Welcome back to You Don’t Read Comics Best of the Decade! Our daily retrospective of the best comics this decade had to offer in celebration for the new year. Please refer to our post highlighting the criteria used to determine each year’s entry. We hope you enjoy today’s piece and encourage you to come back tomorrow.

You Don’t Read Comics’ best comic of 2010 is Locke & Key.

Locke & Key is a horror/fantasy series, published in six volumes (for a total of 19 issues) by IDW comics from 2008 to 2013, with spinoff one-shots coming out as late as this past year and continuing into the next decade. Locke and Key tells the story of the Locke family--mother Nina and children Tyler, Kinsey, and Bode--who move to patriarch Rendell’s childhood home, a mansion called Keyhouse in the fictional Lovecraft, Massachusetts, after Rendell’s murder at the hands of a former student. Keyhouse has a secret, of course: various keys hidden in the house and on its grounds unlock doors to mystical powers, including one which turns people into ghosts, one which turns people into animals, one which opens people’s heads, and so on. Keyhouse is also a place where bad things happen, all connected to the mysterious keys and the source of the metal they’re made of.

Written by Joe Hill, an acclaimed horror novelist himself as well as the son of horror master Stephen King, Locke and Key is a stunning work of horror and fantasy. The characters are compelling and written with depth and heart, and each gets their chance to shine throughout the course of this sprawling series. Hill weaves the lore of Keyhouse through the series expertly, building a complex and detailed set of rules for the magic of this place without anything feeling like overwrought exposition. Hill uses this sprawling series to explore many different themes, from the processing of grief to the pain of first love, from struggles with addiction to institutionalized racism. 

The art, by Gabriel Rodriguez, is some of the best sequential storytelling in modern comics. Rodriguez’s very specific style--not quite cartoony, but certainly not rooted in photorealism, either--is flexible enough to allow for a number of different types of stories, from slasher horror to whimsical comedy. Rodriguez’s character acting is stunning, and each member of the Locke family is able to show a wide range because of it. Rodriguez’s past experience with architecture was a huge boon to the book, as he was able to make Keyhouse itself another living, breathing character in the book. And of course Rodriguez’s monster design is out of this world and terrifying, pushing the already-obvious riff on Lovecraftian horror into new dimensions.

Rodriguez’s art is supported by colorist Jay Fotos and letterer Robbie Robbins. Fotos aids Rodriguez in clarifying such bizarre and abstract concepts as using a key to root around in people’s minds, or a swordfight between ghosts. Robbins’ lettering is solid, giving Locke and Key its own unique lettering style and supporting the rest of the art beautifully.

Locke and Key ran for six years, so why is it our best book of 2010? In the course of 2010, IDW published seven issues of the title: issues 3-6 of the book’s third volume, Crown of Shadows, and issues 1-3 of its fourth volume, Keys to the Kingdom. Through the course of those issues, many of the greatest moments of the series elevated it to classic status, such as:

• Locke & Key: Crown of Shadows #5, a largely dialogue-free issue of stunning splash pages as Tyler Locke, armed with the Giant Key, battles the evil Lady of the Well and the monsters of the Shadow Key for the soul of Keyhouse.

• Locke & Key: Crown of Shadows #6, in which the grieving, alcoholic Nina Locke tries and fails to use the magic of Keyhouse to resurrect her husband.

• The whimsical Bill Watterson homage of Locke & Key: Keys to the Kingdom #1, in which Bode Locke gets in touch with his animalistic side.

• The tragedy of poor Erin Voss, as told in Locke & Key: Keys to the Kingdom #2.

• A horrifying month in the life of Keyhouse, as told in Locke & Key: Keys to the Kingdom #3

Locke & Key is highly recommended for fans of Joe Hill, Stephen King, J.K. Rowling, and any form of whimsical, heartfelt fantasy/horror. 2020 will see the debut of a TV adaptation of the series on Netflix, which makes now a perfect time to read the source material, which is one of the best comics of the decade, and our Best Comic of 2010.

Honorable Mentions for 2010:

Life With Archie

Smile

King City

Last Stand of the Wreckers