Jeff Lemire’s headed back to creator-owned in a big way, as he revealed at CBR that he and artist Dean Ormston are launching “The Black Hammer”, a new superhero story that also deconstructs that genre, at Dark Horse Comics in March 2015. The comic follows five heroes – lost in time – who are stuck in a mysterious town they’re unable to leave after the Event, a battle of epic proportions. Ten years later, these characters arrive at the titular Black Hammer Farm, and from there the aforementioned deconstruction as well as exploration of superheroes begins.
Given Lemire’s savvy as a writer and a creator, this sounds right up his wheelhouse, and with his DC exclusive at an end, I have to imagine he’ll have a lot of things to say on the genre and the state of superheroes and their comics. With that in mind, it’s worth mentioning that the idea was actually conceived, fully formed, back in 2007, although one has to imagine his experience with DC will impact the story in some way.
His partner on the project is Dean Ormston, an artist from “Lucifer” and “Books of Magic: Life During Wartime” at Vertigo, and while I’ve had no experience with his work, what was shown at CBR looks pretty fantastic, and a good fit for what the story is all about.
This is a dynamite sounding project, and from the interview, it sounds like that’s not all we have coming from Lemire on the horizon. He’s working on a graphic novel at Simon & Schuster and he shared that he’s writing and drawing another creator-owned series, but only after he wraps the GN. He also said that you should be hearing what he’s working on next soon – “in the next few weeks or months” – and I will be curious to see if that includes anything else at DC after he left “Green Arrow.”
