Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *
The deadbolt should have been kept padlocked; the catch on the memory firmly kept in place and armed guards placed on every conceivable exit and as for the imagination…well that’s best left to Joe Hill and Gabriel Rodriguez to care for. For the Locke family certainly need them to keep them safe or at least care for them in the same manner throughout as they do in Locke & key: Head Games.
There will always be a set of characters that you care deeply for, whether it is in Graphic Novel form, in film or even in the time between one musical bar and the next that is nourished in ever beating heart of the Progressive concept album. For every Andy Dufresne, there is the alcoholic writer sitting in a bar trying to get clean, for every burnt out rock star there is a Captain America and for every Robin Hood, not quite every single Robin Hood granted, there is a small family being stalked by a malevolent creature and in whom you want to protect.
Locke & Key: Head Games starts exactly where the first novel left off and the only disappointment is that unless you can place the much needed payment for the next book down at the same time, you are looking at a wait that can be as frustrating as waiting for the most perfect combination of art and story and then finding it purely by chance.
Although in print now for a few years the mixture of suspense, horror, intrigue and unbounded expectation that has been written by Joe Hill sits so well with the reader that it might as well pull up a comfortable leather chair, recline to its favourite recumbent position and help yourself to the contents of drinks cabinet. The addition of Gabriel Rodriguez’ s art is of the highest order and whilst it wouldn’t suit the type of taste that finds an artist being commissioned by the Vatican, it nevertheless frames each moment of solitude, each instant of despair and the absolute joy in finding an artist willing to let imagination run riot but with so much control that you don’t realise how wonderfully rebellious he is being until you put the book down.
The amalgamation of words and pictures is perhaps best exemplified by the way the three Locke children find a key that opens up the head, not just the mind but the head in which memories and thoughts run wild and in which negativity and positive elements can be pacified, changed and moderated. The scene in which the youngest of the Locke children first shows how the gift works is so simple, so cunning that you have to rack your brains to think if it has been done before. No matter how hard you try, the answer is going to be a unrelenting no and the joy this causes is enough to root through the panel for every bit of information going.
Like finding a Progressive Rock album that you have not heard, a film involving your favourite star or even having the good fortune to see a part of the world you thought you would never see, Joe Hill’s and Gabriel Rodriguez’s Locke & Key series is one to take to the mountains and proclaim it as the finest example of art and word around, the Graphic Novel gospel has been delivered to the masses.
Locke & Key: Head Games is available to purchase from Worlds Apart on Lime Street, Liverpool.
Ian D. Hall