Posted in: Comics | Tagged: Black Hammer, Comics, dark horse comics, Dean Ormston, entertainment, jeff lemire

First Look: It's Jeff Lemire's Variant Covers For Black Hammer Issues #1-3 !

Published Wed, 11 Mar 2015 14:00:27 -0500

Last updated Wed, 11 Mar 2015 14:04:16 -0500

Black Hammer is coming. It will arrive June 10th from Dark Horse Comics. For me, this series took on almost totemic significance when I heard the name since little was known about it, but the ideas behind it really prodded by imagination. Some sketches were released last San Diego Comic Con but that's about all–until now. The series is written by Jeff Lemire and drawn by Dean Ormston, so we might expect there could be variant covers by Lemire forthcoming, and here they are! For the first three issues, moreover.

Now, if you haven't come across these details already, Black Hammer features a group of Golden Age style superheroes who have become stuck in a small town on a farm for mysterious reasons and are trying to lay low in this new life. We meet them 10 years into this exile. Will they ever return to their former lives?

Dark Horse has revealed a little more information about the first issue, with the tag-line "Heroes Never Die, They Just Get Retconned!":

Once they were heroes, but the age of heroes has long since passed. Banished from existence by a multiversal crisis, the old champions of Spiral City—Abraham Slam, Golden Gail, Colonel Weird, Madame Dragonfly, and Barbalien—now lead simple lives in a timeless farming town. Even as they try to find their way home, trouble has a unique way of finding heroes wherever they are!

So we can glean further from this that our heroes have been in some way wiped out of normal existence or trapped in another time-line. This tackles many of the themes we'll recognize from superhero comics right now and the thorny issues thereof. Our cast of characters appear to be featured on these variant covers, including Barbalien, Golden Gail, and a team cover which places the eponymous "Black Hammer" in the center of their downfall. Or is it salvation?

Here are our glorious covers:

And here is our full solicit information for Black Hammer #1 from Dark Horse:

HEROES NEVER DIE—THEY JUST GET RETCONNED!

Black Hammer #1

Jeff Lemire (W/Variant cover), Dean Ormston (A/Cover), and Dave Stewart (C)

On sale June 10

FC, 32 pages

$2.99

Ongoing

Description:

Once they were heroes, but the age of heroes has long since passed. Banished from existence by a multiversal crisis, the old champions of Spiral City—Abraham Slam, Golden Gail, Colonel Weird, Madame Dragonfly, and Barbalien—now lead simple lives in a timeless farming town. Even as they try to find their way home, trouble has a unique way of finding heroes wherever they are!

From the prodigious brain of Jeff Lemire (Animal Man, Sweet Tooth)! Amazingly realized by Dean Ormston (Lucifer, 2000 AD) and Dave Stewart (Hellboy)! Extra-length first issue—26 story pages!

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