Image Comics has revealed Hammerfist, a crime horror series by writer Rick Remender (Black Science, Uncanny Avengers), artist Steve Epting (Velvet, Captain America), and colorist Matt Hollingsworth (Seven to Eternity, Tokyo Ghost). Debuting this August, the ongoing comic follows Mike Denton, a violent criminal who gains supernatural powers to protect his daughter.
The synopsis elaborates Denton is “a dirtbag hitman, junkie, and absentee father who’s spent his life chasing the easy fix — drugs, cheap sex, and murder for money — while failing the one person who still believes he can be better: his daughter. Now, on the eve of Black Noon — an ancient darkness that erases the light in all things — Mike has to drag himself out of the gutter, awaken a supernatural weapon powered only by love, and fight his way through the living embodiment of evil to save her. This is the story of an unredeemable killer forced to do the one thing he’s avoided his entire life: stand for something other than himself.”
Remender states, “Hammerfist is for people who grew up on those unhinged genre films of the VHS era, over-the-top, hard-R, wildly original, but never forgetting to be fun. A hardboiled crime story that mutates into an ultra-violent, [Sam] Raimi-style horror story following a low-rent killer who becomes the only thing standing between us and eternal darkness. Getting to see it come to life in the hands of a master like Steve Epting is a dream come true. I’ve wanted to collaborate with him for years, and the pages speak for themselves, cinematic, brutal, and emotional. Paired with Matt Hollingsworth’s color, there just isn’t a better art team.”
The comic will mark the first series with Epting on interior art since 2021’s Telepaths. The artist himself adds, “Collaborating with Rick on Hammerfist has been incredible. The book is unpredictable, gritty and funny. A hardboiled crime story that mutates into fever-dream horror without ever losing the heart underneath. There’s real emotion under all the blood and chaos; we just take the most violent road possible to get there. I can’t wait for readers to see what we’ve been building.”
Issue #1 will be released on August 26, with variant covers by Jerome Opeña, Nic Klein, Dan Panosian, Daniel Acuña, Andrew Robinson, and more, including a blank sketch cover, and a foil version of Robinson’s artwork. You can check those out below with a six-page preview. For more of Remender has lined up from Image in the meantime, check out his official profile.
