Divorce at the End of the World in Dark Horse's Black Hammer: Reborn #3

Twenty years ago, Lucy Weber fought madmen and monsters. Today, she finds her marriage falling apart and her children in danger. And now past threats, and rogue heroes, return to herald the end of the world in Black Hammer: Reborn #3, written by Jeff Lemire, drawn by Caitlin Yarsky, colored by Dave Stewart and lettered by Nate Piekos for Dark Horse Comics.

Mark Turetsky: Hey, Vishal! Black Hammer: Reborn is back, and we’re getting some answers, and like good answers, they lead to more intriguing questions.

Vishal Gullapalli: We’re also getting characters getting put through the emotional wringer, which is always good to see. Black Hammer finally feels reborn!

To Pick the Broken Ruins up Again

Mark: We certainly see Lucy and Elliot going through some serious marital strife, and while it seems like the last time we saw them together, Lucy seemed pretty much done with him, going to marriage counseling seems to indicate she’s at least somewhat willing to patch things up.

Vishal: Well, she does mention that she doesn’t really know why she agreed to go. The way the actual counseling session went, it definitely felt to me like she had already made her decision and wasn’t planning on making things work out. I don’t have experience with divorce (or marriage) myself, so I can’t really comment on the authenticity of what we see here, but Lucy and Elliot seem like they’ve been having a rough marriage for a while. Of course they did, though — what healthy marriage has one member send a PI after the other?

Mark: The marriage between a former cosmic-level superhero and a failed street-level supercriminal, I guess. I’ve gotta say, I didn’t foresee Lightning Rod turning out to be anything more than a one-shot villain who’s merely there to bring Skulldigger into the story. Him eventually marrying Lucy makes a ton of sense, though. He’s the sort of man who’s just coasted by, avoiding consequences, using his lovable-loser charm on anyone who’s susceptible. It’s a really good juxtaposition, showing the beginning of their relationship and their current dynamic as a married couple with kids.

As much as I enjoyed the scene between Lucy/Black Hammer and Elliot/Lightning Rod, one thing really grated on me. Within the same panel, Lemire has both characters starting off a line of dialogue with “Look.” Once I noticed that, I noticed it a few more times throughout the issue. I know we all have our writer’s quirks (Lord knows I do), but twice in the same panel, from two different characters? It seems like it needed just one more pass of polish.

Vishal: I don’t disagree, but this is a funny criticism to me because I would never have noticed it. I am absolutely one of the people who starts every sentence with “Look” or “See” or “Like,” and I didn’t even register that their dialogue would come off unpolished. Not to say Lemire or his editors shouldn’t have caught that, but I certainly didn’t.

But back to the flashback to How Elliot Met Lucy, I thought it was a sweet “this is how we met” story, but I could have told Lucy back at the beginning that it was a bad idea. He’s pretty clearly shown that he does not make good decisions when he feels like he’s under pressure or in a bad situation, and when the situation changes from needing cash to pay rent to an unfulfilling marriage, his poor choice will go from robbing a laundromat to sleeping with his secretary. What’s really interesting to me, though, and sad in its own way, is that Lucy’s response to crisis is to go back to what’s familiar, regardless of its viability in the long term. I’m fascinated to see whether Lucy chooses to give Elliot another chance beyond this issue.

The Hell From Above

Mark: And when strange things start appearing in the sky, the familiar thing becomes racing off to the Hall of Hammer while sending Elliot to take care of their kids. She refers to the Hall as “home,” and I feel like in that moment, we’re just waiting for her to pick up that hammer again and get to kicking ass. And it seems almost confirmed that the person Lucy killed was some version of Doctor Andromeda, “as he was,” and part of the reason she can’t be Black Hammer anymore.

Vishal: That definitely seems to be the case. The way the flashbacks are laid out makes me question if Lucy killed him or if the Hammer killed him. There’s a general horror in how Lucy treats the hammer beyond it just being a symbol of her heroism, and I wonder if that’s deliberate or if I’m just picking up something that isn’t there.

It was pretty neat seeing Wingman of the Liberty Squadron in a flashback as Warden Wing, someone Lucy approaches for information — even if being a prison warden is maybe not a great role. We don’t learn too much from this scene, but Wing’s insights into Doctor Andromeda’s state of mind and motivations could be a lot bigger than they let on in this issue.

Mark: Lucy also spoke with him back in Sherlock Frankenstein and the Legion of Evil, so it’s nice seeing some continuity with that story. Also, I just love the way Yarsky draws Warden Wing. Once again, her characters just have such expressive faces, it’s always a joy to watch people simply talking in this comic.

Back to Andromeda, with all the talk about “remember me as I was, […] not how I will be [as emphasized in the book]” really makes me wonder if there’s time travel involved here somehow, especially with the body of Lucy’s victim appearing to be much younger than the Doctor Andromeda we see in the 1990s or the 2020s.

Vishal: Yeah, this is where Yarsky’s art is a little … unclear. Which isn’t a dig, I genuinely really like her art throughout this book, but I can’t tell what I’m reading into based on a specific focus and attention paid to small details, and how much is reading into details that fell between the cracks and weren’t intentional. Doctor Andromeda definitely looks younger in the small flashes we get of his corpse, and that’s stuck around for more than one issue now. Colonel Weird’s presence confirms we’re going to get some weird Para-Zone shenanigans soon, which always invites time travel in all of its tangles.

The Family Business

Mark: So Lucy returns home to her family, in her street clothes. She doesn’t have her hammer (which we know from issue #1 is in the shed in her backyard). It’s funny: It’s strongly implied that their kids know that Lucy was Black Hammer, and Elliot holds it over her head when she tries to leave him (“We can’t break up. Not for real […]. I’m the only one who really knows you.”) But it’s unclear just how much their kids know. Is Elliot trying to blackmail her in that moment, reminding her that he knows about the murder, or is it just about her being Black Hammer? And Joseph, their son, seems pretty confident that she’ll protect them if the world ends.

Vishal: I think the most telling reaction in the scene was Lucy’s response to not seeing Rose at home right away — abject terror mixed with fury toward her (hopefully) soon-to-be-ex-husband. Lucy’s greatest fear is, reasonably, all this superhero stuff hurting her kids, and when that mixes with her anger with Elliot, she gets very visibly guilty and tries to make up for it. It’s why there’s such a strange emotional whiplash between pages when Lucy’s screaming at Elliot before asking him to stay at home.

Joseph’s lack of any worry or anxiety about the situation is pretty funny, even if it does bode poorly for a potential future arc of him having to learn firsthand how terrifying all of this is. At the same time, Rose has the classic teenage mix of disinterest and morbid humor — Lemire seems committed to giving Lucy a (relatively) normal family outside all of the superheroism.

Mark: Superheroism messing up a relationship between a parent and child, you say? What do you think this is? Black Hammer? Black Hammer: Age of Doom? Doctor Andromeda & the Kingdom of Lost Tomorrows from the World of Black Hammer? Skulldigger and Skeleton Boy from the World of Black Hammer? I kid, but it’s a dynamic that Lemire has been interested in exploring in this universe, certainly. And it’s plenty pertinent that Lucy grew up without a father (even before he got swept off to the farm) because he was so busy with work (being a cosmic-level hero representing a lost civilization of gods).

Vishal: Look, if Lemire wants to write about super-daddy issues for another decade, you won’t catch me complaining.

Dispatches from the Para-Zone

Yarsky’s rendition of the “incursions” from the Para-Zone are really delightful. I love the visual of an upside-down city floating above ours, very Inception.
Ditto Joseph’s primal scream of “PIZZA!” It’s peak little kid.
Can we just use this space to squee over Yarsky’s art? Because her Colonel Weird is also bursting with character.

Mark Turetsky

Mark Turetsky is an audiobook narrator and voice actor who sometimes writes about comic books. Originally from Montreal, Canada, he now lives in Northern Louisiana.