The age may have passed but the desires of it have not.
Creative Staff:
Story: Jeff Lemire
Art: Dean Ormston
Colors: Dave Stewart
Letterer: Todd Klein
What They Say:
Once they were heroes, but that age has long since passed. Banished from existence by a multiversal crisis, the old champions of Spiral City—Abraham Slam, Golden Gail, Colonel Weird, Madame Dragonfly, and Barbalien—now lead simple lives in a timeless farming town. Even as they try to find their way home, trouble has a unique way of finding heroes wherever they are!
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
Having read a range of Jeff Lemire’s stories over the years and being really interested in most of them, the debut of a new book from him at Dark Horse Comics will perk up some attention to be sure. Working with Dean Ormston who has done a range of work over the years including some great Vertigo books, the pair are doing their take on superheroes in a way that’s fairly cyclical as we’ve seen this more general approach before over the years. A more mature and somewhat grounded look in a post-event sense is engaging and intriguing if done right as it leaves you wanting more as you have to both backtrack and move forward with the story while understanding the different incarnations of the characters. Suffice to say, Lemire and Orstom nail it here.
The premise itself is one that long time comic book readers will connect with as we’re dealing with heroes from the Golden Age as they look like they’ve stepped out of the 30’s and 40’s with costume design from what little we see of them, but mixed in with some Grant Morrison level Doom Patrol weirdness – made more so by Ormston’s excellent artwork. The group that we deal with here that’s made up of Abraham Slam, Colonel Weird, Talky-Walky!, Barbalien, Golden Gail and Madam Butterfly all deal with a big problem back in the day that lead them to confronting it with all they had. And it ended in the seeming death of Black Hammer, the invincible member of their team. Because of these events they ended up thrown into this small town where it feels like they’re part of an Under the Dome episode, separated from the rest of reality, though only they seem to be aware of it. Having put that life behind them, grudgingly in some cases, the members have been living their lives in weird forms for the past ten years, getting together on the anniversary of the event at least to pay respects to Black Hammer.
The book spends its time giving us the basics of the past and present and really digging into each of the characters in a better way than you’d expect within a standard sized book. While you may not get a full and rich story for each of them, you get more than enough to tantalize and engage, such as with Colonel Weird and Barbalien just for being so distinctive, while wanting to know more about Golden Gail and how she ended up in the young girl body while being older. And naturally, the seniority of Abraham Slam means he’s the ostensible group leader in this frayed situation, you get some neat things with that kind of grizzled and stolid type that’s just trying to do right by everyone while accepting the situation even as others like Talky-Walky is doing what he can to send probes outside of this area to understand more of what’s going on.
In Summary:
Lemire teases and tantalizes for the most part here with what’s going on, not giving us any direct answers or ideas but hitting enough aspects so that you want to know more. The bulk of the time is spent on exploring how this group interacts in this situation, ten years on from being dropped here, and the kind of dynamic that exists within this relationships. Through that we get a look at who they are now and flashback panels to who they were in their golden age, both of which are definitely intriguing and I find myself hopeful for some one-off issues along the way that gives us some classic tales. But I’m far more interested in who they are now, worn and weary, crazy and frayed, and what they’ll do. Lemire’s provided a lot for Ormston to work with and good gravy does he deliver panel after panel in making this work. In a lot of ways it feels very reminiscent of Richard Case’s work on Doom Patrol from decades ago in all the right ways and just those visual quirks turns my interest meter up by a hundredfold. I’ve been wary of adding new series at the moment but Black Hammer is going to turn into a must.
Grade: A-
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: Dark Horse Comics
Release Date: July 20th, 2016
MSRP: $3.99
