Saturday, December 14, 2013

Mini comics review: Locke & Key: Welcome to Lovecraft

In support of my author-crush on Joe Hill (and also because my friend Spencer recommended it), I picked up the first trade paperback of Locke & Key, "Welcome to Lovecraft." The Locke siblings, Tyler, Kinsey and Bode, have had it tough recently: their dad was murdered by a psychotic student and their mom moved them across the country to the town of Lovecraft in New England.  Their new home is the strange Keyhouse, the mansion where their father grew up, which holds wonders and horrors and secrets.  Trouble follows the Locke family to Lovecraft, violent, relentless trouble.  Author Joe Hill and artist Gabriel Rodriguez draw the reader in and raise the stakes immediately; this story is unsparing.

I'm pretty limited in my exposure to comics.  I enjoy Y: The Last Man, Fables, The Umbrella Academy; I collected "Season 8" of Buffy the Vampire Slayer; I suffered through the first 100 issues of The Walking Dead.  Buffy just got too far out there for me and I gave up.  TWD I find just too grim and gruesome.  I like reading horror novels - Stephen King, Joe Hill, some Clive Barker, Justin Cronin - but the scary comics are just too much: I think I prefer the images in my head to the images on the page.  That's why I just didn't wholeheartedly embrace Locke & Key ... and yet I'm torn because I am interested in the story, just not the artwork.  I think I'll try the next TPB and see how it leaves me.

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