The weirdest superhero universe rises from the dead in Black Hammer: Spiral City
Jeff Lemire and Dean Ormston’s Black Hammer is quietly one of the most successful new superhero universes of the past decade. What started in 2016 as an eerie little fable about superheroes trapped in a strange domestic limbo grew into a cosmic epic. The drama came to a head in 2023’s Black Hammer: The End, by Lemire and artist Malachi Ward.
This is comics, though, where endings are merely suggestions, or lengthy pauses. Ahead of next week’s San Diego Comic-Con, Black Hammer publisher Dark Horse is announcing the next phase of Lemire’s oddball universe, Black Hammer: Spiral City.
Written by Lemire with art by Teddy Kristensen, Spiral City is described as a dystopian story that will follow a new cast of heroes “struggling to survive in a chaotic new world.” No details about who those new characters are just yet, but odds are one of them is the rad grasshopper detective-looking fella pictured above and below.
All of the Black Hammer comics — and there are many — are a not-so-subtle homage to a different period or character in superhero comics history. Doctor Andromeda and the Kingdom of Lost Tomorrows, for example, has Lemire and artist Max Fiumara riffing on the DC Comics series Starman by James Robinson and Tony Harris. (The series, in fact, was originally published as Doctor Star.) Similarly, The Unbelievable Unteens is Lemire’s take on ’80s-era X-Men and Teen Titans comics with artist Tyler Crook.
While we’ll have to wait for the comic itself to be sure, but Black Hammer: Spiral City looks like a Black Hammer version of Kurt Busiek’s slice-of-life superhero opus Astro City. Per the summary from Dark Horse (spoilers for those who haven’t read Black Hammer: The End):
Black Hammer: Spiral City picks up after The End, following the Second Cataclysm and the rearranging of the universe. Many of its lost heroes have returned, but there is no homecoming parade as anti-superhuman sentiment grows, fueled by recent events and stoked by Malcolm Gold, the former head of
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