Boxing without the black eyes

Spiderman and I are HUGE fans of the graphic novel series Locke and Key—written by the amazing Joe Hill (son of Stephen King) and illustrated by the equally amazing Gabriel Rodriguez. This series is full of realism and the fantastical, horror and human triumph as well as human foibles. It has a mesmerising plot line that only trickles clues to you about so many dark and winding threads—that really all pay off in the end.  You end up screaming Nooooooooooooooo at the end of each issue as you are left hanging where something terrible has happened to a character you really love—all the characters are ones you end up with such great feelings for you can’t bear to think that something tragic will happen to them. And it will. No one is safe here. The good guys don’t always make it to the end.  When an explanation is finally offered, you feverishly work back through all past issues looking for all the clues that led to the revelation. We love it so much that when we get the shipping notice Spiderman and I sit like coiled springs waiting to pounce on it as it drops through the letter box. A rumble has ensued on more than one occasion over who gets to read it first. Seriously.

 

Go here to read about it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locke_%26_Key Then go to your local comic shop and see if they have it. If not—buy it from Amazon and be prepared for the ride of your life.

 OK, what does this have to do with our summer vacation? Well…Locke and Key is all about a house called Keyhouse where there are strange keys that can unlock all sorts of magic, they are made from the whispering iron—a metal which is not metal—and they can only be used by children –a rule set about by Hans Riffel during WWII to stop them being used for the purposes of war. We meet Tyler, Kinsey and Bode Locke who have come to live at Keyhouse after the brutal murder of their father by someone looking for the keys. Now they must use the keys to stop evil being unleashed on the world.

 

OK, but you still haven’t told us what this has to do with anything. I’m getting to that. We collect replicas of some of the keys. We currently have four keys and were looking for a way to display them. Enter the keybox. Spiderman found this cool key box that was barely whitewashed like an old farmhouse. It has a front door like a knob and it just looks like it is saying: welcome to Keyhouse. But we decided to paint the interior forest green to help the keys show up better. Here is the finished project:


click to see it up close

We currently own the animal key (top) which when used in the animal door turns you into a beast of tooth or claw or feather. Then we have the head key (bottom left) which can open the top of your head and you can put thoughts in (why study for a test—just put the book in your head) or more worryingly, take thoughts out (key witnesses to crimes suddenly can’t recall the event)  Next we have the moon key (bottom middle) which opens a door from this reality to the next—it once helped poor Ian Locke who was dying of a brain tumour to fly in a hot air balloon up to the moon, open the moon and join his family who had died before him) Lastly, we have the angel key (bottom right) which after putting on a harness with wings, if you insert the key in the back you can fly.

 

We also purchased some original cover art from the series illustrated by the splendid Gabriel Rodriguez. It came all the way from Chile and got a teency bit water damaged—no ink smeared, thank goodness, but it is a little wrinkly on one side. We don’t care—we are thrilled to have it. It is a drawing of the mother of Kinsey, Tyler and Bode falling apart and drinking heavily after the murder of her husband.


click to see it up close

 Lastly, Spiderman bought a tiny silver shadowbox to frame replica Joe Friday badge set. I am also a lifelong fan of Dragnet (known in my house as Dum de dum dum—from the opening music) He also bought a replica of the whale of a car he and his partner Officer Gannon ride a round in.

click to see it up close

I also have two biographies of Jack Webb, a TV Guide with him on the cover, Sgt Joe Friday’s safety colouring book and a set of finger puppets with Friday, Gannon and Blue Boy and his magic sugar cubes so you can re-enact the first episode of the colour series where they try to get LSD classified as an illegal drug.

 

So that’s some stuff we hung on the walls. In boxes. Without getting into a punch up--except for maybe waiting for the latest issue of Locke and Key. Stay tuned for the kitchen makeover.