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THE FIRST DECADE
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21 LOCKE & KEY C
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Ted is a regular reader of Neil Gaiman’s
blog (www.journal.neilgaiman.com) and
in early 2006, Neil was raving about a short-story collection by a new author,
Joe Hill. At the time, the book only had
a UK publisher and Ted ordered a copy online and loved it. He wrote
a rave review in Doomed #4 and e-
mailed Joe to see if he’d like to do
something with IDW.
Once a deal was in place, Chris started working with Joe and quickly brought in artist Gabriel Rodriguez. Gabriel had been working with IDW Publishing since the very early days, starting with the company’s first licensed product–CSI: Serial–and worked on several titles that Chris wrote, including Beowulf and The Great and Secret Show. In these interviews, Chris discusses Gabe’s long career at IDW, including his work on Locke & Key, and talks with Joe about his interest in comics and the genesis of Locke & Key. _________________________________________ Sketch of the Keyhouse by Gabriel Rodriguez.
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21 LOCKE & KEY C
H
A
P
T
E
R
Ted is a regular reader of Neil Gaiman’s
blog (www.journal.neilgaiman.com) and
in early 2006, Neil was raving about a short-story collection by a new author,
Joe Hill. At the time, the book only had
a UK publisher and Ted ordered a copy online and loved it. He wrote
a rave review in Doomed #4 and e-
mailed Joe to see if he’d like to do
something with IDW.
Once a deal was in place, Chris started working with Joe and quickly brought in artist Gabriel Rodriguez. Gabriel had been working with IDW Publishing since the very early days, starting with the company’s first licensed product–CSI: Serial–and worked on several titles that Chris wrote, including Beowulf and The Great and Secret Show. In these interviews, Chris discusses Gabe’s long career at IDW, including his work on Locke & Key, and talks with Joe about his interest in comics and the genesis of Locke & Key. _________________________________________ Sketch of the Keyhouse by Gabriel Rodriguez.
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• • • • GABRIEL RODRIGUEZ CR: So let’s go back to 2002… GR: Yes, the last month of 2002. CR: I guess it pre-dates me. GR: Yes, at that time Jeff Mariotte was the Editorin-Chief of IDW. I think it was October or November of that year that I started sending some samples and then, in the beginning of November, it was confirmed that I was approved as the CSI artist. It was my very first professional work in comics. CR: So you’d never done likeness comics before? Drawing actors? GR: I used to, when I was in high school and in my early years in the university. I used to draw self-created comics, but I never finished one. And then when I was in the middle of my architectural studies I dropped my 272
_______________________________________ CSI: Secret Identity, art by Gabriel Rodriguez.
interest in comics, not seeing much future in it… because working on comics here in Chile is absolutely impossible. But then when I was finishing my studies, I got an e-mail from Sulaco Studios in Spain, which was looking for some likenesses. I sent them some samples just at the moment they were trying to form an art team for CSI. So it was incredibly lucky for me that just when I was finishing my architectural studies this opportunity came up. At the beginning I thought it was some sort of joke, but then when I saw on the Internet the first announcements of the new CSI comics with “art by Gabriel Rodriguez,” I thought, “Oh, this is for real.” And then I started getting in touch with the people of IDW and it started working really well for me. It was an incredibly rewarding first professional job in comics.
CR: It was really on CSI: Secret Identity where I started to see something special in your work. You’d always been good with likenesses and your attention to detail was great, but there was something in that book–it might have just been using a different colorist–that made your work stand out that much more, that made me think that we needed to get you on something bigger and more impressive. Not that these weren’t impressive, but I wanted to let you branch out a bit and not just do CSI comics.
CR: I know your first book was CSI: Serial, and Bad Rap and Demon House were all done prior to me starting. Dominos was the first book that I worked on with you.
CR: It’s not easy, huh?
GR: Jeff told me that he was leaving the job and you were coming. After that we did Dominos and Secret Identity. That was directly with you guys.
GR: I understand what you mean. In fact, I’m very grateful for my period on CSI, because it was a great learning experience. When I started the first miniseries, I had never even tried to do a comic book within a month.
GR: It’s not easy, and I started giving myself goals in each of these series. The first one was to complete the work by the deadline; after that was improving the likenesses work; and finally, improving my line work. And I guess it was in Secret Identity when I felt that I had some maturity in my work. That was my ___________________________________________________ Top Spread: Locke & Key, concept art by Gabriel Rodriguez.
first complete work as a comicbook artist when I could say, “Okay, this is what I tried to achieve from the first book until now, and I finally did it after two and half years of work.” It was some sort of graduation for me. CR: Yeah, that’s really where it stood out to me, too. I think that’s where you started to do different things with camera angles and move things around a bit more. There was even more inventiveness in your work. GR: I achieved a narrative freedom that I never tried before while drawing comics. In fact, I think the highly restricted context in which the CSI stories are told was helpful to me, because I had to free myself from a visual point of view. It was mainly a series of comics based on conversations between people, and I tried to make them visually interesting. In that particular series, I discovered that with creativity I could achieve something visually more _______________________________________________ The Great and Secret Show, art by Gabriel Rodriguez.
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• • • • GABRIEL RODRIGUEZ CR: So let’s go back to 2002… GR: Yes, the last month of 2002. CR: I guess it pre-dates me. GR: Yes, at that time Jeff Mariotte was the Editorin-Chief of IDW. I think it was October or November of that year that I started sending some samples and then, in the beginning of November, it was confirmed that I was approved as the CSI artist. It was my very first professional work in comics. CR: So you’d never done likeness comics before? Drawing actors? GR: I used to, when I was in high school and in my early years in the university. I used to draw self-created comics, but I never finished one. And then when I was in the middle of my architectural studies I dropped my 272
_______________________________________ CSI: Secret Identity, art by Gabriel Rodriguez.
interest in comics, not seeing much future in it… because working on comics here in Chile is absolutely impossible. But then when I was finishing my studies, I got an e-mail from Sulaco Studios in Spain, which was looking for some likenesses. I sent them some samples just at the moment they were trying to form an art team for CSI. So it was incredibly lucky for me that just when I was finishing my architectural studies this opportunity came up. At the beginning I thought it was some sort of joke, but then when I saw on the Internet the first announcements of the new CSI comics with “art by Gabriel Rodriguez,” I thought, “Oh, this is for real.” And then I started getting in touch with the people of IDW and it started working really well for me. It was an incredibly rewarding first professional job in comics.
CR: It was really on CSI: Secret Identity where I started to see something special in your work. You’d always been good with likenesses and your attention to detail was great, but there was something in that book–it might have just been using a different colorist–that made your work stand out that much more, that made me think that we needed to get you on something bigger and more impressive. Not that these weren’t impressive, but I wanted to let you branch out a bit and not just do CSI comics.
CR: I know your first book was CSI: Serial, and Bad Rap and Demon House were all done prior to me starting. Dominos was the first book that I worked on with you.
CR: It’s not easy, huh?
GR: Jeff told me that he was leaving the job and you were coming. After that we did Dominos and Secret Identity. That was directly with you guys.
GR: I understand what you mean. In fact, I’m very grateful for my period on CSI, because it was a great learning experience. When I started the first miniseries, I had never even tried to do a comic book within a month.
GR: It’s not easy, and I started giving myself goals in each of these series. The first one was to complete the work by the deadline; after that was improving the likenesses work; and finally, improving my line work. And I guess it was in Secret Identity when I felt that I had some maturity in my work. That was my ___________________________________________________ Top Spread: Locke & Key, concept art by Gabriel Rodriguez.
first complete work as a comicbook artist when I could say, “Okay, this is what I tried to achieve from the first book until now, and I finally did it after two and half years of work.” It was some sort of graduation for me. CR: Yeah, that’s really where it stood out to me, too. I think that’s where you started to do different things with camera angles and move things around a bit more. There was even more inventiveness in your work. GR: I achieved a narrative freedom that I never tried before while drawing comics. In fact, I think the highly restricted context in which the CSI stories are told was helpful to me, because I had to free myself from a visual point of view. It was mainly a series of comics based on conversations between people, and I tried to make them visually interesting. In that particular series, I discovered that with creativity I could achieve something visually more _______________________________________________ The Great and Secret Show, art by Gabriel Rodriguez.
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compelling for the reader than just setting people side-by-side, talking. I think it worked pretty well. It was a great achievement for me, and a first step before moving on to new projects like Land of the Dead and The Great and Secret Show.
Gabriel draw this one, too?” Not only do you have such a wide range but your style is so . . . I don’t even know if it’s your style as much as the fact that working with you has been such a pleasant, creatively inspiring period.
CR: Land of the Dead is where I really wanted to get you next. You’d drawn 500+ pages of CSI, so I wanted to let you get dirty a little bit and draw some more visually exciting things.
GR: That’s another point that’s really important to me. I feel tremendously lucky because the personal experience of working with you and Joe and Clive has been extraordinarily rewarding. I think a good personal relationship in this job is the key to achieving other goals, like reaching deadlines, knowing each other’s limitations, and improving each other’s abilities. I had tremendous luck in the beginning, working with tremendously talented writers like Max Allan Collins and Steven Grant and then with you in the adaptations of Land of the Dead and The Great and Secret Show, and with stuff by Clive Barker and then by Joe Hill. I continuously try to improve my abilities, because I feel I have some sort of responsibility with the incredible chances I’ve been given in working with you. I feel like I can still improve, so it’s very challenging every day to face a blank page and say, “Okay let’s do a better page today then the one I did yesterday.”
GR: It was a very nice turning point. I could try new things like drawing monsters and things more fun to draw. I was still working with likenesses–a very nice way to step from one medium to another. And I think it was a very wise move from you, and a very lucky move for me, to have the chance to do that project. CR: Lucky for me, too. The nicest thing about being in my position is that when there’s something interesting or fun or something that seems best suited to write in-house, I can then handpick the artist I think is best. You were who I wanted from the start on this thing. It’s funny, because now when we talk about who would be best for a book, I don’t think there’s a book we do where we don’t say, “Man, can’t 274
_____________________________________ Land of the Dead, art by Gabriel Rodriguez.
CR: What’s evident in your work is that it’s been good from the start, and it’s gotten better with every project. We’d gotten through Land of the Dead, and I know we had to survive some difficulties on that one, with an old script and re-drawing pages and things like that… GR: I remember it was a logistical nightmare. We drew 10 pages that we had to drop, and then fortunately we could recover them for the collected edition. I remember you had a really rough time writing scripts in record time. CR: Yeah, those things happen at times, but that’s why when the Clive Barker thing came up I thought... GR: I think it’s part of the learning process. Then came The Great and Secret Show, which I feel was my real graduation in comic books because it was my very first experience with the whole opportunity to completely create everything visually. That story was so rich in terms of visual development. I think that ___________________________________________________ Top Spread: Locke & Key, concept art by Gabriel Rodriguez.
was my definitive graduation in learning how to do professional comi- book-artist work. CR: That was one of the reasons I wanted you on that, too. Because after Land of the Dead, which was more likeness work, I wanted to give you something where you could cut loose from having to draw actors and just invent this world visually. Honestly, I didn’t want to do the project without you. It was probably the most difficult thing I’ve ever undertaken as a writer. GR: I remember reading the novel and thinking that there’s no way this guy’s going to fit this story in 12 issues, but you did it. And I think it’s really, really, really a challenging task. I remember when I read the first hundred pages of the book I thought it was 10 issues, easily. And then you made it fit. I think it was a great job. CR: It worked well because I had somebody like you being able to interpret what I was looking for, and do so much more with it. Clive had such a level of respect and admiration for what you were doing, too. ______________________________ Beowulf, art by Gabriel Rodriguez.
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compelling for the reader than just setting people side-by-side, talking. I think it worked pretty well. It was a great achievement for me, and a first step before moving on to new projects like Land of the Dead and The Great and Secret Show.
Gabriel draw this one, too?” Not only do you have such a wide range but your style is so . . . I don’t even know if it’s your style as much as the fact that working with you has been such a pleasant, creatively inspiring period.
CR: Land of the Dead is where I really wanted to get you next. You’d drawn 500+ pages of CSI, so I wanted to let you get dirty a little bit and draw some more visually exciting things.
GR: That’s another point that’s really important to me. I feel tremendously lucky because the personal experience of working with you and Joe and Clive has been extraordinarily rewarding. I think a good personal relationship in this job is the key to achieving other goals, like reaching deadlines, knowing each other’s limitations, and improving each other’s abilities. I had tremendous luck in the beginning, working with tremendously talented writers like Max Allan Collins and Steven Grant and then with you in the adaptations of Land of the Dead and The Great and Secret Show, and with stuff by Clive Barker and then by Joe Hill. I continuously try to improve my abilities, because I feel I have some sort of responsibility with the incredible chances I’ve been given in working with you. I feel like I can still improve, so it’s very challenging every day to face a blank page and say, “Okay let’s do a better page today then the one I did yesterday.”
GR: It was a very nice turning point. I could try new things like drawing monsters and things more fun to draw. I was still working with likenesses–a very nice way to step from one medium to another. And I think it was a very wise move from you, and a very lucky move for me, to have the chance to do that project. CR: Lucky for me, too. The nicest thing about being in my position is that when there’s something interesting or fun or something that seems best suited to write in-house, I can then handpick the artist I think is best. You were who I wanted from the start on this thing. It’s funny, because now when we talk about who would be best for a book, I don’t think there’s a book we do where we don’t say, “Man, can’t 274
_____________________________________ Land of the Dead, art by Gabriel Rodriguez.
CR: What’s evident in your work is that it’s been good from the start, and it’s gotten better with every project. We’d gotten through Land of the Dead, and I know we had to survive some difficulties on that one, with an old script and re-drawing pages and things like that… GR: I remember it was a logistical nightmare. We drew 10 pages that we had to drop, and then fortunately we could recover them for the collected edition. I remember you had a really rough time writing scripts in record time. CR: Yeah, those things happen at times, but that’s why when the Clive Barker thing came up I thought... GR: I think it’s part of the learning process. Then came The Great and Secret Show, which I feel was my real graduation in comic books because it was my very first experience with the whole opportunity to completely create everything visually. That story was so rich in terms of visual development. I think that ___________________________________________________ Top Spread: Locke & Key, concept art by Gabriel Rodriguez.
was my definitive graduation in learning how to do professional comi- book-artist work. CR: That was one of the reasons I wanted you on that, too. Because after Land of the Dead, which was more likeness work, I wanted to give you something where you could cut loose from having to draw actors and just invent this world visually. Honestly, I didn’t want to do the project without you. It was probably the most difficult thing I’ve ever undertaken as a writer. GR: I remember reading the novel and thinking that there’s no way this guy’s going to fit this story in 12 issues, but you did it. And I think it’s really, really, really a challenging task. I remember when I read the first hundred pages of the book I thought it was 10 issues, easily. And then you made it fit. I think it was a great job. CR: It worked well because I had somebody like you being able to interpret what I was looking for, and do so much more with it. Clive had such a level of respect and admiration for what you were doing, too. ______________________________ Beowulf, art by Gabriel Rodriguez.
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That made it that much easier. I remember at his house when he first wanted to see art samples, I really stacked the deck in your favor. I brought all the Land of the Dead issues and I brought the bad color and bad black-and-white copies of other people because I thought I’ll give him five, six, seven options but there’s only person who can draw this book. Luckily he instantly saw your stuff the same way I did and wanted you as much as I did. I couldn’t have gotten through that without you, and I don’t think Clive would have wanted to do it without you. It was great to then be able to go from that to Joe Hill, who had this entire world that he wanted to create with somebody. He was able to bring you in at the start and let you visually set the pace right from the very beginning. GR: In fact, looking back at my last three jobs, which were The Great and Secret Show and the Beowulf adaptation and then the work with Joe on Locke & Key, it’s been incredibly fun for me. In these three projects I had the chance to create this whole world, not just characters but also 276
_______________________________ Head Key, art by Gabriel Rodriguez.
dresses and environments. Even with Beowulf based on production designs for the movie, even in that condition to be able to visually create something that was consistent and coherent and that worked with the narrative of the comic medium was a challenge for me. I dealt with the maximum amount of detail that I could do in one day of work–a regular pace that was very challenging in Beowulf. And The Great and Secret Show was a story that happens between three decades, in a complete town. We had to design all these characters and the families that interact, and also fantastic creatures that have a tremendous variety of aesthetics and abilities. Then there were ideas about time travel and dimensional distortions that were incredibly complex to turn into actual drawings. When I was reading Clive’s novel and he started this sort of esoteric and immaterial description of phenomena that affects the characters…. it was a major task trying to turn that into actual drawings. And after that, the extraordinary color work by Jay Fotos raised the art to a completely new level. That was an amazing experience. ____________________________________________ Top Spread: Locke & Key, art by Gabriel Rodriguez.
CR: On the CSI books, some of the colors were good and some were not as good. I’d been wanting to get you somebody that really complimented your style. Now you, I, and Jay have been together on so many projects… five Land of the Dead comic books, twelve Great and Secret Show comic books… GR: Jay is an incredible talent with an incredibly rich visual eye, but on the other hand he has a grounded color palate. He makes the drawings feel incredibly real just by lining and picking certain colors. The colors in The Great and Secret Show really, really impressed me. Then seeing his work in Beowulf and now, Locke & Key, I cannot help but be incredibly grateful for having the chance to work with him. He’s really an artist of color and I think he gives a sense to the images that make them incredibly appealing and believable. CR: Not to mention the fact that he survived coloring Quiddity in The Great and Secret Show and then your Mead Hall in Beowulf and now some of the scenes inside Bode’s head in Locke & Key ______________________________ IDW Key, art by Gabriel Rodriguez.
and he keeps coming back for more. It’s certainly a testament to him, too, because you’ve done things with your pages that I don’t know how you look at that and even know where to start. But back to you–I wanted to say thanks for the sheer amount of work you’ve done for us, and also for your work ethic and the relationship we’ve had. I couldn’t imagine this company without you. You’ve been one of the biggest parts of our first 10 years and, hopefully, I’ll be telling you that into our 20 years, too. GR: I think we have to start planning what we are going to do for the 20 years book. I honestly tell you that right now I couldn’t imagine myself working with another company, because you are handling such incredibly interesting projects with incredibly high standards of art. If Marvel or DC offered me Spider-Man or Batman, I would say, “Sorry, man, I’d rather do Locke & Key with IDW.” I feel like I’m working on a dream project right now, and have been for the last three years. I’m really proud and thankful and ___________________________________________ Next Page: Locke & Key, art by Gabriel Rodriguez.
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That made it that much easier. I remember at his house when he first wanted to see art samples, I really stacked the deck in your favor. I brought all the Land of the Dead issues and I brought the bad color and bad black-and-white copies of other people because I thought I’ll give him five, six, seven options but there’s only person who can draw this book. Luckily he instantly saw your stuff the same way I did and wanted you as much as I did. I couldn’t have gotten through that without you, and I don’t think Clive would have wanted to do it without you. It was great to then be able to go from that to Joe Hill, who had this entire world that he wanted to create with somebody. He was able to bring you in at the start and let you visually set the pace right from the very beginning. GR: In fact, looking back at my last three jobs, which were The Great and Secret Show and the Beowulf adaptation and then the work with Joe on Locke & Key, it’s been incredibly fun for me. In these three projects I had the chance to create this whole world, not just characters but also 276
_______________________________ Head Key, art by Gabriel Rodriguez.
dresses and environments. Even with Beowulf based on production designs for the movie, even in that condition to be able to visually create something that was consistent and coherent and that worked with the narrative of the comic medium was a challenge for me. I dealt with the maximum amount of detail that I could do in one day of work–a regular pace that was very challenging in Beowulf. And The Great and Secret Show was a story that happens between three decades, in a complete town. We had to design all these characters and the families that interact, and also fantastic creatures that have a tremendous variety of aesthetics and abilities. Then there were ideas about time travel and dimensional distortions that were incredibly complex to turn into actual drawings. When I was reading Clive’s novel and he started this sort of esoteric and immaterial description of phenomena that affects the characters…. it was a major task trying to turn that into actual drawings. And after that, the extraordinary color work by Jay Fotos raised the art to a completely new level. That was an amazing experience. ____________________________________________ Top Spread: Locke & Key, art by Gabriel Rodriguez.
CR: On the CSI books, some of the colors were good and some were not as good. I’d been wanting to get you somebody that really complimented your style. Now you, I, and Jay have been together on so many projects… five Land of the Dead comic books, twelve Great and Secret Show comic books… GR: Jay is an incredible talent with an incredibly rich visual eye, but on the other hand he has a grounded color palate. He makes the drawings feel incredibly real just by lining and picking certain colors. The colors in The Great and Secret Show really, really impressed me. Then seeing his work in Beowulf and now, Locke & Key, I cannot help but be incredibly grateful for having the chance to work with him. He’s really an artist of color and I think he gives a sense to the images that make them incredibly appealing and believable. CR: Not to mention the fact that he survived coloring Quiddity in The Great and Secret Show and then your Mead Hall in Beowulf and now some of the scenes inside Bode’s head in Locke & Key ______________________________ IDW Key, art by Gabriel Rodriguez.
and he keeps coming back for more. It’s certainly a testament to him, too, because you’ve done things with your pages that I don’t know how you look at that and even know where to start. But back to you–I wanted to say thanks for the sheer amount of work you’ve done for us, and also for your work ethic and the relationship we’ve had. I couldn’t imagine this company without you. You’ve been one of the biggest parts of our first 10 years and, hopefully, I’ll be telling you that into our 20 years, too. GR: I think we have to start planning what we are going to do for the 20 years book. I honestly tell you that right now I couldn’t imagine myself working with another company, because you are handling such incredibly interesting projects with incredibly high standards of art. If Marvel or DC offered me Spider-Man or Batman, I would say, “Sorry, man, I’d rather do Locke & Key with IDW.” I feel like I’m working on a dream project right now, and have been for the last three years. I’m really proud and thankful and ___________________________________________ Next Page: Locke & Key, art by Gabriel Rodriguez.
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full of energy and enthusiasm to keep working on such interesting projects in the future. CR: I appreciate that. Hopefully we keep doing this for a long time. GR: Hopefully, if we survive the deadlines and all that. You have to give your best constantly and keep improving. I feel I’m in the right environment to do that right now, with Locke & Key. Just having the chance to extend this epic, having the room to work in 24 issues and then in another graphic novel… Who knows? Maybe it will increase a little. CR: At the current count, Joe told me it’s 36 issues– so it’ll change every day. GR: Well, for me it’s okay. I remember when I was drawing the first arc, I was saying there’s so much room to keep developing this. Fortunately, it’s done pretty well and fulfilled everyone’s expectations so we get the chance to expand this world. What Joe’s written in the first four issues of this new run has made me incredibly enthusiastic. I just can’t imagine what will go on in the next 30 issues. So I think we’re going to have the chance to do something really important as an artistic work here. I think the team we have–with you as editor and Robbie as designer and letterer, and with Jay and Joe and myself–I think we have this baby in extraordinary, talented, and loving hands. I remember reading a comment about Locke & Key in which a guy said that _________________________________________________________ Opposite Page and Above: Locke & Key, art by Gabriel Rodriguez.
you can see the love all these people are putting in this project. That’s what best describes the result that’s produced by this effort. CR: Yeah, I think so. Doing a project like this is so inspiring. It’s always a highlight of my day, no matter how busy it is, to see a new page from you come in. Everybody inspires each other to keep doing the best work they can. The great thing with Locke & Key is that it’s finally getting you the critical, commercial, and fan acclaim that you’ve long deserved. So it’s great that your work’s being seen by that big of an audience. GR: It has been very rewarding to have this exact project in this exact moment. I think I’m better prepared than before to handle something like this, so I think that’s a plus, too. It’s very
______________ Metal Skull Key, crafted by Skelton Crew. 281
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full of energy and enthusiasm to keep working on such interesting projects in the future. CR: I appreciate that. Hopefully we keep doing this for a long time. GR: Hopefully, if we survive the deadlines and all that. You have to give your best constantly and keep improving. I feel I’m in the right environment to do that right now, with Locke & Key. Just having the chance to extend this epic, having the room to work in 24 issues and then in another graphic novel… Who knows? Maybe it will increase a little. CR: At the current count, Joe told me it’s 36 issues– so it’ll change every day. GR: Well, for me it’s okay. I remember when I was drawing the first arc, I was saying there’s so much room to keep developing this. Fortunately, it’s done pretty well and fulfilled everyone’s expectations so we get the chance to expand this world. What Joe’s written in the first four issues of this new run has made me incredibly enthusiastic. I just can’t imagine what will go on in the next 30 issues. So I think we’re going to have the chance to do something really important as an artistic work here. I think the team we have–with you as editor and Robbie as designer and letterer, and with Jay and Joe and myself–I think we have this baby in extraordinary, talented, and loving hands. I remember reading a comment about Locke & Key in which a guy said that _________________________________________________________ Opposite Page and Above: Locke & Key, art by Gabriel Rodriguez.
you can see the love all these people are putting in this project. That’s what best describes the result that’s produced by this effort. CR: Yeah, I think so. Doing a project like this is so inspiring. It’s always a highlight of my day, no matter how busy it is, to see a new page from you come in. Everybody inspires each other to keep doing the best work they can. The great thing with Locke & Key is that it’s finally getting you the critical, commercial, and fan acclaim that you’ve long deserved. So it’s great that your work’s being seen by that big of an audience. GR: It has been very rewarding to have this exact project in this exact moment. I think I’m better prepared than before to handle something like this, so I think that’s a plus, too. It’s very
______________ Metal Skull Key, crafted by Skelton Crew. 281
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interesting, I think there are few comic books that have tried to achieve this idea of having a consistent team working during a long period. CR: I hope we can get to 300 issues. GR: Usually these long-term projects shift between different hands, so having the chance to work with the same team for a long period and in such an ambitious story from both a literary and artistic point of view… I think if we can keep this thing going, and we keep constantly trying to increase the quality and entertainment and ambitions of the story, at the end we may find something really interesting in our hands. That’s a personal and professional goal for me. It’s great to have the chance to do a project like this at IDW–that’s another bonus of these 6 or 8 years of collaboration. CR: And hopefully many more to come. GR: Yeah, and from that point of view I think this is the first step of what’s to come. I’m incredibly comfortable and also fulfilled as a person and professional working in this environment. We all have a responsibility to protect that and constantly give our best to keep that growing. CR: I think we definitely will, my friend. • • • • JOE HILL CR: Since this is for our tenth anniversary book, we’re looking back at people who have been a big 282
_______________________________ Skull Key, art by Gabriel Rodriguez.
part of the first 10 years and, hopefully, on into the next 10 years. I thought we’d look back to our first e-mails–November of 2006–where we first approached you to see if you had any ideas for comics. You sent us a list and Locke & Key was one of the properties you had in mind… you also had this thing called “Fadeaway” that you were doing with your brother. Those are the first two things we talked about, so I’m curious… how did we all settle on Locke & Key? JH: My memory is that when IDW first reached out to me, it was because you guys had read the stories in 20th Century Ghost and liked what you saw there. CR: Yeah, Ted gave me a copy of that book and said, “You gotta read this. There’s this new guy and his stories are amazing, they’re kind of Gaiman-esque in their approach and they’re just great. I’m going to see if he wants to do any kind of comics.” Because, honestly, at the time that was all we knew from you. JH: You guys had come to me with some interest in adapting a few of the stories to comic-book form, maybe because one of them is sort of a comic book-obsessed story, “The Cape.” I had dipped my toes in the comic-book waters with a Spider-Man story a few years before. I got just enough of a taste of what it was like to write for comic books to become obsessed and to really want to do more of it. I had worked up some pitches a couple years before IDW got in touch
with me. Most of the pitches were completely forgettable, but there was this one idea for a story, “Locke & Key.” I had sent the pitch around to a few comic book companies and there wasn’t really any particularly strong reaction to it. I’m not even sure I got any replies on it. I forgot all the other pitches but “Locke & Key” hung around long after I’d given up the idea of interesting anyone in it. I would find myself thinking about those characters in that house and coming up with new keys and figuring out more of the back-story. That’s just a story I really, really wanted to write. So when you guys got in touch with me about doing some of the short stories, I think that my response was, “Wait a second, let me show you something else instead.” I sent along the pitch and it wasn’t very long before you guys responded by saying that you thought there was something there. CR: Yeah, it was really one sentence that hooked us. It was a one-sentence pitch that read, “The story concerns an unlikely family who live in an even more unlikely house–a sprawling, magical place filled with doors that have transformative effects on those who walk through them.” And we thought that sounded great. When we approach prose writers, it’s always been what’s the kind of thing we can do to get them involved in comics that’s going to be the least amount of burden on their schedule, because we understand you guys are writing books, you’re doing other things. We figure we’re probably going to get rebuffed because they’ve got so many other things going on. So when you actually pitched a good idea to us, we thought, “This is gold.” We love to do adaptations, but this is really what we love to do–find somebody new that we really like and develop a new property with them. ___________________________________________________ Top: Locke & Key, art by Gabriel Rodriguez.
JH: What I primarily knew about IDW at the time was 30 Days of Night, which had struck me as a really inventive, really daring piece of comic-book fiction. It had an innovative concept, it had an innovative execution. I had not, up until then, seen Ben Templesmith’s art. Because I don’t think a lot of horror comics are scary. Even the Tales from the Crypt stuff, looking back at it now, it’s easy to see that it’s more sort of gallows humor then anything else. The reader’s response to it typically is more laughter than any feeling of unsettling dread. CR: Yeah, it’s easy to shock people but it’s hard as hell to scare people in comics because you’re dealing with static images for the most part. JH: Exactly. And the one thing that movies have that comics don’t is a soundtrack. A lot of times it’s the sounds in a film that people respond to more than the imagery. 30 Days of Night wasn’t like that. 30 Days of Night did manage to effectively deliver a feeling of unease and even outright horror. Especially, there was this one sort of fatter vampire with the big grinning mouth and all the sharpened teeth and he wasn’t just drinking blood, he was wallowing in it. So I knew that IDW had done some groundbreaking work in the line of suspense and horror fiction. I found that interesting, and then I also took a look at Doomed. That I really liked. CR: You mentioned that in your first e-mail, too. JH: Yeah, I thought Doomed was fun. A lot of companies have tried it. I don’t know why I felt that Doomed worked better than a lot of those other efforts, but I did. I thought it had a real sense of fun, and a lot of the stories rose above being ___________________________________ Anywhere Key, art by Gabriel Rodriguez.
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interesting, I think there are few comic books that have tried to achieve this idea of having a consistent team working during a long period. CR: I hope we can get to 300 issues. GR: Usually these long-term projects shift between different hands, so having the chance to work with the same team for a long period and in such an ambitious story from both a literary and artistic point of view… I think if we can keep this thing going, and we keep constantly trying to increase the quality and entertainment and ambitions of the story, at the end we may find something really interesting in our hands. That’s a personal and professional goal for me. It’s great to have the chance to do a project like this at IDW–that’s another bonus of these 6 or 8 years of collaboration. CR: And hopefully many more to come. GR: Yeah, and from that point of view I think this is the first step of what’s to come. I’m incredibly comfortable and also fulfilled as a person and professional working in this environment. We all have a responsibility to protect that and constantly give our best to keep that growing. CR: I think we definitely will, my friend. • • • • JOE HILL CR: Since this is for our tenth anniversary book, we’re looking back at people who have been a big 282
_______________________________ Skull Key, art by Gabriel Rodriguez.
part of the first 10 years and, hopefully, on into the next 10 years. I thought we’d look back to our first e-mails–November of 2006–where we first approached you to see if you had any ideas for comics. You sent us a list and Locke & Key was one of the properties you had in mind… you also had this thing called “Fadeaway” that you were doing with your brother. Those are the first two things we talked about, so I’m curious… how did we all settle on Locke & Key? JH: My memory is that when IDW first reached out to me, it was because you guys had read the stories in 20th Century Ghost and liked what you saw there. CR: Yeah, Ted gave me a copy of that book and said, “You gotta read this. There’s this new guy and his stories are amazing, they’re kind of Gaiman-esque in their approach and they’re just great. I’m going to see if he wants to do any kind of comics.” Because, honestly, at the time that was all we knew from you. JH: You guys had come to me with some interest in adapting a few of the stories to comic-book form, maybe because one of them is sort of a comic book-obsessed story, “The Cape.” I had dipped my toes in the comic-book waters with a Spider-Man story a few years before. I got just enough of a taste of what it was like to write for comic books to become obsessed and to really want to do more of it. I had worked up some pitches a couple years before IDW got in touch
with me. Most of the pitches were completely forgettable, but there was this one idea for a story, “Locke & Key.” I had sent the pitch around to a few comic book companies and there wasn’t really any particularly strong reaction to it. I’m not even sure I got any replies on it. I forgot all the other pitches but “Locke & Key” hung around long after I’d given up the idea of interesting anyone in it. I would find myself thinking about those characters in that house and coming up with new keys and figuring out more of the back-story. That’s just a story I really, really wanted to write. So when you guys got in touch with me about doing some of the short stories, I think that my response was, “Wait a second, let me show you something else instead.” I sent along the pitch and it wasn’t very long before you guys responded by saying that you thought there was something there. CR: Yeah, it was really one sentence that hooked us. It was a one-sentence pitch that read, “The story concerns an unlikely family who live in an even more unlikely house–a sprawling, magical place filled with doors that have transformative effects on those who walk through them.” And we thought that sounded great. When we approach prose writers, it’s always been what’s the kind of thing we can do to get them involved in comics that’s going to be the least amount of burden on their schedule, because we understand you guys are writing books, you’re doing other things. We figure we’re probably going to get rebuffed because they’ve got so many other things going on. So when you actually pitched a good idea to us, we thought, “This is gold.” We love to do adaptations, but this is really what we love to do–find somebody new that we really like and develop a new property with them. ___________________________________________________ Top: Locke & Key, art by Gabriel Rodriguez.
JH: What I primarily knew about IDW at the time was 30 Days of Night, which had struck me as a really inventive, really daring piece of comic-book fiction. It had an innovative concept, it had an innovative execution. I had not, up until then, seen Ben Templesmith’s art. Because I don’t think a lot of horror comics are scary. Even the Tales from the Crypt stuff, looking back at it now, it’s easy to see that it’s more sort of gallows humor then anything else. The reader’s response to it typically is more laughter than any feeling of unsettling dread. CR: Yeah, it’s easy to shock people but it’s hard as hell to scare people in comics because you’re dealing with static images for the most part. JH: Exactly. And the one thing that movies have that comics don’t is a soundtrack. A lot of times it’s the sounds in a film that people respond to more than the imagery. 30 Days of Night wasn’t like that. 30 Days of Night did manage to effectively deliver a feeling of unease and even outright horror. Especially, there was this one sort of fatter vampire with the big grinning mouth and all the sharpened teeth and he wasn’t just drinking blood, he was wallowing in it. So I knew that IDW had done some groundbreaking work in the line of suspense and horror fiction. I found that interesting, and then I also took a look at Doomed. That I really liked. CR: You mentioned that in your first e-mail, too. JH: Yeah, I thought Doomed was fun. A lot of companies have tried it. I don’t know why I felt that Doomed worked better than a lot of those other efforts, but I did. I thought it had a real sense of fun, and a lot of the stories rose above being ___________________________________ Anywhere Key, art by Gabriel Rodriguez.
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just rehashes of what we’ve already seen in Eerie and Creepy. So I thought IDW looked like it might create the right climate to do something interesting. CR: We’ve certainly always tried to be a place that offers people who bring us a new idea a way to express it without getting in the way and changing it. I want people to be free and creative and feel like this is the kind of place where they can do whatever they want to do. JH: And I have to say that one thing which has been exciting is, I have felt very much that I could take Locke & Key in whatever direction I thought was appropriate and IDW would generally be willing to back those chances. If I did something in the content that might be really upsetting, IDW has always been willing to take the chance and see what happens. I think that’s what you hope for from any publisher in the comic business, or anywhere else. CR: We’re careful about approaching people that we really like and really think they can do something, so when we approach them, we do want to give them freedom. We’ve seen what they can do and we have a certain trust and admiration for their work. So I think within pretty broad reason, whatever you want to do we’re really willing to back. They don’t usually all work out and align as well as well as Locke & Key has, but it’s certainly a pleasure when they do. JH: But that’s okay, too. I think that it’s exciting when you see a publisher that’s willing to take a broad range of chances to try a broad range of material. Very few experiments do catch fire. CR: Doomed turned out to be a bit too prophetically named, but it was still one of the things we were most proud of working on. It is nice to have a track record of having admirable misses, because you never want to get sucked into a pattern of doing the same old thing over and over just because you know it’s going to work. It’s fun to be able to try things like Doomed. Some work and some don’t. But in the case of Locke & Key, _______________________________________________ Opposite Page: Locke & Key, art by Gabriel Rodriguez.
it just seems like from the start it’s been firing on all cylinders, and I think it probably helped even more once we got Gabriel involved. JH: Oh absolutely, absolutely. He’s done so much to define the quality of that narrative and to shape the feel of it. I think if the story works emotionally it’s because the characters as Gabe envisions them are very real. He has a great natural feel for emotional nuance. He doesn’t need to beat you over the head with what characters are feeling because it’s just there in their body language, in the very subtle nuances of their expressions. CR: It’s been a pleasure with him because, other than Ash and Ben, he’s the artist that’s been here the longest. He’s been here almost our entire history. He started out as a studio guy doing the CSI books and then I tried to pluck him from there and keep trying to get him higher profile gigs, so we did the Romero movie together, and then we did the Clive Barker project together, and then we did Beowulf. JH: What Romero movie did you do? CR: Land of the Dead. JH: Really? You’ll have to send me a copy. I’d like to see that. CR: I will. That was the first thing that I adapted and worked with Gabe on and that was where he really came into his own. JH: I’d love to see how you guys did the beginning, because it was so beautiful in the film... with the zombies on the bandstand. CR: We worked off a pretty different script. It changed a bit by the time it finally hit the theaters. There were some hiccups doing it because we were working off an older draft that went through a lot of changes, but I think the comic came out pretty nicely. I’d been trying to get Gabe more highprofile projects, so it’s great that you responded to his work at the start and wanted him on this book, too. _____________________________________ Top: Gender Key, art by Gabriel Rodriguez. Bottom: Omega Key, art by Gabriel Rodriguez.
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just rehashes of what we’ve already seen in Eerie and Creepy. So I thought IDW looked like it might create the right climate to do something interesting. CR: We’ve certainly always tried to be a place that offers people who bring us a new idea a way to express it without getting in the way and changing it. I want people to be free and creative and feel like this is the kind of place where they can do whatever they want to do. JH: And I have to say that one thing which has been exciting is, I have felt very much that I could take Locke & Key in whatever direction I thought was appropriate and IDW would generally be willing to back those chances. If I did something in the content that might be really upsetting, IDW has always been willing to take the chance and see what happens. I think that’s what you hope for from any publisher in the comic business, or anywhere else. CR: We’re careful about approaching people that we really like and really think they can do something, so when we approach them, we do want to give them freedom. We’ve seen what they can do and we have a certain trust and admiration for their work. So I think within pretty broad reason, whatever you want to do we’re really willing to back. They don’t usually all work out and align as well as well as Locke & Key has, but it’s certainly a pleasure when they do. JH: But that’s okay, too. I think that it’s exciting when you see a publisher that’s willing to take a broad range of chances to try a broad range of material. Very few experiments do catch fire. CR: Doomed turned out to be a bit too prophetically named, but it was still one of the things we were most proud of working on. It is nice to have a track record of having admirable misses, because you never want to get sucked into a pattern of doing the same old thing over and over just because you know it’s going to work. It’s fun to be able to try things like Doomed. Some work and some don’t. But in the case of Locke & Key, _______________________________________________ Opposite Page: Locke & Key, art by Gabriel Rodriguez.
it just seems like from the start it’s been firing on all cylinders, and I think it probably helped even more once we got Gabriel involved. JH: Oh absolutely, absolutely. He’s done so much to define the quality of that narrative and to shape the feel of it. I think if the story works emotionally it’s because the characters as Gabe envisions them are very real. He has a great natural feel for emotional nuance. He doesn’t need to beat you over the head with what characters are feeling because it’s just there in their body language, in the very subtle nuances of their expressions. CR: It’s been a pleasure with him because, other than Ash and Ben, he’s the artist that’s been here the longest. He’s been here almost our entire history. He started out as a studio guy doing the CSI books and then I tried to pluck him from there and keep trying to get him higher profile gigs, so we did the Romero movie together, and then we did the Clive Barker project together, and then we did Beowulf. JH: What Romero movie did you do? CR: Land of the Dead. JH: Really? You’ll have to send me a copy. I’d like to see that. CR: I will. That was the first thing that I adapted and worked with Gabe on and that was where he really came into his own. JH: I’d love to see how you guys did the beginning, because it was so beautiful in the film... with the zombies on the bandstand. CR: We worked off a pretty different script. It changed a bit by the time it finally hit the theaters. There were some hiccups doing it because we were working off an older draft that went through a lot of changes, but I think the comic came out pretty nicely. I’d been trying to get Gabe more highprofile projects, so it’s great that you responded to his work at the start and wanted him on this book, too. _____________________________________ Top: Gender Key, art by Gabriel Rodriguez. Bottom: Omega Key, art by Gabriel Rodriguez.
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JH: I think one key element of great comic-book art, and it’s very underrated, is the ability to put together a sequence and the way each panel is staged. And Gabe has a style, an instinct, which reminds me of the cinematographer Dean Cundey, who worked with John Carpenter on all those great horror films from the ’70s and early ’80s like The Thing and Halloween and The Fog. Those were all Dean Cundey films and they’re very un-show-offy and minimalist in their approach but his camera’s always placed just in the right position to squeeze the maximum amount of suspense out of any sequence. And Gabe is the same way with the camera of his imagination. He’s always got the panel framed just right so that as the sequence plays out, the suspense naturally rises and intensifies. You can learn that but I don’t think you can teach that. CR: And he used to play around with the panels a lot more. Some of his CSIs felt like the old Batman TV show, where he’d turn the camera to try to get more interesting. I think he’s developed that into something that’s become a lot stronger over the last 286
few years. When I pitched him to you, I probably did the same thing that I did with Clive Barker where I kind of stacked the deck in Gabe’s favor, because I think he should be drawing everything. I probably showed you a finished book from Gabe and then a pencil sample from a few other guys, kind of like when you hold up the one Old Maid card a little bit higher so somebody will be inclined to grab it. I try and make Gabe look as good as he can so any other samples are going to pale against him. JH: He has a natural feel for architecture as well. It was important that the house looked right and was believable. The house is sort of the unspoken major character of the story. In some ways the house is the main character. But the other thing is the warmth and humanity of his characters. Or not, in the case of a character like Sam Lesser. There’s something about Sam Lesser’s eyes and the expressionlessness of his face that’s a lot more frightening than a look of rage would have been or an expression of hatred. There’s nothing there, he’s an empty closet. You contrast that with the Locke kids. You see Kinsey or Tyler or Bode
reacting to each other, even when they don’t have a line of dialogue, just the look on their face, the way they’re standing is, I think, emotionally incredibly effective.
CR: When you see things like the issue three spread inside Bode’s head–does that make you go, “Man, if he could pull this off what can I possibly throw at him that could challenge him?”
CR: And I think even down to Bode’s body language. A lot of people draw kids as smaller variations on the characters they’ve been drawing, but Gabe draws him and he looks like a kid and he’s doing things with his legs and his body language and posture even in the background that’s very kidlike. You can’t really learn that, you either know people and their behavior or you don’t. That’s another thing Gabe’s a master at capturing.
JH: I will say that many times, very often one of the high points of my day is when an e-mail comes in with a new page from Gabe. That’s always a great part of the day.
JH: I’m in an incredibly exciting position. I have a chance to work with a talent like Gabe. Especially as the collaboration has gone on, it begins to become very fun to give him a challenge and see how he’ll play it out, or to find an opportunity to step back and just let him throw it all on the page, create a stunning full-page illustration. He’s done some stuff in “Head Games” with two-page splashes that... I look at them all the time, I can’t get over them. _________________________________________________________ Opposite Page and Above: Locke & Key, art by Gabriel Rodriguez.
CR: I’m with you. I sit here and do this all day and I think that’s still probably the highlight of my day, too. JH: I’ve also learned how much I can trust him. A lot of times I’ll plan what I think is a really entertaining and engaging exchange of dialogue. Then when the page is drawn I discover I don’t really need most of that dialogue because it’s already there in the illustration. CR: So that’s where we got started. Hopefully we’re talking about this in 10 years and seeing what else we can do.
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JH: I think one key element of great comic-book art, and it’s very underrated, is the ability to put together a sequence and the way each panel is staged. And Gabe has a style, an instinct, which reminds me of the cinematographer Dean Cundey, who worked with John Carpenter on all those great horror films from the ’70s and early ’80s like The Thing and Halloween and The Fog. Those were all Dean Cundey films and they’re very un-show-offy and minimalist in their approach but his camera’s always placed just in the right position to squeeze the maximum amount of suspense out of any sequence. And Gabe is the same way with the camera of his imagination. He’s always got the panel framed just right so that as the sequence plays out, the suspense naturally rises and intensifies. You can learn that but I don’t think you can teach that. CR: And he used to play around with the panels a lot more. Some of his CSIs felt like the old Batman TV show, where he’d turn the camera to try to get more interesting. I think he’s developed that into something that’s become a lot stronger over the last 286
few years. When I pitched him to you, I probably did the same thing that I did with Clive Barker where I kind of stacked the deck in Gabe’s favor, because I think he should be drawing everything. I probably showed you a finished book from Gabe and then a pencil sample from a few other guys, kind of like when you hold up the one Old Maid card a little bit higher so somebody will be inclined to grab it. I try and make Gabe look as good as he can so any other samples are going to pale against him. JH: He has a natural feel for architecture as well. It was important that the house looked right and was believable. The house is sort of the unspoken major character of the story. In some ways the house is the main character. But the other thing is the warmth and humanity of his characters. Or not, in the case of a character like Sam Lesser. There’s something about Sam Lesser’s eyes and the expressionlessness of his face that’s a lot more frightening than a look of rage would have been or an expression of hatred. There’s nothing there, he’s an empty closet. You contrast that with the Locke kids. You see Kinsey or Tyler or Bode
reacting to each other, even when they don’t have a line of dialogue, just the look on their face, the way they’re standing is, I think, emotionally incredibly effective.
CR: When you see things like the issue three spread inside Bode’s head–does that make you go, “Man, if he could pull this off what can I possibly throw at him that could challenge him?”
CR: And I think even down to Bode’s body language. A lot of people draw kids as smaller variations on the characters they’ve been drawing, but Gabe draws him and he looks like a kid and he’s doing things with his legs and his body language and posture even in the background that’s very kidlike. You can’t really learn that, you either know people and their behavior or you don’t. That’s another thing Gabe’s a master at capturing.
JH: I will say that many times, very often one of the high points of my day is when an e-mail comes in with a new page from Gabe. That’s always a great part of the day.
JH: I’m in an incredibly exciting position. I have a chance to work with a talent like Gabe. Especially as the collaboration has gone on, it begins to become very fun to give him a challenge and see how he’ll play it out, or to find an opportunity to step back and just let him throw it all on the page, create a stunning full-page illustration. He’s done some stuff in “Head Games” with two-page splashes that... I look at them all the time, I can’t get over them. _________________________________________________________ Opposite Page and Above: Locke & Key, art by Gabriel Rodriguez.
CR: I’m with you. I sit here and do this all day and I think that’s still probably the highlight of my day, too. JH: I’ve also learned how much I can trust him. A lot of times I’ll plan what I think is a really entertaining and engaging exchange of dialogue. Then when the page is drawn I discover I don’t really need most of that dialogue because it’s already there in the illustration. CR: So that’s where we got started. Hopefully we’re talking about this in 10 years and seeing what else we can do.
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JH: You guys are good to include Locke & Key in the tenth anniversary book. Locke & Key comes in a bit late in the picture. CR: It does, but it instantly becomes a big part of what we do. This is the kind of book that IDW was started to do, so it’s nice that even 10 years in we’re still able to do that kind of thing. JH: Well, I feel like everyone I’ve worked with at IDW has a tremendous sense of fun about what they’re doing. And whether it’s a licensed title or original material, I think a sense of fun counts for a lot. CR: Yeah, I certainly put everything I can into the licensed books, but you know what to expect from a licensed book because it’s already established, whereas something like Locke & Key comes out of nowhere and really smacks you across the head. That’s one of the nice, pleasant bits of the job, too– where something that you weren’t even aware of becomes something that you love, that really means a lot to you. _________________________________________________________ Opposite Page and Above: Locke & Key, art by Gabriel Rodriguez.
JH: Hey, I’m just glad it didn’t tank. Yet. Let’s see what happens. The coolest thing is I get to tell as much of this story as I want to. If it hadn’t done well, then I would have had to tell some sort of truncated version that would have been a lot less satisfying. Instead, I get to play with these characters for a lot longer, which is very cool. CR: Hell, you’ve got 36 issues in you, but maybe in 10 years we’ll be talking about the 100th anniversary issue. We’ll see. JH: Who knows, who knows. I told Gabe in an email this morning, I could easily, easily imagine playing the back story for 24 issues. I’m not saying I’m going to, I’m just saying I could easily imagine going back to 1987 and telling Wendell’s story, the story of the black door and what happened to Lucas Caravaggio and all those other kids. I could easily play that for 24 issues. It’d be a blast! IDW
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JH: You guys are good to include Locke & Key in the tenth anniversary book. Locke & Key comes in a bit late in the picture. CR: It does, but it instantly becomes a big part of what we do. This is the kind of book that IDW was started to do, so it’s nice that even 10 years in we’re still able to do that kind of thing. JH: Well, I feel like everyone I’ve worked with at IDW has a tremendous sense of fun about what they’re doing. And whether it’s a licensed title or original material, I think a sense of fun counts for a lot. CR: Yeah, I certainly put everything I can into the licensed books, but you know what to expect from a licensed book because it’s already established, whereas something like Locke & Key comes out of nowhere and really smacks you across the head. That’s one of the nice, pleasant bits of the job, too– where something that you weren’t even aware of becomes something that you love, that really means a lot to you. _________________________________________________________ Opposite Page and Above: Locke & Key, art by Gabriel Rodriguez.
JH: Hey, I’m just glad it didn’t tank. Yet. Let’s see what happens. The coolest thing is I get to tell as much of this story as I want to. If it hadn’t done well, then I would have had to tell some sort of truncated version that would have been a lot less satisfying. Instead, I get to play with these characters for a lot longer, which is very cool. CR: Hell, you’ve got 36 issues in you, but maybe in 10 years we’ll be talking about the 100th anniversary issue. We’ll see. JH: Who knows, who knows. I told Gabe in an email this morning, I could easily, easily imagine playing the back story for 24 issues. I’m not saying I’m going to, I’m just saying I could easily imagine going back to 1987 and telling Wendell’s story, the story of the black door and what happened to Lucas Caravaggio and all those other kids. I could easily play that for 24 issues. It’d be a blast! IDW
289