Indie comic Black Hammer gets major film, TV deal

A foul-mouthed 9-year-old with a taste for booze and cigarettes. An alien shape changer struggling with his sexuality. An addled space explorer out of sync with time. These are some of the colourful characters of the comic book series Black Hammer, and they are now potential stars of film and television in a deal announced on Tuesday.

The series is being picked up by Legendary Entertainment, which has produced more than 50 feature films, including Batman Begins in 2005.

Black Hammer, first published by Dark Horse in 2016, was created by the writer Jeff Lemire and the artist Dean Ormston.

"With our development team, one of our big initiatives was to bring in a superhero universe," …