This 2008 award winning IDW comic from Joe Hill and Gabriel Rodriguez was suffering from what I would term ‘Sandman syndrome’. We can define Sandman syndrome as the unending rumor that the release of a film or live action series based on a critically loved comic book is just around the corner. This has been true of Locke & Key for a while, and just as in the case of Neil Gaiman’s Sandman, with little if any actual progress or development of the movie/show actually manifested.
Could that finally be changing for this book? After Fox and Hulu both passed on adapting and releasing a live action version of the comic, Netflix, just two days ago (see here), ordered a ten episode first season of a series based on this book.
Sales on high grade copies, subsequently, rose and everything seems to indicate that many people think Locke & Key’s time has finally come.
Can the story succeed the transition from the page to the small-screen?
Locke & Key #1 [IDW] (February 2008)
Like the previously mentioned Sandman, Locke & Key is a well-crafted and enjoyable comic with supernatural themes. Unlike Sandman, Locke & Key is more contained in terms of story and has strong leanings to tales in the Lovecraftian/pulp horror vein, rather than mythological/super-hero style narrative.
This all bodes well for Locke & Key’s Netflix adaptation. What is the book actually about? The story, by Joe Hill, is set in a New England town called ‘Lovecraft’ and features a freaky Mansion called Keyhouse. Keyhouse is the ancestral home the Locke family and it’s also filled with secrets behind its many locked rooms.
The story begins with the grisly murder of the elder Locke by his two psychopathic ex-students. His three children Tyler, Kinsey and, the youngest, Bode, hear the gunshots that end their father’s life. Rushing back to their summer house, the kids alert the two killers to their presence. After Tyler (the oldest) is able to incapacitate his father’s killer Sam Lesser, Tyler’s mother kills Lesser’s accomplice by opening the back of his skull with a hatchet. Lesser then gets arrested and placed in a detention facility. The Locke family, meanwhile, moves across country to Massachusetts with their uncle and mother. Reaching the town of Lovecraft they then take up residence in their father’s family estate. That’s when the story starts to get interesting.
Locke & Key was popular from the moment it first appeared. The first issue, part of a six-issue story arc called “Welcome to Lovecraft”, sold out upon release. The issue to get for speculative purposes is a first print of the first edition but be careful since the second printing is almost indistinguishable from the first and can only be told apart by looking at the indicia (the small print at the bottom of the first page).
Currently high grade, professionally graded copies of issue #1 of Locke & Key sell for anywhere from $100.00 to $300.00 dollars for grades of 9.4-9.8 respectively. Returns have been strong on the 500 known CGC registered copies. Best returns have been on 9.4’s at 14.6% followed by 9.8 graded copies with 11.5% over the last seven years. Highest recorded grade of this comic is a 9.9 which can fetch double the price of a 9.8.
