Don't you just hate it when you're a superhero who saves the world and then gets zapped to a shitty little farm town in another dimension that you literally cannot leave? In Jeff Lemire and Dean Ormston's Dark Horse series Black Hammer, Abraham Slam, Golden Gail, Barbalien, Talky-Walky, Colonel Weird, and Madame Dragonfly sure do. For this month's Four-Color Flashback, Paul and Arlo discuss the recently concluded "main" storyline of Lemire and Ormston's ever-expanding creation, consisting of Black Hammer issues #1-13 and Black Hammer: Age of Doom issues #1-12. From a backwater farm to the furthest reaches of time and space, our heroes explore every facet of the superhero genre. Along the way, they confront the metatextual realities of comics storytelling--and the just plain textual fact of aging.

Next: we have no plans.

THE BREAKDOWN

Total Run Time: 02:33:48

• 00:00:37 - Intro
• 00:02:14 - Black Hammer
• 02:29:10 - Outro / Next

THE MUSIC

• "(Don't Go Back To) Rockville" by R.E.M., Reckoning (1984)
• "How You Gonna Keep 'Em Down On the Farm" by Andrew Bird, Soldier On (2007)

THE LINKS

• "Black Hammer, an Indie Comic, Gets a Major Film and TV Deal" by George Gene Gustines, The New York Times

• "How Ya Gonna Keep 'Em Down on the Farm? BLACK HAMMER and the end of the 'farm story'" by Joe Grunewald, The Beat

• "Jeff Lemire Returns to His Favorite Black Hammer Character for Colonel Weird: Cosmagog with Tyler Crook" by Grant DeArmitt, Newsarama