Comics Giveaway Day 2026: Locke & Key #1

My first experience with Locke & Key, like many, was the Netflix adaptation that first aired back in 2020. Since then, the original comics by Joe Hill and Gabriel Rodríguez have always been a kind of “I’ll read that one day” book for me. Considering that the comics are significantly darker in tone and more graphic in their content than the Netflix series, it can be hard for fans to transition between them at first.

Now, with numerous spin-offs such as Alpha or Keys to the Kingdom, it’s made even harder for a new reader to dive into the rich, Lovecraft-inspired world that in many ways feels like one of those ARGs you’d find out about in a late-night, ill-advised YouTube binge. The Comics Giveaway Day, which is a different but holistically similar event to Free Comic Book Day (it’s a whole thing), version of Locke & Key #1 is the very same as the original debut comic that was first released way back in 2008. On that end, it’s a great jumping-on point for both fans of the show and other readers who are simply intrigued by the series premise.

The artwork by Gabriel Rodríguez is exceptional and very easy to read, so for fans of the show who come to the comics as their first read, it’s actually a pretty smooth transition from point A to B. While Rodríguez uses standard panels and gutters, Locke & Key has a very unorthodox, gritty, and realistic art style that does a lot of work selling the series’ mature rating and elements to the reader. It’s very skilled on Rodríguez’s part, an artist who was, for the most part, an unknown at the time, at least in America.