Though he's established himself as a smart fiction writer in his own right, for many long-term lovers of horror fiction, Joe Hill King still remains the tow-headed kid who got smacked on the face by his movie father for reading a Creepshow comic in the Stephen King/George Romero flick of the same name. And while it may not be entirely kosher to bring up a role Hill played as a ten-year-old kid in one of his father's lesser projects, I still can't help imagining Bode Locke, the youngest of the three sibs facing the horrors of Hill's series, Locke & Key (IDW), surreptitiously sneaking his own Creepshow comic into the house.

Bode's dad — were he still alive — would most likely be more understanding about his son's choice of reading matter. A high school counselor, Ren Locke wound up on the wrong side of a gun when two of his students unexpectedly showed up at his summer house. One of the twosome, Sam Lesser (a great name for a deranged second), turns to have been in thrall to a mysterious being trapped in the bottom of a well á la the demon ghost of The Ring. Ren's death brings his wife and children back to their New England family home and the adjacent well house holding this malevolent creature. Said creature is by no means through, messing with the still-mourning family - or with Sam Lesser either, for that matter.

The first six issues of Joe Hill & Gabriel Rodriguez' Locke & Key have just been collected in a hardcover subtitled "Welcome to Lovecraft," and it's a strong start for the series. Primarily told from the point-of-view of the three Locke children, the book sets up Hill's rich premise and clearly establishes its three protagonists. Eldest son Tyler Locke is still suffering guilt pangs because he believes he may have inadvertently pushed his schoolmate Sam into murdering Ren. Middle daughter Kinsey, who protected her younger brother by hiding from the killers on top of the roof, still wants to be as unobtrusive as possible, striving to stay anonymous in her new school (William Gaines High, EC lovers!) Little Bode, meanwhile, is being regularly visited in dreams by the bloody specter of his father telling knock-knock jokes.