2 out of 5

Though not for me on a couple fronts, this collection of Black Hammer-world strips from BH creator Jeff Lemire’s substack – the story concluded exclusively in this hardcover – also kind of bumbles some storytelling tenets, further suffering a bit from its prestige presentation.

But let’s address where my bias is coming into play: I’ve tried Black Hammer a couple of times, but the series has never been for me, to the extent that it’s hard for me to not see that “from the world of Black Hammer” banner without some disdain. Even despite this collection primarily being written by an author whose work I enjoy, Tate Brombal, that disdain exists. Logically extending from that is that I haven’t kept up with the series at all, so something that dives into one of its niche corners is likely to leave me high and dry.

On the other hand, I’m a firm believer that a well written comic can be read and received regardless of how well you know the surrounding story, much like a good chapter in a book can be extracted and be interesting; if anything, that slice should just make you interested in knowing more. So extend that to my faith in Brombal… well, I was legitimately intrigued to think that this might be my entry point into Black Hammer.

Alas, the way this is written doesn’t suggest Brombal really knew the story until it was near its end, which was maybe true to an extent, considering it started in bits and pieces before it was wrapped up for this hardcover. Furthermore, the conceit of partitioning the story into substack-able reads, each drawn by a different artist, makes it entirely uneven reading, with the flow of the story hiccoughing based on how that artist wanted to tell it; portaling the two titular characters through different “para-zone” realms, in search of some pivotal event Colonel Weird hopes to change, is a good way to accommodate the shtick, but in practice, it comes across as everyone wanting to try out experimental layouts, or having fun drawing their favorite BH character, versus telling cohesive stories.

Brombal’s certainly accountable there as well: I get that Colonel Weird’s absentmindedness is part of his defining traits, but unfortunately, that makes him a pretty uncompelling guide for this journey, and the different zones offer nothing for a new reader like me – they are POVs on (or so it reads) very exclusive events from BH lore. Fair: substackers were paying for this stuff, which shows dedication to that -verse; expecting new reader readability is a tall order.

That’s where I wonder if the oversized-hardcover route was the “right” way to present this. I mean, there’s really nothing to suggest I can’t read this as a standalone – that “world of…” banner is on Hellboy books, which read pretty well on their own, and the hardcover offers zero context as to its source, really pitching it as an original, on-its-own thing. Kind of exampling this over- / under-baked presentation is the table of contents, which is listed in way that doesn’t really tell you if you should read it left-to-right or top-to-bottom, and there are no page numbers, giving off a vibe that you can read these all as short stories if you want, but that’s definitely not the case…

So Colonel Weird and a boy who will become Doctor Andromeda become unstuck in space-time, having “adventures” (i.e. references to Black Hammer characters / events) of varying lengths and surreality. The variation in art is admittedly fun, and I appreciate the synchronicity in styles even with the variability. And by the time Tate gets a handle on what this story actually is (creating a timey-wimey investigator named Willow D. Whisper to quantum leap Weird to a revelatory conclusion), there’s the sense that a non-substacked version of this story, actually written for full issues or a graphic novel, really could’ve landed, inclusive of all the BH lore. However, the scattered origin of the material and its overly-showy reproduction lead a non-Black Hammer inundated reader like myself pretty cold.