The Fackin Line Has Been Drawn: Locke & Key: Omega #4 Review

As often happens with recent individual issues of Locke & Key, I am of varying minds about recommending issue 4 of Locke & Key: Omega. On one hand, I want to tell you that, if you’re already reading Locke & Key, you’ll want to pick up this issue because it’s packed with action, suspense, violence, and a couple of damn satisfying – if small – triumphs on the part of the Locke kids’ mom, Tyler and disembodied Bode… but I also know that if you’re already reading Locke & Key, you’re gonna buy this issue come hell or high water, because that’s what this title does to you if you even like horror at all.

On the other hand, I want to tell you that, if you’ve never read Locke & Key, that the issue is packed with action, suspense, violence, and a couple of damn satisfying – if small – triumphs on the part of some shitfaced lady, a foulmouthed teenager, and a ghost… none of whom you will know. And therefore, unlike a recent issue of Locke & Key: Omega, it is not a particularly good place to jump in if you want to have any real understanding of what the hell is going on.

If you are not a regular reader, it is, however, an excellent place to jump in if you want to see, completely without context, giant monkeys attacking and murdering teenagers. And if you’re a bloated, drunken, 42-year-old suburbanite like me, maybe that’ll be enough for you.

It is Prom Night in Lovecraft, Massachusetts and, as you might expect would happen in a community named after the guy who invented C’thuhlu, everything is going to hell. Tyler Locke and his uncle Duncan are under attack by living shadows. Tyler’s mom has been forced, against her will, into a drunkenness so severe that she is finding the ability to use the phone almost impossible – and considering a couple of weeks ago I was so hammered I was almost incapable of ordering a pizza from Domino’s, a place who exists only to accept orders of pizza from drunk people, I can relate. And the attendees of the junior prom are being attacked by living shadow versions of King Kong by Dodge, a kid from the 80s, hiding in the body of prepubescent child Bode… which one would think would mean he’d go less for giant monkeys and more for Giger-esque versions of Kick Buttowski, but what do I know; I just work here. Meanwhile, Rufus Whedon, an autistic child who is the only one who knows that Bode isn’t actually Bode, rides the bus back to Lovecraft to kick ass and chew bubblegum… and his mom doesn’t let him chew bubblegum.

So we are at the point in Locke & Key where things are coming to a head fast and furious, and that means we have a ton of action happening across a bunch of different fronts here. And those fronts run a fair gamut of fairly classic horror story tropes. When it comes to Tyler and Duncan, we have a combination of Night of The Living Dead and Pitch Black: some dudes trapped in a house trying to keep the monsters outside at bay; monsters who are afraid of the light. Looking at the prom kids in the cave, we’ve got a nice mix of The Descent, Jurassic Park and Carrie – which I hate to bring up because I think writer Joe Hill is good enough and deserving of respect on his own without in any way referencing his father Stephen King’s work when speaking of Hill’s, but a bunch of kids getting fucked up at a prom sort of demands the observation – of kids in a cave being attacked by monsters at the behest of someone who hates them for reasons they don’t even understand.

All of this means that, throughout the issue, we have some well-executed classic horror imagery going on, albeit imagery that we have seen, in some form or another, in other horror stories. But there were two parts of the story that hit me harder than the others, and the first was Mrs. Locke, shitfaced beyond comprehension, trying like hell to pull her shit together enough to be able to call for help for her children. Now, part of why that was compelling to me is because I am a drinker, and I know what it’s like to shamble around hammered, muttering to yourself in self-pity, And frankly, any sequence becomes compelling when the focus drunkenly screeches, ” I draw the fackin line at livin’ Shamwows. The fackin line has been drawn!” But it was the little victory of this poor woman,  in a condition she has previously voluntarily sought out for solace, fighting against it to do what’s right, that I found at least as compelling as Tyler fighting shadow demons. And while that might be personal – again, I’ve recently been too drunk to order a pizza – it still felt human and satisfying to read.

The second affecting part was Rufus’s journey back toward home, and that worked for me for a couple of reasons. The first being that I clearly like the character so damn much, but the second was that his short moments here in the book were such a quiet contrast to the mayhem going on through the rest of the issue. We are shown throughout the issue that even trained cops and people familiar with magic are being utterly fucked by Dodge and his shadow demons. There is nothing good to be gained by being anywhere near Keyhouse right now… and yet here’s this little kid with a mental handicap and a toy robot for company going stoically and implacably into the belly of the beast to stop it. How? Who knows? But seeing him on a bus, going to do what he has to do, literally a page after we see a giant shadow ape utterly destroy a party has a pretty strong emotional effect.

Gabriel Rodriguez’s art continues to just rip up this book. In this issue, Rodriguez is called upon to draw everything from giddy teenagers making out to ghosts to giant apes with lip rings to a child with the terrible, malevolent intelligence of an adult whose seen the Elder Gods in person, and he does it with fine detail, extremely expressive faces, and a variety of weird imagery to keep everything looking interesting. What really got me were the early prom sequences; Rodriguez did a double-page sequence of four long panels of the same image at the same camera angle with the same people. It would have been easy for Rodriguez to Xerox the same image and show just minor changes as many artists would, but the artist clearly drew each panel individually, with everyone’s attention and position changing by the panel. All in all, this is excellent, hand-crafted pencilling, running the gamut from the sacred to the profane, and looking good through the entire issue.

Locke & Key: Omega #4 is a terrible place for new readers to jump in. We have a ton of characters new readers won’t know, all in predicaments they won’t understand for reasons that aren’t clear. However, for familiar readers, we have things moving rapidly and satisfyingly to a climax… and if you want to check out the series for the first time in this issue? You got shitfaced women, evil children and teenagers getting whacked. It’s 50 Shades of Gray for middle-aged guys. It’s worth looking at… but buy those damn trades first, for the love of God.