Everything sucks and requires a lot of death to fix.
Creative Staff:
Story: Jeff Lemire
Art: Dean Ormston
Colors: Dave Stewart
Letterer: Todd Klein
What They Say:
Lucy comes face to face with someone she would never expect, as the only solution to the ongoing fight against Anti-God is revealed!
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
As we get closer to the end of the Age of Doom series the bleaker things look. Which is standard fare for hero books to begin with but there’s that fun little extra to all of this in that it has that sense of culmination of a couple of years of storytelling. Jeff Lemire keeps our characters pretty human here and even though we know little overall of the original Black Hammer he still feels very accessible. It helps that Dean Ormston is again delivering some gorgeous material with great designs, such as the new world at the beginning or the home life of Dragonfly that we get. Each little piece expands the world as a whole but still feels very cohesive and in line with what’s come before.
Lucy’s discovery of her father is one of the best parts since it brings two people together that have been separated for quite some time and have a great bond that’s been shown across the run. Here, we learn how he left the Farm and ended up in this place but without a body that can go anywhere else, making this new world his main place to exist. Which, with the help of an elder being here, Lucy learns of just how out of balance the other universe is, hence the return of the Anti-God. It’s all a bit light and superficial in terms of really digging into the why of it all but it works well enough to show how Lucy can’t bring him back and that she has a role in bringing everything to a close. Lucy feels responsible enough for what happened to the Farm and those there to begin with so it’s easy enough to understand why she’ll fall into this position of helping easily enough.
With the rest of the group not knowing any of this, they just see the slow formation of the Anti-God and how it’ll destroy everything. Combine that with Black Hammer MIA and Dragonfly as well, they know they can’t win but they still feel the need to step up and do the right thing because they are heroes. There’s a lot of interesting dialogue throughout this as anger and resentment is strong toward Colonel Weird after what went down, but he’s also even mor eoff than usual since he no longer knows what will happen. I like the touches we get as to how the world is handling all the strange changes going on in the weather but I also quite like the time that we get with a domestic Dragonfly as she takes care of her kids and household while trying to keep things together before the inevitable.
In Summary:
Black Hammer has been a slow build kind of series since pretty much the start and it continues well here while also bringing out the latest reveals and hints of how it’ll all wrap up. Lemire’s plan looks pretty solid in how it should bring things to conclusion that will give the characters new paths forward that will please fans while also setting up for a larger and expanded Black Hammer universe to play in. Ormston continues to produce some great stuff here with excellent character work and some fantastic settings, especially in this opening pages. I can’t wait to see what comes next and where the whole property is going to go in the next few years.
Grade: B+
Age Rating: 15+
Released By: Dark Horse Comics
Release Date: July 3rd, 2019
MSRP: $3.99
