The secret hideout revealed!
Creative Staff:
Story: Jeff Lemire
Art: David Rubin
Colors: David Rubin
Letterer: David Rubin
What They Say:
Twenty years ago, Joseph Weber became the Black Hammer. Ten years ago, Lucy Weber lost her father when he defeated Anti-God, saving Spiral City and the world. Two years ago, Lucy started looking for him. And she found more than she ever expected.
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
With the Black Hammer series taking a break until spring with the next issue, this issue shifts gears to fill in a bit more of the past. Jeff Lemire put out a pretty good installment like this previously in working with David Rubin who puts in pretty much everything here with art, colors, and lettering, and with it being a tale of Lucy that works really well. There’s a kind of creative cohesion that’s just very appealing with how this unfolds and it reinforces my enjoyment of his style of artwork and layout presentation, offering up “empty” space with interesting things to build the world and the atmosphere of it all.
Going back to ten years ago, just three days after the fight with the Anti-God that caused the heroes to disappear, it’s a solid focus on the fallout from that to a small degree within the world but more of a personal story. Showing the kind of gathering that would come together in the city just a few days after, not knowing why or who the Anti-God was and what it was after, there’s a sense of sadness and gray to the world because of the loss of so many well-known heroes that didn’t hesitate. The speech from former hero Doctor Star is spot on and it’s something that’s listened to by a young Lucy Weber, just ten years old, and unable to talk about how her father was the one that lead the charge and dealt the final blow against this thing. Lemire and Rubin paint such a great picture of sadness and unhappiness here that it permeates the pages well.
Following Lucy’s story after that where she has to keep so much hidden isn’t a surprise but it’s heartbreaking since often these situations are portrayed with the child never knowing. She has to make up empty tales of her dead father, her mother is afraid that Black Hammer’s enemies will find out who he is and try to get revenge on them, and Lucy’s desire to speak out frightens her mother. Where things take a turn that I really hope gets explored more is when Doctor Star gives her a key from her father that reveals the Hall of Hammer, his secret lair. Though the intent is not what Lucy had hoped for she’s going to work it in a very different way as she prepares for college and journalism. You can see how it can be reworked into something very positive, a Black Hammer museum for example, but it’s something that just brings Lucy to life in a way she hasn’t for years and with a renewed kind of intent.
In Summary:
Black Hammer in its main run has done some really great things in filling in the backgrounds of our leading characters and the world they left behind. Stories like this give us an even more human view of them through others, though Lucy is becoming a central character in her own right. Dedicating an issue to her, under Rubin’s wonderfully guiding hand, is spot on what I had hoped for when I first heard about this installment. There’s some great nods to what Black Hammer himself did, some really fun things with Doctor Star that makes me want to see more of him in his prime, and a great motivating aspect for Lucy that has now brought her to a place that she always knew must have existed on some level with the heroes that couldn’t be dead. Very fun stuff but also a little sad simply because we know the next issue is the last until the spring for the main series. At least we have a spinoff coming!
Grade: A-
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: Dark Horse Comics
Release Date: August 23rd, 2017
MSRP: $3.99
