Locke & Key Volume 5: Clockworks: a review.

Locke & Key Volume 5: Clockworks is a tricky thing to review. It’s the fifth part of what will eventually be a six-volume comics series. It would be completely silly to read Clockworks in isolation, and I would be nuts to try to write a review recommending it as though you were doing that. So I really have to convince you to read Locke & Key in general. But for all that it isn’t a stand-alone volume, Clockworks is a collection for good reason. The issues that comprise it belong in a book together: they’re structurally linked, and they form the intense crescendo that has to happen before the finale. This is really clearly the penultimate volume.

Okay, but what’s it about? Locke & Key tells the story of the Locke family, whose lives are torn apart by the bloody, apparently random murder of Rendell Locke, husband to Nina and father to Tyler, Kinsey, and Bode. In the wake of this tragedy, the family move to Rendell’s childhood home, Keyhouse, in Lovecraft, Massachusetts. (Yes, I know, the town is called Lovecraft. That heavy-handed name may be one of the series’ weakest points, and given what a minor complaint that is, it should indicate how highly I think of this comic.) But they can’t run away from their problems, especially not by going to Keyhouse, where an old and strange foe is hiding in plain sight. Tyler and Kinsey, a high-school aged boy and girl, find themselves having to cope with disasters and figure out what’s going on in some truly desperate situations. All the while, the reader knows where their enemy is and can only wait for them to realize what our omniscient perspective has already shown us.

It wouldn’t be inaccurate to describe Locke & Key as supernatural horror, but it would be missing a lot of the point. The supernatural elements are only a small part of what makes the comic disturbing when it’s disturbing, and often it aims for and achieves entirely different emotional tones. At its core, Locke & Key is exploring themes of family tragedy and growing up, and the awful things we do to each other when we’re going through such events. All of the Lockes are traumatized by Rendell’s death in different ways. Though the story primarily focuses on Tyler and Kinsey (and Bode, to a lesser extent), the serial format gives Hill the narrative space to explore other characters’ perceptions of events and their ways of coping. (The single issue that focuses most fully on Nina, “Beyond Repair”, is a piece of virtuosity that will break your heart.) At times the coexistence of supernatural threats and psychological issues gets a little awkward. When the narrative is really interested in the insides of the characters’ heads, the actual dangers that exist outside can seem a bit hokey or heavy-handed. In fact, by the end of volume 4, Keys to the Kingdom, the danger has begun to seem less pressing; the more times a threat shows up in an episodic structure, the more times the main characters have faced it down, after all. But Hill is ready for his readers to grow tired of his villain: the last few issues of Keys to the Kingdom heighten the stakes and change the rules of the game. Everything is clearly building toward a decisive confrontation.

The next issue is set in 1775. Clockworks begins by taking us back to the early days of the Locke family, who apparently can trace their roots to Revolutionary-era Lovecraft. This means that at the moment when dramatic tension is highest, Locke & Key suddenly introduces an entirely new set of characters and leaves the reader to twist in the wind wondering what’s happening to the Lockes we know. And it works. Much of Clockworks is concerned with a series of flashbacks, which fill in desperately needed information about the origins and nature of the strange things the Lockes have found in Keyhouse. What would have felt like stalling or exposition in another work becomes, in Locke & Key, the final few components of a terrible machine slotting into place. I am full of anticipation to see what this creation does in the sixth volume.

I would be greatly remiss to talk about a comic without mentioning the art, of course. Somewhat unusually for a comic published traditionally in print, Locke & Key has had a single artist throughout its publication. Gabriel Rodriguez does an amazing job of making the comic both visually enticing and, at the right moments, repulsive (and in a few extraordinary cases in Clockworks, both at once). The Lockes have a genuine family resemblance – they look alike, but not ridiculously so. In fact, Rodriguez gives all the characters’ faces a lot of individuality and character. I would definitely recognize any of these people on the street, and I doubt I would confuse them with anyone else. The most incredible panels, as in a lot of comics, are those where the writing and art come together to make an idea that could never have been expressed any other way.

The only reason I wouldn’t recommend Locke & Key to someone would be if I thought they would be bothered by the carnage. It’s a pretty bloody comic, from start to beginning. I wouldn’t say that the series glorifies violence or uses it for cheap shocks – the characters’ reactions show that the creators want to explore what actually happens when people whose lives are not violent suddenly have to cope with a lot of death and injury. Still, I know this isn’t for everybody; it definitely wouldn’t have been for me a year ago. But hey: even if you know you don’t like violence, give Locke & Key a try anyway. Seeing the Lockes come together is worth putting up with a lot.