Anarchy In Lovecraft: Locke & Key: Alpha #1 Review

Editor’s Note: Cthulhu Fthagn! Ph’nglui spoilers Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn!

Basically, I see your crazy and raise. It’s the only way to live.

– Tyler Locke

And with that line, if nothing else, Locke & Key: Alpha #1 has finally settled the question as to what I want engraved on my tombstone.

I opened with that line because I’m finding it hard to review the actual comic book. First of all, this thing is a monster – 32 pages, not counting the “special features” toward the end of the issue – with battles and conflicts happening in about four different places with interchanging teams of characters fighting different threats at varying times.

Second, it’s a hard single issue to summarize. We jump back and forth between the characters, each of which is in a different form of mortal danger at least once, and many of them don’t make it through the issue. The nature of the threats to the characters changes from demons to torture to taunting to thrown rocks, so there’s no simple throughline to follow to keep track of everything so it can be described concisely for people who might be looking for reviews to decide if they want to try the book or not.

Further, this just doesn’t scan like your average superhero comic book. Throughout the issue, we see villain Dodge using a variety of escalating levels of magic to try to enforce his will. But instead of your normal comic, where the heroes meet that power with more power, they generally resist by simple human means of courage and love and persistence, leading to almost the opposite of a standard comic book climax, where the action grows smaller and simpler and more intimate toward the conclusion.

And finally, this issue doesn’t end like your normal superhero comic. Because for all the violence and power displayed, this issue concludes with a simple grapple between the villain and an ancillary character. And unlike in your standard comic, writer Joe Hill and artist Gabriel Rodriguez give us a conclusion that makes a hard distinction between the bad guys losing and the good guys actually winning.

So I’ve struggled to decide how to write about this issue. So we’ll go with this to start: if you have been following Locke & Key, this is a spectacular ending (yeah, there’s one more issue, but based on this one, it looks like it’s gonna be a simple denouement) that pays off on just about tease and promise that has been made to the reader leading up to this moment. And if you have not been reading Locke & Key? Well, start with the trades and give this one a wide berth until you’re up to speed.

Don’t Go Back To Nahant: Boston Comic Con 2013’s Locke & Key Panel Full Report

Editor’s Note: If this writeup of Sunday’s Locke & Key panel sounds fun, you can see a bunch of video from the panel, with a lot of additional information that didn’t make this report, right here.

If Boston Comic Con had a single event that no other convention, regardless of size or location, could reproduce in 2013, it was the Locke & Key panel, because it featured all the main players in the production of the book: writer Joe Hill, artist Gabriel Rodriguez, and IDW Editor-in-Chief Chris Ryall. And considering that the book is coming to a conclusion in just a few months, and therefore all of these guys will be moving on to other projects, if you ever wanted to see these three guys interact and talk about Locke & Key while it’s an ongoing concern, the only place to be was the Waterfront Room at the Seaport World Trade Center at 2 p.m. on Sunday.

The one thing that that panel didn’t have was a hell of a lot in the way of actual news, but who the hell expected that? We all know the comic is closing up shop (minus the odd rumored one-shot, which wasn’t something that was addressed at the panel), we all know that the Fox pilot for a TV series is two years dead, and the Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman (of Star Trek reboot fame)-produced Locke & Key movie is only a month and a half into its existence, and there’s no way in hell that they would allow any hard information to be released in a function room full of people wearing t-shirts reading, “Yankees Suck!”

So these guys were not facing a crowd that was rabid for any new information (beyond maybe how, and who will make, Dodge eventually suck the pipe, but even that was a low-key questions; after all, the final issue is just about on its way), which meant that tensions were low for the panel, and it showed. The panel unofficially started with Hill looking at his phone at the stroke of 2 p.m., grabbing a microphone, and saying, “Guys, this just in: the BBC just announced that the next Doctor will be Jason Statham!”

And when the crowd groaned, Hill said, “It would be awesome, and you know it!”

Yeah, this panel looked to just be a good time. And it was.

Closing The Door: Video From Joe Hill’s and Gabriel Rodriguez’s Locke & Key Panel At Boston Comic Con 2013

Boston Comic Con is now over, and it certainly has one thing over the San Diego Comic-Con: getting back to the Crisis On Infinite Midlives Home Office from Boston Comic Con only took 20 minutes and cost $2.50 on the Massachusetts Turnpike.

Boston Comic Con might well have been a pleasant surprise and an exciting jump from a little regional convention to one that feels more and more like one of the bigger boys, but it certainly wasn’t perfect. In the coming day or two, either Amanda or I will be addressing the truly deficient methods this convention had for dealing with crowds both attempting to enter the convention and trying to attend the panels (for now, let’s leave it with the stark reality that, if someone tried to clear a convention room at SDCC in between panels, that effort would start with bemused laughter and end with a truly epic riot), but Boston provided some experiences that were indistinguishable from some of the biggest and best conventions in the world.

And one of those experiences is exhaustion. We are wiped out. And unlike when we attend San Diego, we don’t have a long flight and several vacation days with which we can recover; we’re right back to our daily lives tomorrow morning.

So while we will be publishing that general Boston Comic Con postmortem, as well as detailed coverage of Joe Hill’s, Gabriel Rodriguez’s, and IDW Editor-in-Chief Chris Ryall’s panel on Locke & Key (which, since Locke & Key is concluding, realistically marks the final time these creators will probably be in the same room at the same time), we didn’t want to leave you hanging while we weakly sip beer and appreciate our art purchases (Amanda picked up a J. O’Barr original sketch of Iggy Pop that is as awesome as it is an off-kilter work by the creator of The Crow) while yawning.

So in that spirit, here is a series of short videos we took of Hill and Rodriguez at the Locke & Key panel. And I gotta tell you: if you get a chance to see either of these guys at a convention panel, take it. Rodriguez is clearly enthusiastic about the work he does, and Hill is just plain old laugh-out-loud funny to see speak.

But don’t take my word for it; you can get a taste, straight from our YouTube Channel, right after the jump.

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.

Entry Portal: Locke & Key: Omega #2 Review

I hadn’t read any of Locke & Key, written by Joe Hill and drawn by Gabriel Rodriguez, until the Grindhouse one-shot came out back in September. At the time, I told myself that I hadn’t tried it because the word was it had a bunch of backstory and mythology crossing four already-released trade paperbacks worth of material, and between my heavy take of weekly comics and trying to run a comics Web site, I simply didn’t have the time or energy to throw myself into a deep horror tale that, based on titles alone, looked like another Lovecraft knockoff – sure, I loves me some Lovecraftian stories, but I think I’ve established I have little patience for bad ones. So why run the risk?

That was the reason that I told myself. Turns out the real reason I wasn’t reading Locke & Key is because I was a fucking idiot.

Locke & Key is a spectacular horror story, one that covers twenty years and more of mythology, yes, but which focuses on a small group of well-rounded characters in a limited, generally familiar setting – you know, minus the weird house and its funky magic keys. It has Lovecraftian elements, yes, but it also has so much more, and by keeping the people affected down to a small group, it accentuates the danger by making it easy to empathize with those in the thick of it. Yes, Locke & Key is all one big six-volume story (other than that Grindhouse one-shot), and yes, because of that, it is difficult to just grab an issue to understand who people are and what is happening to them, but four of those volumes are available in affordable trade paperback, with the fifth just out in hardcover… and if you’re anything like me, by the time you finish the fourth book, you’ll happily drop the extra few bucks to get the fifth right fucking now.

The sixth and final Locke & Key volume, Omega, is being released in normal comic book form right now; the second issue dropped on Wednesday. And while I have been digging it, I didn’t review the last month’s first issue because it is a late chapter in one big story. Which meant that if you hadn’t read any of the earlier issues, there wasn’t a hope in hell that a new reader would know what the hell was going on or why. And the same is true for this week’s second issue, but I’m going to review and recommend it anyway, even for new readers. Because even though new readers won’t know who the punk kid in the wedding dress is, or why there’s a naked child ghost wandering around with no wang, or if the black woman muttering “White. Stop. Dodge” is in the mental hospital due to a hideous Bombardment accident, I can guarantee they will lock onto the character of Rufus Whedon. And if the heart and cleverness with which Hill has embued this character doesn’t give you faith that maybe it’s worth starting Locke & Key from the beginning to see what he’s done with these other people you don’t know? Maybe comics really aren’t the hobby for you.

Existential, Non-Euclidian Horror, or: Locke & Key In Movie Development

Yeah, we fixed it (sort of; give us some more time)… and just in time. Because after a week of writer Joe Hill hinting coyly about it on his Twitter feed, it has just become official: Universal Pictures has optioned Hill’s and artist Gabriel Rodriguez’s Locke & Key comic for development as a movie.

The comic was developed as a television pilot a year or so ago for Fox, who decided not to pick up a series order (although if I recall correctly, the pilot, starring Nick Stahl from Carnivale and Terminator 3: Rise of The Machines was screened to good reaction at last year’s San Diego Comic-Con… which I missed, due to a prior commitment to an alcoholic blackout). It is now under development by Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman, who wrote the 2009 Star Trek reboot (Yay!), as well as the first Michael Bay Transformers movie (Boo!), with an eye toward turning it into a possible trilogy.

Tales From The Crypt Door: Locke & Key: Grindhouse One-Shot Review

I’m gonna have to start out this review by admitting that I haven never read Joe Hill’s and Gabriel Rodriguez’s Locke & Key series, which is a point of shame for a serious comics fan… particularly one who’s read and enjoyed Hill’s novels Horns and Heart Shaped Box… and before you start: yes, I can read books without pictures, smartass. I simply generally choose not to, which means that Hill’s novels must be pretty fucking good for me to break that habit. Either that, or I didn’t feel comfortable waiting for job interviews with a big Howard Chaykin trade paperback. But I’m getting off point here.

The point is that I knew nothing about Locke & Key other than its good reputation when I picked up the Locke & Key: Grindhouse one shot. I imagined that there were probably locks and keys involved, but whether they were of the door or the canal transit and-Florida-homosexual-mecca varieties, I had no fucking idea. And for all I know, the original story arcs are about either, both or all of those things. But this story is a period piece about criminals on the lam with nothing to lose, which is an effective and engaging throwback to EC Comics horror and crime stories from the 50s. And it’s really pretty damn cool.