Any time you read a graphic novel, you can't escape the importance of the art. In the best entries, the art and the story intertwine beautifully, each supporting the other and making something more than the sum of their parts. Such is the case in Head Games, which finds the Locke children discovering a new key that leads to the ability to get into each other's heads...quite literally. Artist Gabriel Rodriguez did fine work in Welcome to Lovecraft, but he brings a whole new level out here in his minds apes, which are so packed with detail and nuance that I feel you could spend hours just unpacking everything on display. And the fact that it all supports Joe Hill's ever-complicating story only makes it all the more effective, as the Locke kids start to realize that there's more to their family estate than they ever realized. Meanwhile, we start to dive more into their ever-changing nemesis, who's currently masterminding a hostage situation of his own, and whose past starts to give us hints that we're coming in much later into this story than we ever realized. (Just how late is hinted at in a postscript concerning the keys, where we learn a possible time frame for their creation that's not at all what I expected.) If Welcome to Lovecraft was set up, Head Games delivers on that and then some, complicating the story while also diving more deeply into the characters, their pasts, and - quite literally - their minds. And as Act One of the story concludes, Hill and Rodriguez have me eager to learn more about these keys, the crimes that have been committed, and to see what happens next.
- Josh Mauthe
- Josh Mauthe
