Locke & Key, Volume 2

Head Games
written by Joe Hill
art by Gabriel Rodriguez

Following almost immediately on the events at the conclusion of Locke & Key's inaugural mini-series, Welcome to Lovecraft, Head Games begins as the dangerous and mysterious creature from the wellhouse—now, newly re-re-gendered, introducing himself as Zack Wells and staying with Ellie Whedon as her "cousin," formerly Lucas Caravaggio, nicknamed Dodge, and close friend of Rendell Locke—befriends the new generation of Locke siblings, insinuating his way into their confidence.  And Zack/Luke/Dodge makes a great villain.  Cold-blooded and ruthless, he continues (as before) to seduce and intimidate those he needs to use and kill those who pose a threat.  Among the latter is Joe Ridgeway, an aging teacher who recognizes Zack as Luke and whose memories of Caravaggio begin to illuminate further Zack's mysterious past in Lovecraft, Massachusetts.  Despite several important revelations about his history and character, by the time Head Games concludes and we discover how most immediately Zack came to be at the bottom of the well, we still don't know exactly who or what he is...or why their school production of Shakespeare's The Tempest was so magical.

As an independent mini-series, Head Games is primarily about memories, what we remember and how we relate to those memories.  Like Welcome to Lovecraft, its central narrative concerns are thematized by its most prominent key.  The Head Key itself, pulled out of the pond by Bode with his magnetic "treasure-hunting" fishing rod in the closing panels of Welcome to Lovecraft, is a golden idea, one that fellow comics writer Warren Ellis laments that he himself had not had in his introduction to the volume.  It literalizes the head-as-storage-chest metaphor for memory, which can be opened, rifled through, sorted, and most importantly cleaned out or filled.  And Bode, with his characteristic boyish unflappability, finds it fascinating, though his siblings—at least initially—find it gruesome and unsettling.  Each, though, soon finds ways to put it to use for them.  Following on Bode's success with The Chef's Bible and feeling the pressure of mounting school work and nearing deadlines, Tyler starts by shoving textbooks into his brain and quickly discovers that he can make use of it to gain social leverage with his peers and, most importantly, his crush.  Frustrated at her reactions to the Locke family's recent trauma, Kinsey chooses to rid herself of fear and the ability to cry, which she traps in an empty soda bottle with surprisingly comedic results.

On the whole, whatever is happening currently with the Locke family, Head Games spends much of its time in the past, directly or indirectly.  It begins to accumulate—and then eradicate—details of events twenty years prior, involving the drowning deaths of several high school students, including Lucas Caravaggio, in particular, a memory of Duncan's, in which he remembers following his brother and his friends into a cave below the cliffs.  The already shadowy history of Caravaggio continues to recede, falling away from the other characters just as they are recovered.  The exception here is Rufus, Ellie Whedon's mentally handicapped son, who unlike the others is invulnerable to the Head Key's powers.  Although, like the others who all code their memories differently, blending them as much with imagination as reality, Rufus's observations are re-coded into his own brand of military jargon.  However, he proves far more perceptive than Zack gives him credit for, and therefore flies somewhat beneath his radar and consequently is not treated as other threats.

Like its first arc, Locke & Key continues in its details to show a strong awareness of the larger mythology and of the long history of Keyhouse.  This is nowhere more evident than in Bode's hunt for his new key's matching door, during which the reader is treated to a series of so-far unused but mysteriously antique doors in all parts of the house.  Hill knows where he's going with this series, he isn't afraid to drop hints, and the story we get here is the better for it. 


The Keys:

Head Key allows its user to open his or her head—literally, as a cranium-box, whose keyhole appears magically at the nape of the neck when the key is nearby—and insert or remove whatever he or she wishes.

Echo Key, when used in conjunction with the Echo Door in the wellhouse, brings back a dead loved one as an echo, who must remain in the wellhouse or face fading away unless an alternate door is found.  As an echo, like a ghost from the Ghost Door, they possess all the associated characteristics, such as levitation and the ability to project echoes into empty spaces even far away.

Collects Locke & Key: Head Games #1-6
ISBN:  978-1600104831