Black Science (comics)

Black Science
Publication information
Publisher	Image Comics
Schedule	monthly
Format	Ongoing series
Genre	Science fiction
Creative team
Writer(s)	Rick Remender
Penciller(s)	Matteo Scalera
Inker(s)	Matteo Scalera
Colorist(s)	Dean White
Creator(s)	Rick Remender

Black Science is a creator-owned American comic book series by Rick Remender and Italian artist Matteo Scalera. Image Comics released the first issue in November 2013. The story follows Grant McKay, an ex-member of the Anarchist Order of Scientists, and his team as they are thrown through dimensional barriers to alien worlds while they try to repair the Pillar and return home. His invention, the Pillar, is a piece of technology that allowed McKay and his team to travel between the dimensions with the use of Black Science. Using the Pillar, McKay and his fellow "Dimensionauts" leap between worlds at will, taking anything they want for the benefit of their home reality. A member of Grant's team sabotages the pillar, causing it to jump to random locations at random times, the group is left stranded between a series of increasingly bizarre and nightmarish worlds, struggling for survival. ^[1]

The first several issues of Black Science sold out of first printings at the distributor level, and Image announced that certain issues would be reprinted.^[2]

Plot

Grant McKay, former member of The Anarchistic Order of Scientists, has finally done the impossible: He has deciphered Black Science and punched through the barriers of reality. Grant theorizes that each alternate reality of what he calls the 'Eververse' is like an onion. Pierce into each and you discover a new dimension, one based an infinite variety of choices made by everyone everywhere. What lies at the center is perhaps the primal universe that started it all. What lies beyond the veil is not epiphany, however, but chaos. Now Grant and his team are lost; living ghosts shipwrecked on an infinite ocean of alien worlds, barreling through the long-forgotten, ancient, and unimaginable dark realms. The only way is forward.

Run-amok reality! Grant and his crew escape the madness of the lightning sea-swamp only to be flung into a futurepast trenchworld, where the Sons of the Wakan Tech-Tanka - a high tech version of Native Americans who wage never-ending war on the savages of Europe in a kind of reverse Manifest Destiny. The Anarchist League of Scientists ended up this deep in the onion because someone among them sabotaged the Pillar. Shell-shocked and battered, Grant McKay and his team are stranded on the front lines of the European savages' final standoff against the Sons of the Wakan Tech-Tanka.

McKay and his team of Dimensionauts are given a short reprieve when the Pillar drops them into a surreal hotel. McKay encounters doppelgangers of himself and his wife, who lost their children using the pillar. They now want this Grant McKay's children as replacements. But the real Grant will not let that happen without a fight.

Grant discovers that Kadir sabotaged the Pillar, and this information tears his team apart just as they are launched into a dimension of mad gravity and violent monkey ghosts. Stranded in the most dangerous dimension yet, McKay’s rage at Kadir, his onetime boss, boils over. Ignoring the chaos all around them, the two finally come to blows. Trapped in a fantastical dimension, the Anarchist League of Scientists discover a race of bizarre creatures that hold the mysteries of the Eververse and a startling discovery behind the Pillar's deeper mythological significance. McKay is killed before the team can make the jump. Fueled by a long string of failures as a leader, Kadir launches a mad rescue attempt to bring McKay's kids and the remaining team members back to their reality.

Characters

• Chandra - Second in command to Kadir.
• Grant McKay - Member of the Anarchist League of Scientists, father of Nathan and Pia McKay.
• Kadir - Bankrolled the Pillar project, often comes at odds with head scientist Grant McKay.
• Nathan McKay - Grant McKay's son, stranded with him after the sabotage of the dimension jumping machine known as the Pillar.
• Pia McKay - Grant McKay's daughter, trapped with him in another dimension after the sabotage of the Pillar.
• Rebecca - Scientist who worked on The Pillar and entered an affair with Grant McKay.
• Shawn - Junior scientist on the Pillar project for the Anarchistic Order of Scientists.
• Ward - Ex-military that now operates as security officer for the Anarchistic Order of Scientists and Grant McKay.

Other Characters/Places/Things

• The Anarchistic Order of Scientists

Publication Dates

Status

Ongoing series.

Collections

Trade Paperbacks

• Black Science, vol. 1: How to Fall Forever - Collects #1-6. "Anarchist scientist Grant McKay has done the impossible! Using the Pillar, he has punched a hole through the barriers between dimensions, allowing travel to all possible universes. But now Grant and his team are trapped in the folds of infinity, the Pillar sending them careening through a million universes of unimaginable adventure, sanity-flaying danger and no way home..."
• Black Science, vol. 2: Welcome, Nowhere - Collects #7-11. "The Anarchist League of Scientists has lost their leader, the most recent victim of the Pillar’s violently random jumps through the Eververse... but are they really random? As the survivors fight their way through a world where magic and science are one and the same, the secrets of their predicament slowly come to light... and illuminate a terrible truth."
• Black Science, vol. 3: Vanishing Pattern - Collects #12-16. "The Anarchist League of Scientists dive deeper into the Onion than ever before. Now veterans of inter-dimensional travel, the team begins to realize how damaging their actions are on the fabric of reality. No longer content with merely fixing the Pillar and finding a way back home, they vow to uphold a new ideal: leave every dimension they visit better off than how they found it."
• Black Science, vol. 4: Godworld - Collects #17-21. "Following the catastrophic final jump of the Pillar, the last Dimensionaut is stranded in the furthest reaches of space, adrift on the wreckage of his former self. Before he can reclaim his mantle as protector of the Eververse, he must first overcome the demons that lurk within his own soul."
• Black Science, vol. 5 - Collects #22-25. "Grant McKay attempts to rescue his team from the evil of the Withering Woods, but his presence threatens to unravel a peace treaty between the world's gods and cost his daughter a hard earned happiness. The Dimensionauts' long jaunt through alternative realities is finally leading them back home, but what will it take to get there? More importantly, what has happened while they were gone?"

Collected editions

References