I’ve been struggling with my objectivity on this because I appreciate the Locke & Key comic books so much. Terry, what were your initial thoughts on the comic and the Netflix series? Having now watched it, I don’t feel entirely let down, but Netflix definitely failed to capture some of the things I loved best about the books and in particular there were shifts in tone and aesthetic that didn’t always work for me. Joe Hill and Gabriel Rodriguez’s comic-book miniseries (IDW, 2008-2013) ran for 37 issues plus a handful of additional one-shots (with some new ones now planned for this year!) I discovered the comic shortly after it had finished thanks to my partner (a non-comics-reader) and I loved it – for me it was a genuinely original piece of comic-book horror that read well, looked fantastic, and had enough twists and originality to delight most fans of the genre, so I had quite a lot invested in the television adaptation.

So when Netflix’s first season finally premiered on 7 February 2020 I already had pretty mixed feelings of excitement, anticipation, and nervousness. Locke & Key has a particularly troubled history when it comes to adaptation – two pilots were previously made (for Fox, 2010 and Hulu, 2018) but neither got picked up. But whether you’re a fidelity purist or in support of any changes that might make comics more accessible to a wider television audience, Netflix’s most recent offering, Locke & Key, raises many questions about the storytelling capabilities of these different media and platforms, the success of horror on the small screen, and the demands of adapting new mythologies and storyworlds.

If you’re reading this blog then you’re probably already well aware and have your own opinions on many of the choices that have been made when bringing comic book properties to the small screen. The pace quickened once Daredevil kickstarted the Marvel Netflix Universe (2015) and today it might seem that subscription television channels have slowly but surely become homes for ever-increasing numbers of comics adaptations. Over the past decade television seems to have caught up with the comic book zeitgeist and we’ve seen shows as diverse as The Walking Dead (AMC, 2010), Richie Rich (Netflix, 2015) and Lucifer (Fox, 2016) – all adapted from comic books.

Locke and key book