Locke & Key Vol 1: Welcome to Lovecraft by Joe Hill

Locke & Key, Vol 1: Welcome to Lovecraft
by Joe Hill (author) and Gabriel Rodriguez (artist) [741.5 Hil] 

I’ve been seeing the trade paperback collections of Locke & Key, written by Joe Hill, circulating in the libraries’ collection for the past year-or-more, and finally took the time to start reading the series. Each of the six oversized trade paperback graphic novels in this series compiles six individual comic-books into a novel-length story. In “Welcome to Lovecraft“, the first compilation volume, Tyler, Kinsey and young Bode Locke move, with their mother, from California to Lovecraft, Massachusetts, to live in the family estate known as Keyhouse. This follows the brutal murder of the kids’ father by a psychopath. As the Locke children settle into their new home, making new friends, they discover that Keyhouse has mysterious — mystical — properties. Bode discovers a doorway that when he passes through it allows him to leave his physical body behind and travel as a phantasm. He also discovers a malevolent spirit trapped at the bottom of a well…a spirit that continues to manipulate the man who killed Rendell Locke, and which is drawing him on a cross-country journey to kill the rest of the Locke family.

The writing of Joe Hill — Stephen King’s son, but a respected horror-master in his own right — and the art by Gabriel Rodriguez are superb. This first volume features only the beginning of the more horrific, supernatural and monstrous plot elements that come to dominate the subsequent volumes in the series, and feels more like a thriller with some paranormal elements on the side. I appreciate the metaphor of multiple “locks” and “keys” that recurs throughout this series, but which is set in motion to good effect in this volume.

[If you enjoy this, you may also wish to try the remaining 5 compilation volumes in the series, which definitely concludes with Volume Six: Alpha & Omega.]

[ IDW’s official Locke & Key web site ] | [ official Joe Hill web site ]

Recommended by Scott C.
Bennett Martin Public Library

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