Reader Review: Locke & Key - Welcome To Lovecraft, a hardcover graphic novel.

Hello folks, have you read anything interesting lately?  Well I've been doing my best to get back into reading over the last four months or so, and it's been working out fairly well.  Aside from the collection of books we have here at home, such as our enormous Stephen King collection, I've been checking out books at our local library.  I mostly pick up graphic novels from there, as that particular section has been getting a lot better over the last six months.  While most of them are books that I won't bother to read, as they're of no interest to me, there are a few solid gems in there.  Hellboy, Sin City, Locke & Key, and especially The Walking Dead (currently I'm awaiting their order of the hardcover Book Eight).  Anyway, without further ado, this is my brief review of the first hardcover book in the Locke & Key series, cleverly entitled "Welcome To Lovecraft".

Locke & Key: Welcome To Lovecraft, a 158 page hardcover book, not including the intro and art gallery sections, is a graphic novel from the rather creative, yet very disturbed minds of Joe Hill and Gabriel Rodriguez.  Welcome To Lovecraft is the first book in the series, released in 2008, is a collective of six softcover graphic novels "Welcome To Lovecraft Volumes 1-6", and was released by IDW Publishing.

This first book in the series follows the beginning of a multitude of unfortunate events that befall the Locke family, starting with a surprise visit to their vacation cottage, by one Sam Lesser and one Al Grubb, two very disturbed and troubled teen boys.  The family consists of the father, Rendell Locke, the mother Nina, and their three children: Tyler, an older teen male, Kinsey, a teen female and Bode (pronounced bo-dee), a young male.

I won't give away too many details, but a tragedy that occurs at the cottage causes the majority of the family to move back to Lovecraft, Massachusetts, to Keyhouse, a mansion full of magic and mystery and of which is also where Rendell and his brother Duncan grew up as children.  In this first book, quite a bit happens, from the beginning incident at the vacation cottage, to Bode finding a mysterious key, to a cunningly deceptive woman in a well, to Tyler meeting a strange new friend who, like the Locke children, is also new to their school... or is "he"?

There is a lot that's going on in this first installment in the series, a lot more than in the next volumes, however with it only being 158 pages in this particular book, I was left with a feeling of it being rushed.  There is also the issue that this series is for adult eyes only, as the content in it is rather... "mature" and "graphic", to a fair extent.  From the over-the-top foul language, to the surprising way that Sam Lesser "convinces" a male truck driver to give him a ride to "somewhere" (you don't think I'm going to spoil that part of the story, do you?), there's quite a lot of depth to the characters in this book already.  This particular volume pays attention primarily to giving the reader a quick run through of what started the incidents, who the main characters are, and what the house is all about, but thankfully they do leave out a lot of other things that are later revealed in the rest of the series.  If you're interested in reading it, and have any inquiries beforehand, feel free to leave me a question, and I'll respond as soon as I am able.  until then, keep an eye out for the next installment of this blog, you never know what's going to pop up.

Title: Locke & Key - Welcome To Lovecraft (hardcover)

Year of release: 2008
Publisher: IDW Publishing www.idwpublishing.com

Writer: Joe Hill
Art: Gabriel Rodriguez
Colors: Jay Fotos
Letters & Collection Designer: Robbie Robbins
Collection Editor: Justin Eisinger
Series Editor: Chris Ryall

ISBN-13: 9781600102370
ISBN-10: 1600102379
MSRP: $24.99 USD