05 - Locke & Key - Clockworks

The narrative of Locke & Key is structured in three acts, with each act consisting of two six-issue storylines. Act One's first story arc, Welcome To Lovecraft, was a six-issue limited series published by IDW Publishing. The first issue of Welcome To Lovecraft was released on February 20, 2008 and sold out in a single day, requiring a second printing to be done immediately. The second arc of Act One, entitled Head Games, commenced with the release of the first issue on January 22, 2009. The actual Head Games story was printed in four issues, with a standalone prologue ("Intermission" or "The Joe Ridgeway Story") and a standalone conclusion ("Army Of One").

Act Two of the Locke & Key story consists of two limited, six-issue miniseries; the first storyline of Act Two, Crown of Shadows, began in the fall of 2009. The second storyline, Keys to the Kingdom, began in August 2010.

The first storyline of Act Three was initially announced as Time & Tide, but is now titled Clockworks.

The original publication plan for the issues comprising the second, third, fourth, and fifth story arcs to be released monthly, with the final storyline being produced as an original graphic novel, but these plans have been altered.

Clockworks

Act 3a
Issue Release Chapter Title Summary
#1 July 20, 2011[21] The Locksmith's Son Colonel Adam Crais's minutemen are literally trapped between a rock and a hard place; in the first days of the Revolutionary War, they find themselves hiding beneath 120 feet of New England stone, with a full regiment of redcoats waiting for them in the daylight... and a door into hell in the cavern below.

The black door is open, and it's up to a 16-year-old smith named Ben Locke to find a way to close it. The biggest mysteries of the Locke & Key series are resolved as Clockworks opens, not with a bang, but with the thunderous crash of English cannons.
#2 August 31, 2011[22] SMASH! Terror runs wild, and the Locke family comes to grief in the smash-ingest story of the series yet!
#3 December 14, 2011[23] The Tamers of the Tempest The Omega Key to The Black Door has been found by the one, who calls himself The Legion.
#4 February 1, 2012[24] The Whispering Iron The tamers of The Tempest—Rendell Locke, Dodge Caravaggio, and their friends—descend into the Drowning Cave to open the Black Door, hoping to get their hands on some of the fabled whispering iron, the material from which all of the keys are forged. And everything goes according to plan! Not.
#5 March 14, 2012[25] Grown-Ups Lucas "Dodge" Caravaggio returns from the Drowning Cave, infected by a parasite of the soul; the good and loving friend has been left behind, and replaced by something free of all human feeling. Searching for a way to control him, the Keepers of the Keys make a dreadful choice... and set off a chain of events that will end in an unimaginable slaughter.
#6 May 16th, 2012[26] Curtain As a storm thunders up the coast to Lovecraft, Massachusetts, the Keepers of the Keys face Dodge a final time, under three hundred feet of stone, in the darkness before the Black Door. Here, water will mix with blood and The Drowning Cave will become a colossal grave, in the final issue of the CLOCKWORKS storyline.