I highly recommend that you watch the 1945 horror film Dead of Knight. It has a creepy circular plot device. Architect Walter Craig arrives at a mansion and greets several guests. Each guest tells a story about nightmares. Craig remembers each person from his own nightmares, even though he has never met them before. Craig strangles one of the guests, realizes he’s having a nightmare, and wakes up. Then, he goes to an appointment and arrives at the mansion seen at the beginning. The plot device of this film has a similar narrative structure to the plot of Black Science.
I’m a big fan of writer Rick Remender. So, spoilers ahead for this story, Black Science, will be kept to a minimum. It is an underrated and underappreciated 2013 science fiction epic that more people should know about.
The Basics of Black Science
A rogue, pot-smoking scientist, Grant McKay, uses unethical methods, or “Black Science,” to create “The Pillar.” The Pillar is a reality-hopping device that allows McKay, his family, and colleagues to leap between realities. A traitor damages the Pillar, and the team gets lost in other realities.
McKay, who chose his profession over family, now struggles to keep his family together. They have no hope that the malfunctioning Pillar will ever bring them back to their home reality.
Remender’s story is heartbreaking, adventurous, creepy, ambitious, and full of high-minded science fiction concepts. The art by Matteo Scalera looks deceptively simplistic but is complex, full of fine detail, and very expressive.
This is an epic comic book that has not gotten its proper respect from the fandom.
Let me explain why.
Black Science Review
Grant McKay is a former member of the Anarchist Order of Scientists. McKay is a pot-smoking anarchist scientist who believes in Black Science, or the idea that the ends justify the means. If scientists have to use unethical, morally bankrupt, and devious means to achieve their goals, then so be it.
In the same way that scientists believe there could be multiple dimensions and higher-dimensional beings we can’t perceive all around us, McKay believes in the “Eververse.” Different dimensions of reality are layered upon each other like an onion. The Pillar breaks through all of these dimensions so scientists can visit them and plunder new tech and science.
While McKay is not expressly evil, he is a morally irresponsible man; it’s hard to call McKay one of the good guys. McKay is the type of person who wants to do the right thing the right way only when it is 100% clear, no other options are available. McKay sacrifices time with his family to perfect the Pillar. In an unwise move, his family is present when the Pillar is activated for the first time.
They explore a world where Indigenous Americans are the most technologically advanced race. In another dimension, McKay’s group encounters a telepathic death cult. McKay’s group makes allies and some enemies in new realities that stalk them with each dimensional jump. If you haven’t read this story, keep an eye out for Doxta the Witch.
Unfortunately, a traitor within the group sabotages the Pillar. Now, it autonomously activates and deactivates. It thrusts the group in new dimensions with no direction or control. The group becomes more stranded and lost from their home dimension with each Pillar misfire.
A Masterpiece About Family, Hubris, Black Science, and Dark Consequences
When McKay was in his home dimension, he took his family for granted. And he took the ethos of Black Science so seriously that he did not care for the lives of the people in the dimensions he disrupts. Now, his family is with him, and they are in danger with every misfire of the Pillar activating.
Worse, McKay and his group are now at the mercy of the dimensions and people they encounter in the Eververse. McKay once saw the Eververse as an unending and disposable scientific commodity; now it is an other-dimensional mindfield of threats that he must blindly navigate with his family.
Before the Pillar’s misfire, it never occurred to McKay to prioritize his family. Now lost in the unpredictable and dangerous Eververse, the last thing McKay can guarantee his family is protection.
This is definitely one of the best sci-fi comics of the last few years. If you love science fiction, then you should give Black Science a chance.
Buy this comic now. The Black Science Compendium is a 1,104-page hardcover that collects all 43 issues of the 2013 comic. You can buy the paperback for $40 or the Kindle version for $39, and both are good deals.
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