Radiant Comics

I’m back from the comic shop this week and I got three new comics:

And now for a review of something I’ve read recently.

”Locke & Key: Volume 3 Crown of Shadows” by Joe Hill and Gabriel Rodriguez

I’m back for a third volume of the family horror series “Locke & Key”. I call it a family horror series because it mainly involves a family, mother, big brother, middle sister, and little brother living in their old family home and finding magic keys about the place that can do various things all while being menaced by a magical entity who also wants the keys.

By this volume we’re well into the story. Joe Hill is a novelist and the story seems more like a novel’s structure than a typical comic books. There isn’t much introduction or exposition about the characters. By now the reader is expected to know who everyone is. As a consequence I found this volume to be faster moving than the other two. There is a lot of dialogue and character development though so it isn’t as fast moving as some modern “Decompressed” comics.

I think this was my favorite volume so far. The artwork was good, the writing was good, there was a really big dramatic moment, and lots of interesting things happened in general. The first two volumes dealt more with the past and this one was more about the present. Not that I don’t enjoy the flashback stuff but it was a nice change of pace to be mostly in the here and now of the Locke family.

I also like how the story is paced. Though I’m reading it in collected volumes it doesn’t seem to be “Written for the collection”. Each issue feels like a chapter that can stand on its own. Comics aren’t always written that way these days but it works for me. It’s well thought out and that’s something that I like. So there you go. I don’t have much new to say about “Locke & Key”. All the volumes I’ve read so far have been good and I already have volume four on my shelf. Check it out for yourself.