A chance to escape begins to reveal itself.
Creative Staff:
Story: Jeff Lemire
Art: Dean Ormston
Colors: Dave Stewart
Letterer: Todd Klein
What They Say:
There’s something unusual about the sleepy farming community of Rockwood: it’s now the home of Spiral City’s mysteriously vanished superheroes. But not by choice: they were banished to the town after a battle with the Anti-God, and now they’re stuck within its boundaries. Lately, a new arrival in town has started asking questions, and she’s discovering that its superpowered residents aren’t the only strange thing about Rockwood . . .
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
With Black Hammer having spent its last issue focusing on the title character and exploring his story, which in turn was the way to cement things for Lucy and her motivation for finding the group, Lemire and Ormston continue to do top notch work. The series is one that I just can’t wait to get my hands on and savor as it digs into some classic material with more mature nudges along the way while not going so far as to lose the charm of the older style stories. That we get some solid character focus in each installment while also expanding the larger story and working the cast as they do really just makes it such a delightful read even if your favorite character isn’t there. And it seems like each issue gives Ormston something wonderfully new to work with in illustrating.
The backstory side of this issue gives us more time with Gail, further expanding what we knew of her from the previous origin material. Here, we see how in the past she’d been operating for years and built up the Golden Family with pieces of her power so that they could eventually take over. Her retirement is a surprise to them and a fun little take on so many other variations of this over the years. What I really love is that we see her retiring and going to visit her old nemesis, Frankenlock, who now has a massive worldwide business that’s doing a whole lot of good. While he’s an “undead ghoul,” it turns out that she’s been attracted to him for years, and he with her, resulting in her finally living her life and finding true love. So when we see her in the here and now, frustrated at being locked into this form and in this world, it becomes so much tragic and we understand her rage all the more.
The present day material in this other world continues to be intriguing and becomes more so as Lucy investigates more. This has her spending time at the library only to discover the town history books – at the least – are all blank. We know there’s something not right about this place beyond the team being unable to leave, but the edges are fraying more now. Lucy also manages to give Talky some inspiration for exploration later on toward finding a way out and his enthusiasm is positively infections. Of course, that’s when Colonel Weird shows up to shoot him down as he goes on about how nobody can leave. There’s obviously something greater going on here and we know Weird has seen so much while out in the other space he can still access and you have to wonder what else he’s seen that has pushed him so thoroughly in this direction.
In Summary:
Black Hammer continues to be one of my favorite books in general and it’s the kind of thing I already can’t wait to read in full when all is said and done. The opening arc brought a lot of things into focus and now we’re digging into the details more, piece by piece, and it’s becoming an even more chilling storyline. If you subtract the super powers you basically have a Twilight Zone kind of storyline going on here and it works very well just from that perspective. Lemire and Ormston continue to craft a larger tale here and each new piece of it that comes into focus is engaging, but it’s the smaller stories that win me over from issue to issue. There’s a lot to like here and I already liked Gail, but damn if this round of backstory just make her all the more a tragic figure that I’m really hoping finds a safe path out of this to what she deserves.
Grade: A-
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: Dark Horse Comics
Release Date: April 19th, 2017
MSRP: $3.99
