The end of the beginning.
Creative Staff:
Story: Jeff Lemire
Art: Malachi Ward
Colors: Bryce Davidson
Letterer: Nate Piekos of BLAMBOT
What They Say:
Hammers collide as Lucy Weber once again takes the mantle of Black Hammer to face off against an evil version of the Hammer putting all of Spiral City in jeopardy.
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
Black Hammer brings to a close the final series of this little intriguing universe and it does so with a great team. Lemire’s got a knack for expanding and introducing things while playing off the core material – and the classic comics of decades from long ago – and that makes for an intriguing turn of events. For this series, Black Hammer has Malachi Ward and Bryce Davidson 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 the finale, well, things are about as I expected them to be so there’s not a lot in the way of disappointment here. The finale has as its big focus a lot of action and it unfolds well and in a fun way for a lot of it. The plus is that we get a great fight against the Anti-God and some solid more personal fight material as well, but the downside is that for the big fight there’s little in the way of a good emotional connection with the characters. We’ve got so many that have come from other timelines to fight here that they’re just curiosities and not characters. We do have some good moments when key players show up that you do know, especially Weird, but there’s a kind of hollowness to part of it for me because we’ve spent so much time skipping across timelines and getting variations of the familiar characters. You end up transposing some of the feelings from the core onto those. I’m glad Skulldigger had a good big moment, however.
The more personal side of the book focuses on Lucy as you’d expect since it all comes back to Black Hammer, both the version that she is and the one that’s been causing all the problems. It’s good to see Lucy finally embrace this side of things, though it’s a rough cost to pay at first, and the pushback against this version of her father unfolds well as more and more step up to help her. Lucy having as many Hammers as she does in the final fight is a good bit too but I also just liked the clarity of family sticking together before that and watching as they do the hard work of protecting what remains of existence. Combine that with Weird in his various forms finally coming together and these are the two characters I most wanted to see have a good ending as they do here and it delivered what I needed for them.
In Summary:
Of course, it sets things up in an open-ended way for the future and I hope Lemire will allow others to play in this sandbox someday. The minor gap between issues didn’t hurt this ending too much but I’ll say that this run really will read better in collected form when you can just burn through all the chaos and have a better connection with the alternates of the main cast. The property has come an incredibly long way since what it began as and there are times where I’m not sure it needed to go as far or as long as it did. But there were so many fun sidebars along the way and twists on the homages to other characters and universes that it all worked out in the end. It’s a good ending, and in some ways a fine ending, but it helps to make it feel complete. A massive omnibus someday will be an amazing read for someone to get into as we get flavors of the past but also a lot of modern concepts employed as well. This is a distinctive work.
Grade: B+
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: Dark Horse Comics
Release Date: March 27th, 2024
MSRP: $3.99
