Black Hammer Spin-Off Recreates What Was Great About the Original
Warning: contains minor spoilers for Colonel Weird & Little Andromeda chapter 1!
A new entry in the Black Hammer franchise is here, and the latest addition returns to where it all began, with a team of heroes struggling to escape their exile on a mysterious farm. Jeff Lemire has premiered his newest tie-in series Colonel Weird and Little Andromeda exclusively on his Substack. Featuring an all-star roster of talent, the brand-new series is an untold story about the earliest days of the unfortunate heroes.
The original Black Hammer came from the creative team of Jeff Lemire and Dean Ormston and was initially released by Dark Horse. The series tells the story of a group of superheroes who, after stopping a universal cataclysm, wind up on an eerie farm they seem to be unable to leave. The story was a hit among fans and served as a launching point for Lemire to create a number of spin-off books set in the same world. While the series' central mystery has since been solved, the initial premise was so iconic that fans will still be eager to return.
The latest spin-off, Colonel Weird and Little Andromeda, has premiered exclusively on Jeff Lemire's Substack newsletter, 'Tales From the Farm.' Lemire sets the stage for the sudden premiere, saying, "Space-faring adventurer Colonel Weird sets forth on a journey to save his superhero colleagues from their rural purgatory by entering the Para-Zone only to find himself paired with the much much younger Doctor Andromeda on a series of fantastical adventures through assorted worlds and dimensions!" Lemire notes he will be collaborating with a number of artists such as Ariela Kristantina, Ray Fawkes, Andrea Sorrentino, Marguerite Sauvage, Yuko Shimizu, Dani, Tyler Bence, Nick Robles, and will be written by Barbalien spin-off writer Tate Brombal. Fans were treated to the first chapter of the new series for free, though Lemire notes future chapters will be for paid subscribers only and released on a weekly basis.
Colonel Weird's cryptic journey follows in the steps of Lemire's other spin-offs aimed at expanding the world of Black Hammer and digging deeper into its incredibly complex and deeply human characters. Some books like The Quantum Age and Skulldigger + Skeleton Boy add new heroes to flesh out the superhero universe, while others like Barbalien: Red Planet seek to examine the main characters by providing backstories not seen in Black Hammer. Colonel Weird and Little Andromeda appears to do the latter, beginning with the initial days the heroes arrived in their strange new home, and telling self-contained stories of Weird and Andromeda's attempts to free their allies.
While Colonel Weird & Little Andromeda is being pitched as a trippy anthology, it also seems set to recapture the original series' sense of mystery, in which the world itself can't be trusted, and it constantly feels like literally anything could happen. Similarly, it will be fascinating to see more of Colonel Weird's disjointed experience of the early days of the Farm.
The good thing about returning to such a formative time is that it serves as a fantastic jumping-on point for any fan. There have been a lot of supplemental Black Hammer books in the last several years and the main series is currently in its third volume. It can be overwhelming to jump in after so much time has passed, but thankfully, time has never been much of a concern for Colonel Weird. Any fan looking for something that recaptures the mystery and charm of the original seems to be in luck, while those wanting to try the Black Hammer universe are being offered a visually stunning starting point.
Source: Tales From the Farm