As if Lucy’s life couldn’t get worse.
Creative Staff:
Story: Jeff Lemire
Art: Malachi Ward, Matthew Sheean
Colors: Malachi Ward
Letterer: Nate Piekos of BLAMBOT
What They Say:
A multidimensional nightmare unfolds and wrecks chaos on Spiral City as the powerful superhero known as the Black Hammer joins forces with the brutal vigilante known as the Skulldigger to put an end to this madness.
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
Black Hammer moves to a new stage with this installment and once again we see how Jeff Lemire is going to mess with our perceptions some. I really like that we had such a radical event going on previously that pushed our lead into some new territory and what we get here is the exploration of how she decides to not cope with it and just focus forward. For this arc, Black Hammer Reborn has Malachi Ward and Matthew Sheean on the art duties and it provides its own distinctiveness to it. It still feels very much in the world of Black Hammer as established previously, but it also is its own thing in some really good ways. Ward’s layouts look good but I really dig the character placement and movement of the camera around situations in order to deliver a really good experience as a reader.
With Colonel Weird having gone and basically ended Lucy’s family, she’s now in this state where it’s all just a lull and a blur. The just sitting there unsure of how to move forward and what to do next dominates. Initially, the only thing that motivates her is finding Skulldigger’s device in Rosie’s backpack but she’s then called down to deal with Doc Robinson. With him having been killed, there’s nothing they can do but to eliminate the remains and move on. It’s a grim moment for Lucy to deal with, one that she’s not entirely keen on, but she still goes through with it all. It’s just one more surreal moment in a city that has long dealt with the surreal. The weirdest part now is that we see how the other Spiral City is closing in from above, inching closer by the minute with two days until it essentially starts crashing into this one.
While Lucy tries to find a little solace with her mother, I like that she really can’t get anything out in this and that she’s just despondent with the loss overall and not able to truly process it. All she can do is focus on other things, which ends up being the Skulldigger piece going off. She’s slowly drawn to the other Spiral City, especially after the TRIDENT folks come across her and she realizes they have nothing. That just makes her all the more intent to go over, perhaps subconsciously wondering if her family is there in some other form. What she gets isn’t what she expected, as is natural in this series, but Skulldigger seemingly knows the score and we get our version of Earth-2 here where the villains are heroes. I’m sure there’s a greater twist to it coming as just a standard homage isn’t Lemire’s style, but the stinger visual is just fantastic.
In Summary:
Black Hammer Reborn takes an interesting turn in this issue all around. I really like the new artists on it for this “guest” run of it as they definitely get the right vibe of the property overall but bring their own style to it as Spiral City begins to meet… Spiral City. Lemire walks us through the start of Lucy’s breakdown and how she’s putting up walls quickly to numb the pain and to avoid having to really process it at all. It’s definitely really well done and the small moments deliver while the bigger ones, such as that last page reveal, set us up for what’s to come in a really great way. I’m excited to see where this arc of the run goes.
Grade: B+
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: Dark Horse Comics
Release Date: October 27th, 2021
MSRP: $3.99
