Following in a parent’s footsteps can be challenging for anyone, especially if the parent is highly talented in their area of expertise. When your father is as talented as Stephen King, those footsteps can be quite large and intimidating. And yet, Joe Hill has managed to not just follow in those footsteps, but make them his own.
Like King, Hill is a writer of horror novels and short stories. While his body of work is comparatively small, it is already quite impressive. “The Fireman” is an epic on par with any of King’s, and the four novellas that make up “Strange Weather” range from bleak to moving, but all are excellent.
Hill chose to use a pseudonym (an abbreviated version of his middle name) because he wanted to prove that he could succeed as a writer without his father’s name to carry him along. He has, in my opinion, succeeded quite nicely. In fact, I think in many ways he is the better writer. That is not meant to disparage King, but to put into context how good I think Hill is. You can see his father’s influences in his stories, certainly, but they also have a more modern edge and a sharper bite, making the stories his own.
In addition to prose, Hill also has a nice body of comic book work under his belt. Surprisingly to people who know me, his comics are his work of which I’ve read the least. Somewhat surprisingly, I haven’t read “Locke & Key,” his most notable comic work, although I intend to someday.
Joe Hill wanted to earn a reputation as himself, not as a King. If you’ll forgive the play on words, he will someday be a king in title as well as name.