10 Best Comic First Issues This Week (Dec 12, 2018)

We all strive to be normal but that is harder for Louise Kaminski than most. Her dad's a drunk, her mother's a shrew and she has the face of her grandfather, an ageless squid-faced cosmic horror from beyond the stars. School is hell. Home life is hell. With all of that building to a slap from her father, she runs away to give in to her sewer-dwelling eldritch grandpa. So the deal is struck: if she wants to be like everyone else, to be normal, then she will have to kill in the name of the Great Old Ones.

Black Hammer is a very nifty comic that holds all the hallmarks of Jeff Lemire as a writer. Six heroes trapped in a Twilight Zone-esque town. After a decade of working on the title, Lemire began to orchestrate spin-off titles from that universe, such as Sherlock Frankenstein and The Quantum Age. This particular book is actually a one-off story about the daughter of one of their former villains.

The art Emi Lenox and colors by Dave Stewart makes even the oddities of the Black Hammer universe feel like they belong while not seeming to deny that Cthu-Louise is a little girl underneath those tendrils. Sheer excellence!