I hadn’t read any of Locke & Key, written by Joe Hill and drawn by Gabriel Rodriguez, until the Grindhouse one-shot came out back in September. At the time, I told myself that I hadn’t tried it because the word was it had a bunch of backstory and mythology crossing four already-released trade paperbacks worth of material, and between my heavy take of weekly comics and trying to run a comics Web site, I simply didn’t have the time or energy to throw myself into a deep horror tale that, based on titles alone, looked like another Lovecraft knockoff – sure, I loves me some Lovecraftian stories, but I think I’ve established I have little patience for bad ones. So why run the risk?

That was the reason that I told myself. Turns out the real reason I wasn’t reading Locke & Key is because I was a fucking idiot.

Locke & Key is a spectacular horror story, one that covers twenty years and more of mythology, yes, but which focuses on a small group of well-rounded characters in a limited, generally familiar setting – you know, minus the weird house and its funky magic keys. It has Lovecraftian elements, yes, but it also has so much more, and by keeping the people affected down to a small group, it accentuates the danger by making it easy to empathize with those in the thick of it. Yes, Locke & Key is all one big six-volume story (other than that Grindhouse one-shot), and yes, because of that, it is difficult to just grab an issue to understand who people are and what is happening to them, but four of those volumes are available in affordable trade paperback, with the fifth just out in hardcover… and if you’re anything like me, by the time you finish the fourth book, you’ll happily drop the extra few bucks to get the fifth right fucking now.

The sixth and final Locke & Key volume, Omega, is being released in normal comic book form right now; the second issue dropped on Wednesday. And while I have been digging it, I didn’t review the last month’s first issue because it is a late chapter in one big story. Which meant that if you hadn’t read any of the earlier issues, there wasn’t a hope in hell that a new reader would know what the hell was going on or why. And the same is true for this week’s second issue, but I’m going to review and recommend it anyway, even for new readers. Because even though new readers won’t know who the punk kid in the wedding dress is, or why there’s a naked child ghost wandering around with no wang, or if the black woman muttering “White. Stop. Dodge” is in the mental hospital due to a hideous Bombardment accident, I can guarantee they will lock onto the character of Rufus Whedon. And if the heart and cleverness with which Hill has embued this character doesn’t give you faith that maybe it’s worth starting Locke & Key from the beginning to see what he’s done with these other people you don’t know? Maybe comics really aren’t the hobby for you.