Black Science #8

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

They are men of science and magic.  Kadir, knowing himself the saboteur of the pillar, cannot imagine a universe in which the marooned crew of scientists is battered from world to world by anything other than random chance.  The shaman sees a force, perhaps divine, of destiny in their circumstances, in the seemingly inevitable and unchanging pulse of the scientists' lives, each reliving and re-enacting the same story as those across many worlds, cosmic justice for the hubristic use of "black science".

"Your pillar has killed five of your own, endangering you with each new world.  Perhaps the device does not jump as randomly as you suspect."  (Black Science #8: 17)

The shaman's tale, though it explains the tantalizing inversion of power and technological privilege between the Europeans and the American Indians in his own world, is rather pedestrian.  A scientist with yet another "onion" logo, this time a giant mantis flying a world-jumping spacecraft, lands in a time of desperation for the shaman's people.  The dimensional interloper is soon struck dead and his magical ship used to save his tribe and seek revenge on their would-be conquerors.  The shaman was, quite frankly, more compelling before he began speaking.

The rest of the crew is plagued by persistent idealism, no matter how pathetically futile it now seems, or increasing bitterness and suspicion.  Rebecca blames Kadir entirely, accusing him of outright murder as well as sabotage.  Shawn clings fruitlessly to the fading hope that the pillar is still an instrument of salvation rather than chaos and destruction.  Pia has redirected her animosity and resentment for her absent and philandering father—now dead—to his lover.  Nathan wants only to make his father, in life already his hero, proud of him.  Every little reason to hate one another is magnified by their perilous and forever newly threatening circumstances.  Meanwhile, an alien-possessed Chandra is now quietly and unobtrusively working her own sabotage while the other scientists implode.

As ever, the alien worlds of Black Science steal the issue.  Remender, Scalera and White continue to exploit the creepy and creepily beautiful potential of amalgamated species:  white-furred, carnivorous snails with lizard tongues and heavily bearded, big-eared humanoids with glowing red eyes wander a leafy, tropical jungle.  Even if the story somewhat stalls in Black Science #8, the wonder of this dimension-hopping, sci-fi adventure does not lag.