Fantasy series Locke & Key made stars of its creators Joe Hill and Gabriel Rodriguez, and was acclaimed as a masterpiece by critics and fans alike. The run ended a decade ago with the final issue of Locke & Key: Alpha, although Hill — who’s also a successful horror novelist — has teased a potential return more than once. Now, he’s talking more about what that might look like… and explaining why it won’t be happening anytime soon.

“Gabe and I have talked for years about a whole ‘other six-book run of Locke & Key, which would be called World War Key, that would jump back and forth between Key Houses past and Key Houses present and pick up with some of the characters after the events of the original run,” Hill reveals on The Short Box podcast. “It might happen. I hope it will happen, and if it doesn’t happen in the next couple of years, it can still happen five or six years down the road… but Locke & Key is a big commitment, we’ve done some really good books, I wouldn’t want to let readers down by giving it anything less than my full attention, and I can’t do that really when I’m working on the novels.”

That’s not the only complication, however; Hill has been keeping track of what’s been happening at Locke & Key publisher IDW Publishing, which has had a somewhat tumultuous year, and that has made him slightly nervous about the prospect of returning too early.

“I co-own Locke & Key with IDW comics,” he explains. “IDW comics is not in financially good shape, as far as I can tell. I only know what I see from the outside, but it’s my sense it’s not a company that’s as financially secure as one would hope. That they have struggled over the last few years, with the pandemic and so on. I’m rooting for them to get back on their feet and stuff, but I don’t know what the future of Locke & Key looks like, because I don’t know what the future of IDW comics looks like. So there are several cross-currents that make it difficult to predict what the future looks like for Locke & Key.”

So… consider it good news deferred, perhaps…? If nothing else, there’s always the original run to revisit while we wait…

Revisit the April layoffs of a substantial portion of IDW Publishing.