CBR Exclusive: Lemire Explores Superheroics in "The Black Hammer"
By Steve Sunu
In March 2015, Jeff Lemire is tackling superhero comics -- but not in any way readers might have seen him do it in recent memory. Lemire and artist Dean Ormston's new Dark Horse Comics creator-owned series "The Black Hammer" is a character-driven series following five of the greatest heroes of a lost era as they find themselves trapped in a mysterious town they're unable to leave following a cosmic battle known only as the Event. The series picks up ten years after these five written-out-of-continuity heroes arrived at Black Hammer Farm and what follows promises to contain Lemire's knack for character-driven independent work, as well as a deconstruction and exploration of the modern superhero storytelling technique and superhero comics as a whole.
Although the series might be new, Lemire conceived of the concept in 2007 -- well before his run at DC Comics. However, with his DC-exclusivity at an end, Lemire is ready to jump into "The Black Hammer" with Ormston -- and there's plenty of potential to see some of the writer's insights on the genre.
CBR News spoke with Lemire about "The Black Hammer," the concepts behind it, the cast of characters drawn from different parts of comic book history, developing a mythology, how his time at DC Comics influenced re-approaching the story seven years later and much more.
In March 2015, Jeff Lemire is tackling superhero comics -- but not in any way readers might have seen him do it in recent memory. Lemire and artist Dean Ormston's new Dark Horse Comics creator-owned series "The Black Hammer" is a character-driven series following five of the greatest heroes of a lost era as they find themselves trapped in a mysterious town they're unable to leave following a cosmic battle known only as the Event. The series picks up ten years after these five written-out-of-continuity heroes arrived at Black Hammer Farm and what follows promises to contain Lemire's knack for character-driven independent work, as well as a deconstruction and exploration of the modern superhero storytelling technique and superhero comics as a whole.
Although the series might be new, Lemire conceived of the concept in 2007 -- well before his run at DC Comics. However, with his DC-exclusivity at an end, Lemire is ready to jump into "The Black Hammer" with Ormston -- and there's plenty of potential to see some of the writer's insights on the genre.
CBR News spoke with Lemire about "The Black Hammer," the concepts behind it, the cast of characters drawn from different parts of comic book history, developing a mythology, how his time at DC Comics influenced re-approaching the story seven years later and much more.
CBR News: Jeff, where did the concept behind "The Black Hammer" come from? Did it have anything to do with your extensive time working on superhero books for DC?
Jeff Lemire: Ironically, not at all. The funny thing about the project is that it's got these strange origins -- I developed "Black Hammer" pretty fully formed years and years ago before I ever started working at DC or Vertigo. I had just finished "Essex County" with Top Shelf and was playing around with a few different ideas in sketchbooks and notebooks about what projects I could do after "Essex County." This is well before "Sweet Tooth" and certainly before I had ever done any superhero books at DC. Really, this is my attempt to do a superhero book in a way that I did my independent work -- really character-based drama and the fact that they're superheroes with these fantastic elements surrounding the characters and the mythology would be secondary to the character work. We explore human emotion with these characters and use the superhero thing more as metaphor than something that drives the plot.
That's a long, convoluted way of saying, "No, it wasn't influenced by DC." [Laughs]
I was actually going to draw it myself, do it as a graphic novel in 2007 or 2008. I pitched it to Dark Horse then, and that's when I got work at Vertigo doing "The Nobody" and "Sweet Tooth,"M.aEXCLUSIVE: Writing Team Ready to "Blow Things Up" in DC's Weekly "Futures End".
Catch the rest of the interview at Comic Book Resources!
