Everyone knows that Wednesday is new comic book day. While picking up your new issues consider looking at some of the trade paperbacks and hard covers of past issues and story lines. But which ones should you choose?
That’s why every Tuesday, The Flickcast will recommend a collection of comics that are just as good, if not better, than the issues you are currently buying. Books that deserve to be read, and bought the next time you walk into your local comic book store.
The trade paperback you should check out this week is Locke & Key: Welcome to Lovecraft by IDW Comics. Locke & Key is one part horror, one part mystery, and ten parts of intrigue. It is a book that immediately after you finish reading it, your first thought will be, “Why haven’t I read this before?”
Locke & Key is the story of the three young Locke children, and what happens to them after their father is murdered. Their uncle invites the kids and their mother to move to Lovecraft, Massachusetts, where the home of the Locke family mansion also known as the Key house resides.
Everything seems to be settling back to normal for the kids until the youngest Locke boy finds a key with a skull on it, and when he inserts it into a certain door, he becomes a ghost. That one single turn of the key leads the three Locke children into a bigger mystery about the true nature of the house, its multiple special keys and doors, and the secret of what exactly is in the well out back.
This book has everything. Locke & Key just finished publishing its fourth volume of the series, so you know the mysteries and plot lines introduced in this volume play out over the long term. Writer Joe Hill, son of a writer you may have heard of before by the name of Stephen King, knows how to write characters.
Each of the Locke children is introduced slowly and carefully. We get to know them in the beginning so that we truly care about them when they are plunged into mortal danger at the end. Mr. Hill also knows how to carefully answer his mysteries. He gives the reader just enough to leave us satisfied, but still be curious enough to want to continue reading.
I cannot say enough good things about Locke & Key. The closest thing that I can compare it to is Lost. Except Locke & Key is the horror equivalent of Lost. The series is strong on characters, strong on mysteries, but the plot moves with the confidence that the writer knows what his endgame is.
Locke & Key should be a movie or television show. It’s that strong of a concept. In fact, Fox made a pilot of this first book last year, but declined to pick up the series for a full run. Do a quick search of YouTube, and you can find the trailer for the pilot. Then tell me that you wouldn’t watch it each week!
Until the time that Locke & Key graces our screens, run, don’t walk to your local comic book shop and pick up Locke & Key: Welcome to Lovecraft. You will not regret it. In fact, I bet you will find the story of the Locke children so compelling that you buy the other three volumes as soon as you finish volume one. I should know. It’s exactly what I did.
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