New Details Revealed For Locke & Key And The Sandman Crossover

Back in February, a crossover event between DC's The Sandman and IDW's Locke & Key was announced in what feels like a dream come true to comic book fans--pun intended. Writer Joe Hill and artist Gabriel Rodríguez are combining these two worlds.

At Chicago's comic convention, C2E2, Joe Hill explained that Locke & Key's inspiration was the world they will be crossing over into in October. "Our inspiration was Neil Gaiman's run on Sandman," Hill told GameSpot. "You know, we wanted to tell a big story of fantasy that would reflect some of the same values that we saw in Sandman. And I always felt that the magic of the keys, the supernatural keys, were like dreams in Sandman. They were a tool we could use to tell any story we wanted to tell. In my mind, the two things already sort of mashed together. And a couple of years ago we started talking about possibly doing a crossover because we had an idea for them."

Rodriguez and Hill came up with the crossover idea together at a comic convention, and after two years, the comic was good to go. This included a blessing from Sandman creator Neil Gaiman, which Hill explained was very important to him.

At this time, Hill and Rodriguez are shooting for two or three 32-page issues in order to tell this story. And there is already a bridge to the Sandman story, and two of these Locke & Key stories have already been published. "The first one was Open the Moon, but then we did another one called Small World and so all of them sort of take place in this, right around the time that World War I got going," Hill explained. "And the event, the next one about those characters, is Pale Battalions which is two issues long and that sets up the material for Sandman crossover."

The Sandman Locke & Key crossover is coming to DC Comics in October. For more on DC Comics, check out our interview with the creators of Strange Adventures.