“This…I did not see coming.”
Creative Staff:
Story: Jeff Lemire
Art: Rich Tommaso
Colors: Dave Stewart
Letterer: Todd Klein
What They Say:
After the shocking revelations in the last issue, Colonel Weird finds himself a stranger in a strange land, where reality is ever-changing!
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
When things get Weird around here… The Black Hammer: Age of Doom series takes a turn for this issue and the next, presumably to give Dean Ormston a little time to catch up and for Jeff Lemire to flex some creativity with artist Rich Tommaso. This is the first of a two-part side arc that kind of puts a bit of space between the big reveal of the previous issue and the results from all of it by moving out of the Para-Zone off for a while and I know that has to be frustrating for some. Having enjoyed some of the other side story material in this series and other works from Lemire, I’m pretty much in understanding of it and have generally enjoyed them as well.
Telling the tale through Colonel Weird’s perspective for this, we get to the reveal previously and the move he mad to bring the ship out of the Para-Zone, resulting in Madame Dragonfly absolutely panicking over what it will mean for existence if it draws out the Anti-God once again. But for Weird, the transition flash of brilliance has everyone disappear but him, leaving him in his standby mode of being an explorer again and going into the whiteness of space to figure out what’s going on. This journey is interesting and while I can understand why a number of folks will see it as just wasting time, for me it’s a fun journey through the way Weird views the world after all of his experiences and all that he’s seen. Tommaso’s artwork is fantastic here for it as it has a very different feeling that lets it come across in exactly the right way for a character like Weird.
This is largely a surreal kind of thing as Weird ends up meeting Inspector Insector, a humaniform insect that’s like a private detective in design, and along the way while walking through the world he’s landed on he discovers other beings there that are basically cast of characters from stories where they were never used or never needed. There’s some nice meta elements to it and anyone who writes can talk of numerous characters created and discarded without being used. There’s some fun creativity to it here but I also liked the way the world kept changing based on the “bosses” interests, especially in post-apocalyptic designs, and generally just playing with some fun things as a lot of hell based creatures come attacking until things ramp up in terms of the bigger story ideas, which I hope end up being more than just a dream sequence overall. With Weird’s powers, you never know.
In Summary:
Black Hammer overall has been quite the journey and a sidebar story like this is more than fine for me, especially when I’m also in the midst of reading the Quantum Age series and have had some really great miniseries running alongside the mothership book for a while now. This one puts its focus on Weird and Lemire definitely enjoys writing him, though he’s a bit less disconnected this time around than in past installments. Rich Tommaso breathes a solid life into the story with its own flavor of weirdness and I’m looking forward to seeing where they go with it overall, and hoping that Lemire and Tommaso can figure out a good Weird miniseries someday as well.
Grade: B+
Age Rating: 15+
Released By: Dark Horse Comics
Release Date: October 17th, 2018
MSRP: $3.99
