Watch Tyler Crook create the far-out cover for Black Hammer spinoff, Colonel Weird: Cosmagog #1

This week, Oregon-based Dark Horse Comics is celebrating the expansive world of one of its most popular flagship titles, the Eisner Award-winning Black Hammer.

Since first landing on our planet back in 2016, Jeff Lemire and Dean Ormston's Black Hammer has been a sensation with fans, chronicling the crazy lives of deconstructed Golden Age superheroes stuck in a pastoral netherworld after a cataclysmic event accidentally confines them to the haystacks and cornfields of Rockwood. Over the years we've been treated to numerous spinoffs, prequels, sequels, mini-series, and one-shots set in that nostalgic domain, as the Spiral City champions' stories continue to unfold.

The latest offering from the Hammerverse focuses on one of its strangest inhabitants, the enigmatic interdimensional astronaut known as Colonel Weird, now in his own 4-issue solo outing titled Colonel Weird: Cosmagog (tentatively arriving late 2020) — and SYFY WIRE has an exclusive video of Eisner-nominated artist Tyler Crook creating the main cover for the premiere issue.

Credit: Dark Horse Comics

Written by Jeff Lemire and adorned with arresting art by Tyler Crook (Harrow County, Black Hammer/Justice League) and colors by the great Dave Stewart, this bizarre sci-fi origin story stars freaky space adventurer Colonel Randall Weird, who exits the Black Hammer farm to embark on a far-out odyssey through the Para-Zone, hunting for something he's long forgotten — with his sanity and life at stake.

Watch Crook craft the striking cover for Colonel Weird: Cosmagog #1 in the video below, and absorb the elemental oddity of this Black Hammer favorite!

Crook is a monster fan of the Hammerverse and feels lucky to be given another opportunity to contribute to the ever-growing franchise that will soon become a live-action TV series from Legendary Entertainment. He believes that Lemire and Ormston have created one of the most intriguing and heartfelt superhero universes that the world of comics has seen in decades. 

"It's always challenging to make covers for a first issue," Crook tells SYFY WIRE. "It has to carry a lot of weight for the whole series. The Colonel is a man haunted by the cosmic terror of knowing the past, present, and future simultaneously, so that's what I tried to get at with this cover. The series will explore much of his childhood and the lost years right after he entered the Para-zone. The painting itself was made using a combination of watercolor and acrylic inks over the course of two days."

Watch for Dark Horse Comics' Colonel Weird: Cosmagog #1 sometime this fall as release dates are shuffled due to the ongoing global health crisis.