Black Science #10

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

And then there was Blokk.  Whoever that is.  Nathan and Pia, captured after their separation from the others and the pillar, are taken before their captors' cruel and prophetic leader, one announced previously as Blokk.  He demands a key, a key to the "pil'ar".  There is also Mr. Blokk, the obese, pock-faced plutocrat of an alternate Egypt, also in search of a key to other dimensions so that he may raise himself a pharaoh of all worlds.  And another Mr. Blokk, from whom Rebecca wrangled the pillar project and negotiated Grant's involvement.  He is the kingpin in this iterated tale, the boss to McKay and Kadir's rival scientists.

As the futility of fighting fate's momentum weighs on so many interdimensional McKays, each scrapping to save his own (and others') children, the tenuous thread of destiny, the razor's edge between blessing and misfortune, is eloquently rhapsodized by the apocalyptic Millipede Blokk:

"Why is it that here in this world all my people have ever known is suffering—food for the beasts, slaves for the pulley?  Yet, in another plane, a fraction of an atom away, I am a king of opulence and bounty, in a green pasture living in eternal peace?  Why do I toil while my doppleganger thrives?  What misstep did I make to earn this?"  (Black Science #10: 2)

Whatever fate and life are, they're not all that interested in fairness.  Her father was undoubtedly a selfish, myopic bastard who in the daily pulse of their lives thought always of himself first, but Pia McKay is insufferable in her self-righteousness and her insistence on seeing her mother as a martyr to her father's ego.  Even as she professes her mother's victimhood, she paints a picture of an absent, dangerously disinterested and equally myopic mother, doubtless hurt by McKay's philandering and perhaps even depressive, but also mildly irresponsible in her own right and willing enough to pass on parenting responsibilities to her daughter.  When Nathan takes Pia to task for her own selfish behavior, she's quick to make excuses for herself and deflect all the blame on McKay and his lover.  Now, despite their mutually perilous circumstances, Pia's acting like an entitled, unappreciative brat.  And it's so very genuine.

Black Science may ultimately end up being the war of Grant McKays.  Pharaoh-Blokk seems to command a veritable cadre of McKay look-alikes and employ his world's McKay—named Gahiji Makalani, who just shot their Kadir in the head—but they are interrupted by another McKay (our McKay?) looking for a pillar to chase after his children.  He is also, it seems, the first of the McKay not to be sporting an "onion" logo.  If our Kadir is now a hero, fighting the narrative that he once perpetuated, this just might be his heroic McKay counterpart.