Black Science #2

written by Rick Remender
art by Matteo Scalera
painted art by Dean White

Black Science #1 begins in medias res, a footrace against a sabotaged homing beacon and a glitchy timer on a strange and hostile planet.  Its second issue follows more conventional narrative rules, albeit largely in flashback, elaborating several of the events immediately preceding the team's first jump and further clarifying their current situation.  Dr. Grant McKay's research team has successfully developed, built and tested the "pillar," a device designed to travel through dimensions.  But the pillar's control panel has been sabotaged, the homing beacon destroyed and the timer set to jump at randomly selected intervals.  They have no ability to control where they jump or when they jump.

As Remender's sci-fi fantasy adventure settles in, it begins to fill in the gaps left by its exceptional first issue, most notably character differentiation and development.  Black Science #1 was undoubtedly a phenomenal first character portrait of its protagonist, an idealistic but egocentric and often selfish scientist with seemingly more interest in his research than his family, but the secondary cast was largely indistinguishable.  Early in Black Science #2, ambitious, self-serving bureaucrat Kadir, the project's overseer with the purse strings, and his sycophantic mole Chandra emerge as the team's primary interpersonal obstacles, two characters far more interested in assigning and deflecting blame and responsibility than finding solutions.  Rebecca, McKay's research assistant and lover, is—like McKay—difficult to like, primarily because their affair seems so far to be defiant and unprovoked, entirely inconsiderate of those it will inevitably hurt, but her disappointment at its ending and her lack of emotional hysterics or manipulation to keep it going, along with her ability to set aside her chagrin in the immediate crisis, give her depth and nuance and realism that buoy her.  Shawn, another researcher and cache of terrible jokes, is easily the most personable of the survivors and an easy target for bullies like Kadir.  But the most pleasant surprise is Ward.  Former military, dishonorably discharged after whistle-blowing C.I.A. strikes against civilians, Ward finds a fellow idealist in the rebel scientist, the first man in five years to trust him and Ward aims to repay his benefactor by saving his life.

While not as atmospherically rich as their first world of frog- and fish-people, the team's new interdimensional destination is rife with mystery.  There's a palpable familiarity of the World War I era trench warfare, human soldiers and Earth geography, but it's an altered (or alternate) Earth in which rebel European nations have allied against an invasion of pseudo-American Indians and their vastly superior technical forces.  Either an accident of alternate history or a consequence of the invasion forces, English is now a dead language.

"I--ich spreche kein Englisch——es ist eine tote Sprache!"  (Black Science #2: 11)

 More immediately, McKay, already shaken up from his escape on the previous world, is stabbed in the shoulder by a confused German infantryman and now requires the help of an Indian shaman, a medic of the "sons of the Wakan Tech-Tanka, Mecha-Hopi, Apache Tomahawks, Navajo War Crows..." (12), to survive, and he has fewer than four hours before the pillar jumps to yet another unknown world.