Advance Review: ‘Black Hammer The End’ #1 Enters The Multiverse … Unfortunately
by Tom Smithyman
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: Superheroes are facing an interdimensional villain who threatens to destroy all creation. So the good guys are forced to travel through time, space and the multiverse to assemble the greatest team ever imagined to defeat the baddie.
From DC’s multiple crises to Marvel Comics’ Secret Wars as well as their most recent movies, it’s an overused story line that can start off as fun but quickly loses its luster because we’ve been here before. Unfortunately, that’s the direction that the Black Hammer franchise is embracing in its newest series The End.
Perhaps it was inevitable that a series that started out so strong with a mystery would devolve into this. After all, there have been so many spin-offs and tangential series – most of them very strong – that writer Jeff Lemire may have felt he had nowhere else to go. Regardless of his thinking, though it’s unfortunate.
To make matters worse, this new series picks up on the heels of Black Hammer Reborn, which came out more than a year ago. There are so many characters and plot lines to follow, making The End impenetrable for new readers. Lemire isn’t slowing down his story just because some readers may not remember exactly what happened last time or who these characters are. Either catch up or be left behind.
In addition to assembling a team throughout the multiverse, the issue also deals with life on the farm where some of the heroes have been voluntarily trapped in an effort to hold off the Anti-God’s path of destruction. All the familiar characters are there, though they are struggling with their roles. Meanwhile an evil version of Black Hammer, whom we met in the last series, is plotting against the good guys, with the help of yet another unseen adversary. Again, this all seems really familiar.
Malachi Ward’s artwork is, at times, quite strong. His depictions of the robot Walky-Talky and the ethereal Colonel Weird are by far his high points in the issue. But when he gets to more mundane drawing assignments such as the farm, his illustrations become very basic.
It would be unfair to say that the Black Hammer franchise has run out of stories to tell. But it would be much more exciting for readers – and likely more fulfilling for the creative team – if the series found its own plot instead of borrowing everyone else’s tropes.
Black Hammer The End #1 will be available for purchase tomorrow.
Overview
With all the multiuniversal stories out there these days, you’d think that a creative team as talented as the one behind Black Hammer could come up with something more original. Alas, this latest series in the once-great franchise begins with a sputter because we feel like we’ve been here before.
