New Black Hammer Story Hitting Stores Next Weeks
After a months-long break, the world of Black Hammer will soon return. Tuesday, Dark Horse confirmed The Last Days of Black Hammer will hit comic shops later this month. The story first debuted on Jeff Lemire's Substack newsletter as a serialized comic last year and now it's being collected in print for the first time. Instead of receiving a traditional monthly release, Dark Horse has opted to release the tale of a 140-page OGN.
The publisher says The Last Days of Black Hammer will be available through comic stores beginning February 22nd, while bookstores and online retailers will begin selling it a month later on March 28th.
"The Last Days of Black Hammer details the heroics of Joe Weber-the original hero known as Black Hammer-at the height of his power, along with the rest of the main Black Hammer heroes like Golden Gail, Abraham Slam, and Barbalien in the final days leading up to their cataclysmic battle with the cosmic villain Anti-God and their imprisonment on the limbo farm," the comic's official synopsis reads.
The state of the Black Hammer world has been a bit in flux, especially after Lemire signed an exclusive indie contract with Image. That deal, however, had no bearing on the publication of future Black Hammer tales and the main storyline will continue in Black Hammer: The End later this year.
At one point The End was set to end the series, though Lemire has since reversed course and confirmed Black Hammer stories will continue beyond the upcoming volume. "I can't leave these characters and this world behind. Not completely," Lemire wrote last November on his newsletter.
Lemire also teased "major" film and television news regarding the series, though he wouldn't expand on that. The property was previously optioned by Legendary, which hoped to build its own live-action cinematic universe. At the time, Lemire confirmed it was being planned to tell one single story across film and television, similar to how the Marvel Cinematic Universe operates. Lemire was hired to write the script for a potential television pilot.
"Legendary has optioned the entire universe, not just the one story," Lemire told ComicBook.com "It's a very ambitious adaptation and I'm currently working on the first piece of that, writing the screenplay for the first project within what we hope could be a shared universe for film and television."