glad to see that the artist has remained on the book through it’s current run (the fourth trade will be released later this year). Rodriguez draws really gruesome scenes of hyper-violence—and Hill writes enough of those—but his characters faces are so emotive, which is essential to the story being told.

Of all the nightmares in Locke & Key, the worst of them is Sam Lesser. Sam is a sad sack teenager who attends high school with Tyler and stumbles upon the secrets of Keyhouse. Sam is easily seduced by a voice that promises everything Sam has always wanted: a better face and a better life.  Sam lives in his own nightmare of being shared between two parents who seem to challenge one another to love their son less.

Sam goes on a murdering spree to unlock the secrets of Keyhouse. Tearing apart the Locke family was only the start. He carelessly lays waste to several innocents (well, most of them) as he makes his was to Keyhouse and the voice that is beckoning him.

Locke & Key is a haunting book. I mean in that wonderful way where you continue to think about it over the next few days and pull it back off the shelf to look back through it, immediately reminding yourself that it was as good as you remembered.

Perhaps the most surprising thing for me was the amount of heart at the heart of this book. Hill takes time to get squarely into the heads of Locke & Key’s three protagonists and how they deal with the unimaginable death of their father. There is nothing disingenuous here. There is Kinsey trying to remain hidden, Bode going about life and making naively honest observations, and Tyler as he copes with the guilt over his father’s murder. The only small qualm I had was how little time is spent with Nina.

Locke & Key: Welcome to Lovecraft is deserving of all the praise bestowed upon it. Now onto Locke & Key: Head Games!