Black Hammer, Vol. 4: Age of Doom Part Two Review

Rating: 2/5

Synopsis: Black Hammer, Vol. 4: Age of Doom Part Two concludes the main series's expansive saga as our superheroes needs to band together again to fight the Anti-God.

My Thoughts: The first issues of this volume are drawn by guest artist Rich Tommaso whose rough and somewhat simple art style fitted the surreal nature of this storyline where Colonel Weird is in this bizarre ever-shifting void which is later revealed to be the artist's subconscious in which scrapped characters ideas are abandoned. Weird and the other wild motley crew of heroes try to escape before they're expunged by demon-like entities called Hellamentals. That portion of the book is my favorite for its more experimental tone which ventures into the extremely meta territory. The rejected characters and Hellamentals, in my view, was a commentary on how many authors are self-deprecating towards their creations and will try to completely erase ones they perceive as objectively bad and, in that respect, the storyline was pretty clever. Overall, I would give it 4/5 stars. Unfortunately, I found the rest of the volume beyond that underwhelming and lackluster. The "heroes reuniting for the greater good" trope was handled in an average, unimpressive way while the ending felt like a regressive return to the status quo when one takes into consideration all the character progression that has occurred throughout the series. For this reason, I'd rate the remainder of the story a middling 2/5.

Final Thoughts: Despite the strong opening two issues, I found the rest of the book was disappointing and generic. I would still recommend a fan of the Black Hammer universe who had been keeping up with the main series to read it since it wasn't offensively bad either. I hope the writers do a better job with their future spin-offs.