Locke & Key, Volume 1: Welcome to Lovecraft

by Joe Hill, Gabriel Rodriguez (Illustrator), Robert Crais (Introduction)

Overview

Now a Netflix original series! Named a "modern masterpiece" by The A.V. Club, Locke & Key tells a sprawling tale of magic and family, legacy and grief, good and evil. Acclaimed suspense novelist and New York Times best-selling author Joe Hill (The Fireman, Heart-Shaped Box) has created a gripping story of dark fantasy and wonder—with astounding artwork from Gabriel Rodriguez—that, like the doors of Keyhouse, will transform all who open it. The epic begins here: Welcome to Lovecraft.

Following their father's gruesome murder in a violent home invasion, the Locke children return to his childhood home of Keyhouse in secluded Lovecraft, Massachusetts. Their mother, Nina, is too trapped in her grief—and a wine bottle—to notice that all in Keyhouse is not what it seems: too many locked doors, too many unanswered questions. Older kids Tyler and Kinsey aren't much better. But not youngest son Bode, who quickly finds a new friend living in an empty well and a new toy, a key, that offers hours of spirited entertainment. But again, all at Keyhouse is not what it seems, and not all doors are meant to be opened. Soon, horrors old and new, real and imagined, will come ravening after the Lockes and the secrets their family holds.

Locke & Key, Vol. 1 features an introduction by Robert Crais, author of the bestselling Elvis Cole series of crime novels.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781600103841
Publisher:	IDW Publishing
Publication date:	08/18/2009
Series:	Locke & Key , #1
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	168
Sales rank:	66,366
Product dimensions:	6.60(w) x 10.20(h) x 0.40(d)
Age Range:	16 Years

About the Author

Joe Hill is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Full Throttle, The Fireman, Heart-Shaped Box, and NOS4A2, recently made into a TV series from AMC. His horror novella In the Tall Grass, co-written with Stephen King, was made into a feature film from Netflix. His book of short stories, 20th Century Ghosts, won the Bram Stoker Award and British Fantasy Award for Best Collection. He earned the Eisner Award for Best Writer for his long-running comic book series, Locke & Key, featuring the eye-popping art of Gabriel Rodríguez.
 
Born in Santiago, Chile, Gabriel Rodríguez began working as an illustrator in the late 90s and in 2002 started drawing books for IDW Publishing, including CSI, George Romero’s Land of the Dead, and Beowulf, amongst others. In 2007, he co-created the award-winning series Locke & Key with Joe Hill. He continued developing other creator-owned projects: the Eisner-winning Little Nemo: Return to Slumberland, with Eric Shanower; Sword of Ages; and the gritty sci-fi adventure Onyx, with Chris Ryall. In 2019, he partnered with Hill once again for two new Locke & Key stories, “Dog Days” and “Nailed It.”

Editorial Reviews

"A modern masterpiece..." — AV Club

"It's great! ...The art here by Gabriel Rodriguez is some of the finest stuff in comics today... The team of Hill and Rodriguez is top notch!" — Blair Butler, Fresh Ink

"Solid pacing and plot twists, combined with Rodriguez's clean lines and detailed pencils make Locke & Key a lock for best horror book of the week." — Wizard Magazine

"In a year of auspicious comics debuts, Joe Hill turned in one of the few comics that truly came from a different place. Written with skill that makes me jealous, courage that makes me smile, and honesty and brutality that makes me want to see what comes next. Okay, I'm officially a fan." — Ed Brubaker

"A modern suspense thriller meets something more wondrous and magical." — IGN

From the Publisher

Old New England mansions have a well-earned reputation for strangeness, but no other abode can match the supernatural weirdness of Keyhouse. From the very first page of Locke & Key, the forbidding old house draws you in and binds you, challenging you to guess what's beyond each ghastly door. Bram Stoker Award–winning writer Joe Hill and artist Gabriel Rodriguez have delivered a graphic novel in throat-grasping horror seeps to the surface when you least expect.

Novelist Hill, author of Heart-Shaped Box, crafts a gripping account of the shattered Locke family's attempt to rebuild after the father/husband is murdered by a deranged high school student and the family subsequently moving in with the deceased father's brother at the family homestead in Maine. But as anyone who has read horror fiction in the past 70-odd years will tell you, it's a bad idea to try to leave behind the gruesome goings-on in your life by moving to an island named "Lovecraft." What begins as a study in coping with grief soon veers into creepy territory as the youngest Locke discovers a doorway with decidedly spectral qualities, along with a well that houses someone or something that desperately wants out and will use any means available to gain freedom, including summoning the teenage murderer who set events in motion in the first place. To say more would give away many of the surprises the creative team provides, but this first of hopefully several volumes delivers on all counts, boasting a solid story bolstered by exceptional work from Chilean artist Rodriguez (Clive Barker's The Great and Secret Show) that resembles a fusion of Rick Geary and Cully Hamner with just a dash of Frank Quitely. (Oct.)

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