Back at Locke & Key Manor for the Golden Age

After the betrayal of the TV series, the two authors of the comic Locke & Key return to the foundations of Keyhouse by offering new episodes in The Golden Age but is this extension only for fans? Read our column to find out.

Five out of one

As the writer says in the introduction, you don't have to have read the previous episodes to discover The Golden Age. The book opens with a very useful introduction for neophytes where the screenwriter Joe Hill gives the main keys to understanding Locke & Key. This volume is even perfect to start with. It brings together five new unpublished novels of different sizes:

• Scale model is a distracting introduction to introduce the concept and family
• Reaching for the moon is a heartbreaking paternal love story
• Music softens morals on World War I
• … In pale battalions… on a bloody four-page foxtrot
• Locke & Key/ Sandman: Hell Train where a Locke travels through the Sandman series universe to save a member of her family

This list could make it seem like a series of unrelated stories. However, The Golden Age follows the same generation of Locke a century before the main series : Father Chamberlin Morse Walton Locke, Mother Fiona Ingrid, daughters Mary Brigid and youngest Jean Thompson, boys John Tyler and Ian Ulysses. They lived with Chamberlin's Métis brother, Harland Benjamin. Everyone has a different character. The father holds the helm despite the gusts of drama crashing at Keyhouse and his wife seeks the nobility. John, the youngest son, is Machiavellian, young but courageous, intelligent Mary, Ian very cultured and curious but fragile because of his epilepsy. We find them at different ages of their lives on the beautiful cover of Gabriel Rodriguez enhanced by the superb gold lettering.

Two for everything

Quite rare in the American industry, the same creative team has been in charge of the entire series since the first episode with writer Joe Hill, artist Gabriel Rodriguez and colorist Jay Fotos. The graphic part is perfect. Each box is extremely detailed which is not common in comics given the short deadlines. But, thanks to the success of the comics – and royalties from Netflix – the cartoonist took the time. Indeed, Locke & Key, The Golden Age is a compilation of episodes made between 2011 and 2021. The Chilean designer knows how to organize the boxes to create a fluid reading and give rhythm. He captures different emotions and plays with scales. The publisher HiComics also offers as a bonus all the covers including the variants of the crossover Locke & Key / Sandman by other artists.

These episodes are an opportunity to find the atmosphere of the original series but new keys appear in the Keyhouse mansion. A key on a dollhouse allows you to see what everyone is doing on the residence and to intervene on the parts. A match key literally sets fire to each other while a mailbox key reads letters that have never been sent.

One House and One Nation

If the main series was set in the very close past of the Obama presidency, it is the older past that is highlighted in this volume. The series becomes an allegory of America as evidenced by the title: The Golden Age is that of the rise of a country. Keyhouse represents the United States and all of Keyhouse's secrets correspond to the hidden parts of American history. The series is quite dark about the future of the family and the country. The father represents the ideals of the new nation but the children are more sadistic. In the second novella, the cowboys no longer live the conquest of the West but watch each other in the cinema. We go from the United States to Belgium when we see the First World War from the German side. Japan falls into modernity with the death of Emperor Meiji.

Locke & Key, The Golden Age is far from an accessory bonus because, with Pick up the Moon, it offers the best short story of the Locke & Key universe. It is also a good gateway to the series by showing a new family by two artists at the top of their game. Joe Hill knows how to handle action, horror and humor but without cynicism. Cartoonist and co-creator Gabriel Rodriguez gives every page a fluid and detailed read.

You can find on our site other chronicles on horror comics with The Witcher and The Plot.