Is there any other comic book writer-artist duets out there who've reached the heights that Joe Hill and Gabriel Rodriguez have in their Locke & Key franchise? Ok, Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples have done wonders with their Saga epic so far, and I'd have to be lying if I said that Italy's Guido Nolitta and Gallieno Ferri didn't form one of the all-time great writer-artist teams in the history of comic books on their famous superhero Western serial, Zagor. But Hill and Rodriguez are taking the art form to a whole new level: it's as if each was born (for the most part) in order to complement the vision of the other.
In the fourth volume of their horror story, Locke & Key: Keys to the Kingdom, the aforementioned duo continue in their telling of the Locke family story, and the conniving Zack Wells (Dodge, or Luke Caravaggio by birth) who will stop at nothing in his deception to find the enigmatic Omega Key. We witness Tyler Locke get his heart broken by the sexy yet unreliable Jordan Gates; Kinsey nearly discovers the truth about the keys and her family history from an old woman, Erin Voss, but Dodge unfortunately gets there first and uses the Head Key to erase any memory she may have had; and young Bode uses the Animal Key to turn into a Sparrow and save his older siblings from a pack of wild animals, who were led by Dodge (transformed here as a wolf, also using the Animal Key). Rufus Whedon is given a larger role in the story's mythology, and Hill turns him into a more essential character than may have first appeared; it would seem the "slow-witted" boy knows and understands a whole lot that is going on, and his method of communicating in some sort of toy-army-speak may just be a ploy on his part.
Rodriguez's artwork of the opening chapter, Sparrow, is handled quite exquisitely. He illustrates the scenes from a few different points of view: the third person viewpoint, which is the style we've grown accustomed to, and also a more basic, child-like drawing style, which clearly suggests Bode Locke's interpretation and viewpoint of the events in question. The juxtaposition and juggling of two such contrasting styles within the same section - or even on the same page - is quite marvelous for the eyes and imagination of a fan of this series, which seems to be re-inventing itself as it continues to amaze us in all the right ways. Keys to the Kingdom kills off some main characters, introduces new twists and turns in this ever-engrossing storyline, and keeps our heartbeat at the absolute maximum throughout. Because, to be honest, anything less than perfection would be a letdown at this point.
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