First meetings tied to an ending, of sorts.
Creative Staff:
Story: Jeff Lemire
Art: David Rubin
Colors: David Rubin
Letterer: David Rubin
What They Say:
In the golden age of space exploration, Colonel Randall Weird was on the frontlines. In his interstellar travels he encountered many strange worlds and alien civilizations, but none more curious than the technological marvel that became his best friend: Talky-Walky! Guest artist David Rubin reveals her robotic backstory in this special issue of Black Hammer!
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
Black Hammer has a whole lot going on that sometimes you do feel like Colonel Weird in the Para-Zone as we keep seeing past and present and glimpses of the future at the same time. Jeff Lemire has been structuring the book in a particular way which at times may feel like it’s being padded but is instead taking its time to reveal itself and flesh it out, something that a lot of books tend to not do these days as they just barrel toward the big moments and hit us with overly compressed stories. This issue provides a bit of a change, however, as David Rubin of Ether fame steps in on the art duties to help out. He’s a welcome player in this regard as he captures a lot of what Dean has done so far while also bringing in his own particular style where it helps to define things. It looks like he’s back for the twelfth issue as well with a standalone story there, so it’s all good.
The way recent events have played out put us in a bad place the last time around with Talky-Walky having figured out a way to try and reach beyond with his probe. That’s a big positive in trying to resolve things but Weird knows more about it from what he’s seen and that Talky has to be stopped, hence killing him. The two have a really good short series of encounters over the course of the book while at the farm as you really do get the sadness from Weird over what he had to do – and that leads to him nearly revealing things to Lucy just a bit later. While it may not answer things for her it does give her clues to start putting more of it together. Thankfully, it doesn’t look like Talky is down for the count because I certainly want to have more of him, and some reactions from him and the others after the truth of what Weird attempted to do comes out.
What a lot of the book focuses on in regards to the past is definitely a highlight as we get Weird in the past being directed to a distress signal on some alien world where there isn’t supposed to be life. This gives us one of his young adventures before he went into the Para-Zone, something that I enjoy as it’s old school 50’s style science fiction material. Having him discover a world of silicon life, hence their detectors not finding life there since it’s not carbon based, turns into chaos as he’s hunted down only to be rescued by Talky, someone who doesn’t fit in on this world and wants to escape. It’s a familiar story but it plays well with some light silliness, mostly in the name pronunciation aspect, and some good initial bonding moments. It’s kind of all over the map with how they try to escape but it lets Rubin really run with it with some creative city design material and the silicon life itself.
In Summary:
Black Hammer spends just a little bit of time at the farm and that means not a lot of reveals in the present or much in the way of the family dynamic that really gets me interested. It’s a tighter focus with just Talky and Weird with a dash of Lucy just to connect things and it works very well, there’s no doubt. I like what we get for their friendship/origin story and Rubin delivers some great looking pages while capturing what it is that makes the young Weird who he is with that kind of science fiction material. But the issue just feels like it’s missing enough of what it needs to nudge things forward a bit more or any of the bigger trappings to connect it all together. It’s a very good story and explains a lot of the bond that exists between the two.
Grade: B+
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: Dark Horse Comics
Release Date: April 19th, 2017
MSRP: $3.99
