A new Black Hammer series begins! 
The story follows 20 years after Age of Doom, where Lucy Weber, daughter of the original Black Hammer, has retired as a superhero. Lucy works a mundane job, is a mother, and does her best to keep up this lifestyle as everything else in her personal life falls apart. The era of Super-Heroes is over, where agencies such as T.R.I.D.E.N.T take care of all the nefarious occurrences of supernatural events and supervillains. But something from 20 years ago haunts Lucy and is making its way back to the present. Now Lucy is left with a question to herself: What will she do to preserve the peace that she has long sought for her life?
If anyone is unfamiliar with the previous efforts of Black Hammer, have no fear as Jeff Lemeire expertly sums up all that you need to know about Black Hammer through this great character study of a story. It’s interesting to see characters age and change, and given that Lemeire has been steering this ship of a series that he co-created, it’s refreshing to see how he accomplishes taking characters that he has co-created, and taking them in places that provide as much mystery and intrigue as to where they might end up next. For new readers, this is a very reader-friendly book that drops you in and gives you all that you need to know about Lucy and the world of Black Hammer. Lemeire is no stranger to writing character-driven stories and in this tale, seeing Lucy as a mother compared to what she once was as a teenage superhero is quite a contrast. It’s obvious that Lucy is trying to grasp at anything that bears a semblance to a normal life, while also trying to avoid what once was in her previous life as a superhero. It’s not often that superhero comics get to explore characters that age in real-time, and it’s refreshing to see Lemeire take that approach. Something about this book reminds me of Kurt Busiek and Stuart Immonen’s Superman: Secret Identity, and if you like that book, you may enjoy this one.
Caitlin Yarsky lends her visual talents to the world of Black Hammer and it shows wonderfully in this book that she was the perfect person for this assignment. Yarsky has a great ability to combine the fantastical with the mundane in ways that feel real to readers. While she is able to draw visually stunning action scenes, it’s the mundane segments of Lucy trying to hold on to her newly accustomed lifestyle that grabs interest. Coupled with Dave Stewart’s greatly rendered colorwork, and Nate Piekos lettering, you get a beautifully packaged book that is worth the price of purchase. It’s a solid book that’s both entry-level for new readers, but also rewarding for long-time readers of this series and its spin-offs. I recommend adding this to your pull list for new comic book day.
Newsdesk