Locke & Key: Volume 1: Welcome To Lovecraft
Written by Joe Hill
Art by Gabriel Rodríguez
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JOEL
Barbican Comic Forum
00000000 / Kraken
Brain Teeth
So as far as I can see it – there are three different ways we could approach this.
The first is of course the Netflix series which yeah: is not very good really is it? I mean: it’s very actively terrible of course (I’m not sure that the algorithms would ever allow for that) but it’s also – not really anything that that’s good. Which I’m starting to fear is the future for our televisual entertainment. Anything that ever actually stinks but also nothing that never actually manages to reach the point that’s actually transcendent or hell even worth the time that you choose to give it. I mean that’s all par for the course right? No one ever really expects Netflix to be amazing. That’s not really what it’s there for – it’s the McDonalds of TV after all. But it’s just kinda weird that they managed to do it with Locke & Key which I’ve gotta say – is probably one of the best mainstream comic series of the 21st Century (yep) and is basically just sitting there waiting to be adapted into what could very easily be one of the best mainstream TV series of the 21st Century (yep) and but instead is – just another Netflix show (yawn).
I remember reading an interview with the director of that Jonah Hill thing which the people who took part in an experimental drug thing where all of their minds were connected into a super computer thing (and the fact that I can’t recall what the hell it was even called is so very incredibly telling) and he was saying that Netflix have their algorithms worked out to such a point that they can tell creators “oh yeah don’t do that thing” because they know exactly how many people will switch off their sets at that point – which at the time I read it seemed like a cool obvious thing: but now having watched all of season 1 of Locke & Key (what can I say? I had a slow weekend) I’m now convinced that it means we’re all doomed to a future of TV where nothing actually too much ever happens. And well – if there’s one thing that Locke & Key (the comic) is very much about – it’s doing things which are a little bit “too much.” (which yeah is a big part of why I love it so). But means that the Netflix version is a little like watching a Fast and the Furious film where they’ve decided to take out all of the bits with the fast cars.
All of which is to say: if you haven’t read it yet – I would very much recommend it.
JONATHAN
Barbican Comic Forum
I had heard good things about Locke & Key but I wasn’t expecting so much plot. I just figured it would be key of the week: guys find a key have a few laughs, move on to the next key, maybe Cthulhu is behind one of the doors, that sort of thing. But no, Locke & Key gets really serious really quickly, and does not let go of that.
The result is that these kids are really fucked up worse than Batman about their dad’s murder, and the book refuses to give them a free pass. There is a panel where it says Ty is working himself to distract from the trauma of the incident but then then next panel shows that each stone he moves is reliving how he stoved in a man’s head. Just in that one picture we know everything about what that character did and what he’s capable of doing again. And with that much drama I sort of wonder if you need the whole key thing, because at the beginning it feels kind of frivolous.
But it does mean the tension is turned up to 100 for every scene. It should be enough to have an escaped murderer on your trail looking for revenge; or an evil ghost lady; or to be dabbling with the dark arts in a haunted house; or to have a family screwed up by grief; but what you have from this panel is that while they are in so much jeopardy you feel the characters couldn’t bear another bereavement. So the book carries this tension which is built up throughout and that tension informs the characters choices right up until you think the worst has happened. And that’s the genius of the keys, because without them the story would be stuck in endless moping, because the corner they are in so difficult, really the only thing that can save this family is magic. Sure they try everything else but the book creates its own pressure valve, and then to twist the knife, the keys they depend on are possibly the cause of all their problems.
Although another cause of their problems may also be that their dad bequeathed them a haunted house in the first place. In the of event of my untimely death, I will mainly be leaving this rich literary legacy of my thoughts on popular films and graphic novels. But when my solicitor suggested leaving them a haunted house in my will I said “no, please continue to use my extensive estate as part ancient and secretive sorority house, part insane asylum, and part illicit scientific research facility. I mean it just makes sense to diversify in the property market.” So I feel that Randall Locke may be a bit of dumbass. When I read this and watched the TV show I hadn’t realised Joe Hill was Stephen King’s son, and I think what’s interesting is that by creating an unreliable parent with a cursed legacy of magic and wonder, and another parent who is a damaged alcoholic, it made think “damn, I guess you really went there buddy.”
AMANDA
Barbican Comic Forum
Jonathan wrote: “these kids are really fucked up worse than Batman about their dad’s murder, and the book refuses to give them a free pass.”
At the risk of getting a bit dark:
Murder propels superhero and ‘hero’s journey’ stories pretty often, doesn’t it? Thinking back to previous LGNN discussions we’ve had Batman (parents: murdered), Wicked + Divine (Laura’s family and several pantheon: murdered), Daredevil (dad and several girlfriends: murdered; see also: women in refrigerators trope), The Boys (Hughie’s girlfriend: manslaughtered), Spider-Man (uncle: murdered)…
It’s a common thread – but it feels like these comics tend to avoid digging into the resulting grief in a relatable, realistic way. The grief is there (and for Daredevil it’s overwhelmingly, oppressively present in many runs), but it manifests in superhuman, fantastical ways. A rich young man travels the world learning obscure martial arts and buys himself an arsenal of gadgets and bat costumes to beat up thugs. A plucky teenager with superstrength and spider-senses gets taken under the wing of a group of fellow superpeople and also beats up thugs. A sulky teenager/god-celebrity conjures neon hell vines to beat up other teenagers and explodes a villain’s head with a snap of fingers. And so on.
This wish fulfilment, escapist, fantastical approach is of course fine – and it’s often what I/we seek as readers! – but it’s not exactly relatable or realistic.
By contrast, Locke & Key starts out with a bracingly human response to the trauma of murder. I first read the series a few years ago, not long after experiencing a particularly heinous bereavement of someone very close to me (the panel with Rendell’s injured body, slumped and undignified at the bottom of the ladder is uncomfortably familiar). I was, and am, struck by how well-observed the family’s reactions are. Kinsey wanting people to see her as a whole person (or to not see her at all) rather than label and pity her as a victim – yep, that’s reality. Tyler putting on a brave face for his family but crumbling when alone, unable to escape how his own actions might have contributed – yep, reality. Bode’s unsettling, cryptic nightmares – yep, reality.
I know all the usual wish fulfilment/escapism/fantasy approaches to trauma appear in this series too, but I really appreciate how Locke & Key gives its characters a volume’s worth of space to grieve as ordinary people before that stuff properly sets in.
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I don’t want to depress the thread to death, so I’ll leave it on a different note: I’m a bit frustrated with myself for not getting on with the character art (I have no qualms with the layout and structure and colours and the experimentation Joel mentioned; it all flows and tells the story very well in that sense). There is just something about their weirdly enormous eyes and occasional ducklips and the way Sam looks about 40 rather than 17 that I can’t get past, and it’s a shame, because it occasionally takes me out of the story. I don’t think it’s bad, it’s just not to my taste!
Last minute add-on: I really like how a lot of the backgrounds – especially in settings in/around keyhouse, and some of the big setpieces with the well – use that woodblock/engraving sort of effect for detail and shading. It reminds me of Victorian-era illustration and, to me anyway, there’s a moodiness or spookiness to that style that I think works really well for the story.
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