The end is nigh!
Creative Staff:
Story: Jeff Lemire
Art: Caitlin Yarsky
Letterer: Nate Piekos of BLAMBOT
What They Say:
Lucy Weber has been searching for her father for years, and when he finally appears at her door, he turns out to be from an evil dimension–will she take his Faustian offer to be a family again or face off to prove there can only be one Black Hammer?!
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
With one more issue to go after this as things wrap up for the series, and I believe Black Hammer in general for a while, Black Hammer Reborn brings us back to the farm so things can draw together properly. While its focus has been on Lucy and Weird, it makes sense to go back to the beginning in a way and reconnect with those that started it all. Lemire’s pick to work with Caitlin Yarsky was a huge high point for me and I’m glad to see them back on the book at this point. It made sense to change things up for Weird’s arc but having them back works well here as things escalate. It reminds me a lot of what the original series had, which I can attribute to Dave Stewart’s masterful use of color design, but it has a different kind of expressiveness that works just as well to amplify the situations.
This issue opens on where so much of the series has spiraled out from with Weird threatening Lucy’s family and trying to get her to realize that this is the right thing to do. Weird is always difficult to contend with for everyone else for obvious reasons and his threatening her own isn’t going to change that. What’s interesting is that when he does zap them, we follow Rosie and her father as her brother is split off – though he shows at the very end with Insector of all people. For Rosie and her dad, they’re confused by being in the country and finding a small town called Rockwood, which has them trying to find out how to get to Spiral City from there. That, of course, sets off alarm bells for one patron – an Abraham Slam. Yes, Rockwood is where they ended up after everything happened before.
Abraham is able to scurry them away and find out what’s going on a bit as Rosie is in tell-all mode while her dad is angry and focused on finding his son. But it works out as Tammy knows some of the details and Abraham is just trying to keep things calm as the whole superhero thing is a big secret. So much so that Rockwood basically exists in our world and there are no superheroes here except in comics and movies. That does let Abraham calm things a bit and refocus on finding the missing boy, but we get a nice diversion at Abraham’s place as he fills the pair in on what happened to Sherlock and Gail as they know the bigger story from before. It’s a delight to see them getting a second lease on life and doing their best as kids that don’t remember what came before. Of course, everything is going to crash in soon as things are set up well for the finale.
In Summary:
Black Hammer Reborn continues to be a lot of fun and we can see in this issue more of the various threads coming together. I’m glad to see a little bit of what happened to the old crew even as I’ve enjoyed seeing Lucy’s story expand as there’s a good connected aspect between them all. Lucy’s not in this one all that much but letting her husband and daughter take center stage works quite well and giving Abraham a chance to shine and fill in the gaps is a big plus. It continues to be a good read that looks great throughout and I’m really curious to see how Lemire wants to bring it to a close with the next issue.
Grade: B+
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: Dark Horse Comics
Release Date: April 20th, 2022
MSRP: $3.99
