IDW finally provides details on how Joe Hill and Gabriel Rodriguez’ smash-shit series Locke & Key will be concluded later this year.

“Locke & Key coming to a close? Well I guess that means I need to catch up on the series then! This series is urban horror thriller done right.” ~Shadowhawk

I started reading Joe Hill’s Locke & Key series last month as part of my (first) graphic novel reading challenge for the year. After a bit of a stumbling start in the first issue, the first volume picked up considerably with the next few issues and Welcome To Lovecraft (review) became one of my favourite graphic novels ever. The book had everything I could wish for: great realistic characters, ample mysteries and thrills, great art, and a really fun experience. I haven’t read anything after that however, since I’m currently working on catching up with the remaining graphic novels on that list, but I’m definitely looking forward to getting started on volume 2, Head Games.

And now I’ve more motivation to read the book since IDW announced last night that the series will be coming to a close this August with 2 giant-size bumper issues. In a way, I think this is fantastic news since it implies that the series has a clear roadmap, looking at it from a big picture perspective. Some series that go on and on and on often lose steam somewhere along the way. This is quite common in comics from the Big Two, where there are endless reboots and creative team shuffles, not to mention controversies. But for a series like Locke & Key, I think it is for the best that the overall big picture is “finite”. A clear beginning, middle, and end.

Read on.

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The End Begins in LOCKE & KEY: ALPHA!

San Diego, CA (April 27, 2013) – While it’s long been announced that Joe Hill and Gabriel Rodriguez’s Eisner-winning epic Locke & Key is approaching the story’s conclusion, details of the finale have finally been announced, and the finale has become even bigger than originally revealed.

The concluding series, Locke & Key: Omega, will now run five issues instead of six, and the finale itself will bring the Keyhouse down in the form of LOCKE & KEY: ALPHA, a series of two forty-eight-page issues that will end the series with the kind of intense, macabre aplomb that made it a hit for six series!

“We hadn’t wanted to reveal the direction this finale was going to take until now in order to maintain necessary secrecy over how LOCKE & KEY wraps up,” said series editor and IDW’s Chief Creative Officer/Editor-in-Chief Chris Ryall. “But after Omega, there can only be Alpha. And the series will end much the way it began, in the form of an extra-length issue. Two, in this case. Hard to fit this much death and destruction into just a regular-sized issue…”

Ryall added “It’s been an incredible rewarding six years of Locke & Key, and we’ve loved seeing Locke & Key build a larger and more rabid audience with each volume of the series. Add to that the fans who’ve liked the series enough to tattoo it on their bodies, the actual keys built by Israel Skelton’s Skelton Crew Studios, the Fox pilot, the Eisner Awards and everything else we’ve experienced, and it’s been one of the more rewarding series IDW has ever published. And now it’s time to close this storyline in a way that will be as equally memorable as everything we’ve seen over nearly 40 issues from Hill, Rodriguez and colorist Jay Fotos.”

Locke & Key has enjoyed a massively successful critical and commercial run and found a die-hard group of passionate fans. Though all good things must come to an end, LOCKE & KEY: ALPHA promises to cap things off in the kind of legendary, eye-popping fashion that can only come from the minds of Joe Hill and Gabriel Rodriguez.

For the saved and the damned alike, it’s always darkest before the dawn… or is it? This August, there’s only one way to find out.

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If you have been following the series, what are your thoughts about the announcement? Are you excited? Put off? Share your thoughts in the comments!