Locke and Key
Joe Hill is a pitiless bastard.
Two weeks ago I got up early on a Saturday morning and read the last volume of Locke and Key, Alpha and Omega. I’d been planning to write my review for last week about it, because its one of the best comic series I’ve read in quite a while. Fast forward two weeks later and I’ve got no review for last week and a bunch of tear stains on the last few pages of my glossy comic. I’m not what you’d term an emotionally expressive person, so the fact that I both cried and was willing to tell you about it should testify to the quality of this series.
The story revolves around the Locke family when they return to the Key House in Massachusetts, the family estate, after tragedy strikes their life in California. The children of the family discover that Key House is a place filled with magic in the form of special keys that are hidden all around the house. These keys do wonderful and terrible things when placed in the right lock and turned – things like changing your gender, or making you grow, or control the shadows around you. Or turn into a ghost.
Despite the fantastic nature of these keys, or maybe because of it, there is never any doubt in your mind when reading that Locke and Key is a horror comic. The source of this magic and horror, become quickly apparent just by reading the title of the first trade, “Welcome to Lovecraft”. The series borrows heavily from the tone and themes of Lovecraft as well as one of the most prolific and popular contemporary horror writers, Stephen King. Things fell into place in my head when, after reading the first three trades of the series, I found out that Joe Hill is actually Stephen King’s oldest son. I grew up in Maine, stood next to Stephen King at the fence and watched his son play Little League against my town’s All Star team, and NO ONE writes the inherent darkness of New England like Stephen King. Except maybe for Joe Hill.
I love a good horror tale that collides the eldritch with the modern, especially when the writer manages to do a good job of keeping the main characters balanced on the edge of madness. Locke and Key manages to also introduce the concept of the magic sword or magic ring into the mix with the special keys. The trope of “There are 9 or 12 or 17 magical objects out there and whoever controls them will have all of the power” is a classic in fantasy, but you rarely see it in horror. Hill proves with Locke and Key that it can serve just as well as the macguffin in a horror story as it can in a fantasy, because the keys are definitely macguffins.
Despite all of the magic and terrible demons and murders, Locke and Key manages to be a successful horror story because it’s not actually about “thiiings from beyyyyoooonnnndd our woooooorrrrrllllddddddd!!!!”. It’s about the real horror of life – the inevitability of time. While not a bildungsroman, the story is certain about trying to stay sane through all of the tragedies that time throws at you. The loss of a parent, uprooting an entire life and moving someplace new, sacrificing pieces of your mind to try and keep the rest intact . . . everything that happens in the story is an easy metaphor for the way we’re beaten up by the storm of time. The kids in Locke and Key are constantly fighting the result of things set in motion before they were even born, as time itself is lashing back at them again and again. Bad things WILL happen to us, to all of us. It’s inevitable, and all we can do to fight it is try to make peace with them as they happen – to take each event and try to unlock its demon and let it rest as a memory instead of a dagger. For me, it was the loss of friends that caught me off guard.
If you’ve read any of my past articles, you probably know that my friend group was struck with tragedy in November. When reading the last few pages of Locke and Key, it brought me back to that place and time, and made me see the inevitability of what happened. Not the specific circumstance, but that as life passed by, there was nothing I could do to avoid SOMETHING like it happening around me, or to me. It was a fairly crushing moment on a Saturday morning. But that is what great art is about – making you really FEEL something about life. And in that, Locke and Key was extremely successful. Successful enough for me to say “Fuck you, Joe Hill. Fuck you.”
