Spencer & Locke
What if Calvin and Hobbes grew up in Sin City? Detective Locke and his imaginary panther partner Spencer crack a brutal murder in this neo-noir.
đź“– Action Lab Comics • Started 2017
What happens when the easiest elevator pitch in comics becomes a full-blown crime saga? Spencer & Locke asks “What if Calvin and Hobbes grew up in Sin City?” and answers with a stylish, brutalist noir that bolts childhood trauma onto a hard-boiled murder case. Detective Locke returns to his old neighborhood when his grade-school sweetheart turns up dead, and his only partner he can trust on the job is Spencer — his imaginary talking panther from childhood. Together they wade through a vicious crime syndicate, gunfights, and the fractured memories of Locke’s own past to find the truth.
Writer David Pepose and artist Jorge Santiago Jr. (with colors from Jasen Smith and letters from Colin Bell) built this as a love letter to both Bill Watterson’s Sunday strips and Frank Miller’s noir iconography, and critics ate it up — IGN called it “a stylish noir mystery,” while Scott Snyder hailed it as “richly imagined and darkly original.” Published by Action Lab in 2017, the first arc earned a Ringo Award nomination for Best Series, and the 2019 sequel Spencer & Locke 2 (which satirized Beetle Bailey) earned another. The rights were even optioned for film by Hitman producer Adrian Askarieh.
Perfect for fans of Sin City, Fight Club, and True Detective — more than equal parts Sunday nostalgia and hard-edged crime.
