Dark Horse Comics have announced “Black Hammer: The End,” the six-part culmination of Jeff Lemire and Dean Ormston’s superhero universe, written by Lemire with art by Malachi Ward, and lettering by Nate Piekos. Picking up directly from last year’s “Black Hammer Reborn,” the comic will see the Weber family reunite to face “new challenges and villains” in a “multi-timeline, world-hopping adventure,” that will take readers back to the farm where the heroes of Spiral City were trapped after the Cataclysm of 1986.
Lemire says, “‘Black Hammer Reborn’ left the Black Hammer Universe on quite a cliffhanger, and now we’ll find out what happens next! ‘Black Hammer: The End’ is a story I’ve been building across the various Black Hammer books for years now. It will pull storylines, and characters, from all the various series into one massive story which will both be a conclusion of all we’ve been doing, but also usher in a fresh start, and a whole new beginning, for the Black Hammer Universe!”
The Black Hammer Universe began in 2016 with the eponymous 13-issue series by Lemire and Ormston, and has received multiple prequels and spin-offs, including a crossover with the DC Universe, “Black Hammer/Justice League: Hammer of Justice!,” in 2019. Artist Malachi Ward previously contributed to the last core series, “Reborn,” which was primarily penciled by Caitlin Yarsky. As indicated above, Lemire has stated in a video interview last year that he plans to let the series “sit” for a while after this, but he already intends to write a story about the Shazam-esque heroine Golden Gail. A film and TV version of the comic was in the works at Legendary Entertainment, but the option lapsed in 2021.
“Black Hammer: The End” #1 will be released online and in comics shops on August 30, with a main cover by Ward, and a variant by David Rubín.
