Zeb Larson reviews Black Science #9…

Conflict is the only constant, as the Dimensionauts are embroiled in a brutal war which threatens to engulf the fantastical land they are stranded in. But how can they uncover the horrible truth about the Pillar when every second is a fight to survive?

This is a strange issue of Black Science, literally jumping around in time and space so that we can only try to grasp what Rick Remender is telling us. I have so much faith in this comic that all will be explained in time that I’m willing to put up with a lot of narrative uncertainty right now. Moreover, this issue drops some bombshells on us that dramatically change our understanding of what’s happening here. There will major spoilers in this review, so read on at your own peril.

Spoilers

The comic can be neatly divided into three different places. In the first part, Rebecca remembers the death of her twin brother, who drowned after she was unable to get help quickly enough. Kadir’s team has had no luck locating Nate and Pia, who have a number of different problems. There seems to be some sort of religious war unfolding between a race of vaguely simian beings and enormous telepathic millipedes, whose religious symbol just happens to be an onion. In another time and place altogether, a mysterious stranger is chasing after an artifact. The place appears to be some sort of alternate Egypt in the 1920s or 1930s, and it’s only at the end of a wild car chase and Tommy Gun shootout that we learn the identity of the man: Grant McKay.

Grant McKay is back. Actually, that shouldn’t be quite the spoiler that it is. In a fictional reality with an infinite number of accessible worlds, and one other alternate Grant floating around, it was highly likely we’d see him again. Still, the possibility that it’s the original Grant is an intriguing one. I want to know just what the hell he’s doing in alternate Egypt and what he’s chasing after.

End Spoilers

This issue deserves some praise for finally giving us some the perspective of Rebecca, who until now has been kind of a blank spot in the team. Her past raises an interesting question about the possibility of using the Pillar to undo the mistakes in your life, as the regret of her brother’s death has evidently followed her all her life. Yet we know from an alternate Grant McKay that every reality he’s visited has ended with the deaths of Nate and Pia, which raises the question just how much control any of these protagonists really have.

One of the major themes of Black Science is control, especially the difficulty that we have in exercising control over such a stochastic universe. Granted that the dimensions these people visit are as chaotic as you can possibly imagine, the whole project was born from Grant’s belief that he could control the Pillar and use what he found in these different realities. Rebecca had no control over her brother’s death, Nate and Pia can’t escape from whatever the hell is chasing after them, and Kadir, who we don’t even see, can’t come to their rescue. The more we are exposed to chance and randomness, the worse we tend to do.

On balance, this was a good issue. Not a lot really happens: Nate and Pia are still lost, the team doesn’t do much to find them, and we’re only introduced to our mysterious stranger. Remender wants to make his mystery last a little while longer, so this issue is mostly about character development. I would have liked to see the rest of the team get a little attention, but the next issue should be out in a few days.

The artwork in this issue really is stellar, even by the psychedelic standards of this series. The chase through Egypt is a special highlight, with the cars barely staying on the road amid a hail of gunfire and some semi-lucid and as yet unexplained flashbacks. There was something special about the retro aesthetic in this futuristic, with its almost art deco flavor. Yet even art deco had a deliberate futuristic flair to it, which Matteo Scalera illustrates fantastically. I hope the Egyptian sequences last for a while, because they’re gorgeous to look at.

Zeb Larson