The Locke family is similar to most other American families. They quarrel, resent, and sometimes openly argue with one another, but ultimately, despite their imperfections, they still love each other when all is said and done. The thing that separates them from most other wholesome families lies deep down underneath the giant home in Massachusetts where they reside. It holds many secrets, and they aren't necessarily of the cheerful kind. Down below, in the cellar of their Keyhouse, lies a door that may have access to a world of unimaginable evil. Is it a portal to hell? An entrance to Satan's own layer?
Writer Joe Hill and artist Gabriel Rodriguez's Locke & Key: Welcome to Lovecraft is an intro to a comic book series that is at once engaging and mesmerizing. Following the aforementioned Locke family who are coping with a family tragedy in which their father Rendell was brutally murdered by a couple of juvenile delinquents, the story centers around the three surviving children - the playful young boy Bode, the angst-ridden eldest son Tyler, and the once-rebellious-but-now-mostly-depressed sister of the two boys, Kinsey. Their mother, Nina, is also deeply devastated by her husband's death, and the choice of comfort she chooses for her personal mourning is a bottle of wine. To each his own, I guess.
After Rendell's funeral, the Lockes move from their San Francisco residence back to their East coast family mansion, and that's when strange things begin to happen. Bode, inadvertently, begins to play with the Ghost key, and discovers the ability to leave his own body and observe it from outside, as a ghost. There are several other keys that hold unique powers, and these small metallic implements will play a large role in this and the ensuing Locke & Key story arcs. And then there is that mysterious dark haired girl in the family well, whose voice and echo lure Bode - and the sociopath Sam Lesser (the boy responsible for Rendell's death) into the supernatural aspects of Locke family property. She may have ulterior motives in her wish to be freed from the imprisonment of the well house, an action that will require help from the outside world, and something that will jump-start the plot of Locke & Key and propel it into hyperdrive.
Using his ever engrossing imagination, Hill creates a world that seems to be composed of dreams and nightmares, a place in which everyday misery and otherworldly evil exist side by side, without either knowing about the presence of the other. The gothic visualization of Keyhouse - a mansion clearly inspired by countless movie and literary ghost stories - is perfectly executed by Rodriguez, a comic book artist whose characters and settings look simultaneously cartoonish and realistic. Welcome to Lovecraft grabs our attention from the opening frame, and never lets it go. It is a masterful work of art, a complex and multi-layered tale, something that challenges even the most prestigious literature, and a story that perhaps one day could (and SHOULD) be mandatory reading study in high school English classes. Because when it comes to ghost tales about large, ominous looking houses presiding on the ocean's peninsula, nothing comes close to challenging our imagination and exciting our sense of wonder like Locke & Key.
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