Locke & Key might be the single best comic book on the stands right now – a roiling, captivating puzzlebox/family drama/supernatural generational struggle. If you’re a fan of King, Barker, Gaiman, Whedon or LOST then you’re already likely a fan of Locke & Key.
You just don’t know it yet.
Over four years after writer Joe Hill and artist Gabriel Rodriguez began the story of the Locke family, the mysterious house they call home, and the sinister woman in their well-house, the book’s creators are bringing the curtain down with a flourish.
Locke & Key: Omega #3 brings readers to the midway point of the story’s final arc, and Hill and Rodriguez continue to crank up the tension with clinical, sadistic precision, creating an uneasy feeling of evil’s inevitability. By the end of Omega #3 it seems entirely possible, even likely, that the Locke family (and, oh yeah, everybody else) is damned.
Locke & Key traffics in some liberal gore and a good amount of supernatural shenanigans, but the copious crimson and the multitude of monsters on display have never been the source of the book’s real chills. The two moments of true horror in this issue don’t have anything to do with monsters or magic or blood – they stem entirely from the characters that readers have grown to know over the past 5-plus years. For those who’ve taken the journey this far these moments are emotional horror arising out of what happens to these people, as people. With this issue creators Joe Hill and Gabriel Rodriguez are going to make some readers hate them, and in this case that’s a serious compliment.
Look, there’s no sense in recapping the story in this issue – it’s the middle portion of the last section of what is, arguably, a gorgeously illustrated novel about loss, family, greed, hate, childhood, adulthood, hope, death, addiction, memory, maturity, regret, fear, love, and spooky monsters. Instead, go buy Locke & Key‘s first two collections and read them. If they speak to you – and if you’re a fan of King, Gaiman, Barker, Whedon, etc. then they likely will – you’ll want to read more. You’ll find yourself sucked into the Locke family’s troubles and enchanted by the dark magic of Hill’s story and Rodriguez’s art. You’ll marvel at the care and thought that’s been put into this obvious labor of twisted love. And sooner rather than later you’ll be all caught up and ready to read the Omega arc, perhaps in time for its conclusion.
If you’re reading Locke & Key already then you know why this issue, and this series, is so terribly, wonderfully good. If you aren’t reading it get started.
