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[REVIEW] Horrific Realism: ‘Locke & Key’ Volumes 1 – 4

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Locke & Key is the kind of story that watches your toes dangle over the side of the bed, and contemplates when the best time to take a nibble is. The true fright might not set in as you read, but when the lights go out it’ll be there waiting just for you. Joe Hill doesn’t push a decaying thumb under your nose, instead he says it’s somewhere in your room. Jump into this series to escape into a world where keys and doors aren’t taken at face value. Read on for the skinny…

lockevol1lockevol4 As a novelist, Joe Hill has an excellent sense of organization and direction. The series is divided into volumes, issues and chapters to give it a crisp and clear story arc. The interlacing within the series is refreshingly predictable in a way that readers can see that their destination is just ahead, but can’t quite focus their eyes on the darkness that lies beyond. Hill doesn’t want anybody getting lost in poor or confused structure, instead he directs readers to the idea behind it all. But why is Locke & Key a graphic novel and not a novel? The images are the key to his design. They support and influence his words in the same way that surgeons’ steady hand holds a life-saving scalpel. They are by no means more important, but without the colorful ink the readers would lose the visual pleasure Hill and Rodriguez are trying to share.

Rodriguez’ style is typical for a graphic novel; the images are artistically stimulating and delightful to take in. He’s a successful artist to say the least, whom adds a unique flare to each individual panel- it’s revitalizing to see anatomically correct human bodies and proportional faces in comic art. Individuals have unique bone structure, right down to their finger and toenails. These aren’t just pretty pictures and characters; these are visual representations of linguistic messages. You can tell when you look into their eyes that something is beyond the page. It’s chilling to think they could come out or pull you in. This sense of realism highlights Joe Hill’s horrific narrative, and doesn’t draw to much attention away from the story. With general backgrounds and limited detail, this story is driven by its characters and by the tale itself. The most important elements of the series, and the most attractive visual depictions, are the keys themselves. From the title and the cover art, readers expect a story about literal keys, but what they get is much more than an opened door. One of the best parts about seeing the story is being able to see the keys. With such an important role, a single detail can’t be left to the reader’s mind’s eye. Rodriguez has given the reader something that Hill could not, something to bring them in to the physicality that is essential to Locke & Key. While each page is nice to look at, readers are still roped in by the writing and the meaning. Rodriguez compliments Hill’s writing perfectly, as all art should in such a situation.

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Joe Hill, a renowned Horror and Fantasy writer, feeds the never-ending appetite of a literary-lover with this unique story. Right from the start readers expect a novelty horror tale by the name-dropping of Lovecraft on the cover. They would only be let down if the story were to disappoint, but nevertheless, it has yet to happen. From the introduction of the Locke family, and the interesting implication of one of the most influential Enlightenment philosophers (John Locke), in the cozy yet sinister town of Lovecraft, readers are instantly drawn into the lives of the three children (Tyler, Kinsey, and Bode) and the supernatural dynamics that explode in their day-to-day activities. While they are continuous throughout the series, separate stories unravel around, and independently of, them. Interlacing at it’s finest. From the first adventure, of experimentations with The Ghost Door and the discovery of the Anywhere Key, readers can see that Hill isn’t going to follow the conventions of horror. While the gore is minimal to non-existent, dread is born through fear of the unknown, not through blood and guts. Hill masters this form of the genre, one of three ways to represent horror as described by Orson Scott Card, a respected author and critic. There is terror, horror, and dread, with dread being the strongest. It is that tension, that fear that something is around the corner, not the face-to-face encounter with the killer or the corpse. Joe Hill exercises this idea and plants tension and dread into the minds of readers.

Pick this one up at the break of dawn. You’ll be reading it well beyond the start of bleeding fingertips from frantically flipping pages.

4.5/5 skulls

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[Review] Graphic Novel ‘Tender’ Is Brilliant Feminist Body Horror That Will Make You Squirm & Scream

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Tender Beth Hetland Graphic Novel

Beth Hetland’s debut graphic novel, ‘Tender,’ is a modern tale of love, validation, and self-destruction by way of brutal body horror with a feminist edge.

“I’ve wanted this more than anything.”

Men so often dominate the body horror subgenre, which makes it so rare and insightful whenever women tackle this space. This makes Beth Hetland’s Tender such a refreshing change of pace. It’s earnest, honest, and impossibly exposed. Tender takes the body horror subgenre and brilliantly and subversively mixes it together with a narrative that’s steeped in the societal expectations that women face on a daily basis, whether it comes to empowerment, family, or sexuality. It single-handedly beats other 2023 and ‘24 feminine horror texts like American Horror Story: Delicate, Sick, Lisa Frankenstein, and Immaculate at their own game.

Hetland’s Tender is American Psycho meets Rosemary’s Baby meets Swallow. It’s also absolutely not for the faint of heart.

Right from the jump, Tender grabs hold of its audience and doesn’t let go. Carolanne’s quest for romantic fulfillment, validation, and a grander purpose is easy to empathize with and an effective framework for this woeful saga. Carolanne’s wounds cut so deep simply because they’re so incredibly commonplace. Everybody wants to feel wanted.

Tender is full of beautiful, gross, expressive artwork that makes the reader squirm in their seat and itch. Hetland’s drawings are simultaneously minimalist and comprehensively layered. They’re  reminiscent of Charles Burns’ Black Hole, in the best way possible. There’s consistently inspired and striking use of spot coloring that elevates Hetland’s story whenever it’s incorporated, invading Tender’s muted world.

Hetland employs effective, economical storytelling that makes clever use of panels and scene construction so that Tender can breeze through exposition and get to the story’s gooey, aching heart. There’s an excellent page that depicts Carolanne’s menial domestic tasks where the repetitive panels grow increasingly smaller to illustrate the formulaic rut that her life has become. It’s magical. Tender is full of creative devices like this that further let the reader into Carolanne’s mind without ever getting clunky or explicit on the matter. The graphic novel is bookended with a simple moment that shifts from sweet to suffocating.

Tender gives the audience a proper sense of who Carolanne is right away. Hetland adeptly defines her protagonist so that readers are immediately on her side, praying that she gets her “happily ever after,” and makes it out of this sick story alive…And then they’re rapidly wishing for the opposite and utterly aghast over this chameleon. There’s also some creative experimentation with non-linear storytelling that gets to the root of Carolanne and continually recontextualizes who she is and what she wants out of life so that the audience is kept on guard.

Tender casually transforms from a picture-perfect rom-com, right down to the visual style, into a haunting horror story. There’s such a natural quality to how Tender presents the melancholy manner in which a relationship — and life — can decay. Once the horror elements hit, they hit hard, like a jackhammer, and don’t relent. It’s hard not to wince and grimace through Tender’s terrifying images. They’re reminiscent of the nightmarish dadaist visuals from The Ring’s cursed videotape, distilled to blunt comic panels that the reader is forced to confront and digest, rather than something that simply flickers through their mind and is gone a moment later. Tender makes its audience marinate in its mania and incubates its horror as if it’s a gestating fetus in their womb.

Tender tells a powerful, emotional, disturbing story, but its secret weapon may be its sublime pacing. Hetland paces Tender in such an exceptional manner, so that it takes its time, sneaks up on the reader, and gets under their skin until they’re dreading where the story will go next. Tender pushes the audience right up to the edge so that they’re practically begging that Carolanne won’t do the things that she does, yet the other shoe always drops in the most devastating manner. Audiences will read Tender with clenched fists that make it a struggle to turn each page, although they won’t be able to stop. Tender isn’t a short story, at more than 160 pages, but readers will want to take their time and relish each page so that this macabre story lasts for as long as possible before it cascades to its tragic conclusion. 

Tender is an accomplished and uncomfortable debut graphic novel from Hetland that reveals a strong, unflinching voice that’s the perfect fit for horror. Tender indulges in heightened flights of fancy and toes the line with the supernatural. However, Tender is so successful at what it does because it’s so grounded in reality and presents a horror story that’s all too common in society. It’s a heartbreaking meditation on loneliness and codependency that’s one of 2024’s must-read horror graphic novels.

‘Tender,’ by Beth Hetland and published by Fantagraphics, is now available.

4 out of 5 skulls

Tender graphic novel review

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