On the Coffee Table: Locke & Key

Title: Locke & Key, Volume 1: Welcome to Lovecraft
Writer: Joe Hill
Artist: Garbriel Rodriguez

via Wikipedia

Even if you've never heard of Joe Hill, it's highly likely you've heard of his father.  Joe Hill is the pen name of Joseph Hillstrom King, son of Stephen and Tabitha King.  For perfectly understandable reasons, Hill uses a pseudonym so he might have a writing career independent of his literary titan father.  It's an attitude I totally respect, yet there's no denying that writing page-turners runs in the family.  Call it nature or nurture, Hill definitely knows how to spin a yarn.

Rather than the traditional monthly delivery for comic books, Locke & Key is published in limited series.  Welcome to Lovecraft ran from February to July 2008.  The next story, Head Games, picked up in January 2009.  After witnessing the gruesome murder of his father, Tyler Locke and his family move across country to Lovecraft, their father's childhood home and current residence of Tyler's uncle.  The house is filled with doors of mysterious nature.  Bode, Tyler's younger brother, discovers the Ghost Door.  He steps through it, his physical body dies while he becomes a ghost until he re-enters the door from the opposite direction.

Bode also discovers the well and the entity who lives within it.  Said entity is also in touch with Sam, Dad's murderer, in jail back in California.  Sam escapes, then makes his way to Lovecraft in order to set the entity free, no qualms about killing again to accomplish this.

Tension mounts gradually to a thrilling ending.  Even as this initial story wraps up, new questions emerge to be answered - plenty of avenues for the tales to come.  Locke & Key contains ample gruesome violence but it all serves the narrative.  The storytelling is masterful and Rodriguez's artwork plenty creepy to match.  Locke & Key definitely works for me.