Zeb Larson reviews Black Science #10…
Fueled by a long string of failures as a leader, Kadir launches a mad rescue attempt. Can he live up to his promise and finally redeem himself, or will he fall beneath the crawling chaos of a million psychic millipedes?
Best issue so far of Black Science? Definitely. For a while now, this story arc has had several loose threads rattling around that haven’t been fully explained, but Remender and Scalera bring everything together here. While Black Science still has an enormous number of unresolved questions, at least now the threads are being woven back together. Spoilers will follow, so read on at your own discretion.
Pia and Nate are brought before the leader of the psychic millipedes, who informs them that he plans to use the Pillar for some vague yet quite clearly nefarious purpose. Amidst all this, we get to see the source of much of Pia’s resentment toward Grant and his generally negligent parenting style. In the alternate Egypt, we see Kadir handing the “key” over to a man, in exchange for an alternate Sara. None of this actually works out, especially after the other alternate Grant bursts in. Rebecca and Shawn also get a little time together, and Rebecca fills in another missing piece of the puzzle as to how the accident with the Pillar went down and why she’s gone along with this trip. Collectively, everybody is in serious trouble, especially as this dangerous group of millipedes moves closer to the Pillar.
Some characterization for Pia was long overdue, and boy, does she really hate Grant. It doesn’t sound like your typical teenager waxing angst about a parent, either. She blames him for the whole situation, as well as the other members of the group, and just wants to escape with Nate at any cost. Of course, she’s behaved like any typically bad teenager, and the truth underneath her feelings is probably more complicated than she’s willing to admit to herself. Still, she really shows Grant as the crappy parent that he is.
The real reason everything went so pear-shaped, as it turns out, is over Grant’s wife Sara. Kadir was in love with her, and Rebecca convinced Kadir to bring Grant aboard the project by telling him that it would fail. Supposedly, once it all fell apart, Sara would then leave Grant for Kadir. Rebecca then told Grant that Kadir wanted him to fail, knowing that this would galvanize Grant into action. The whole thing fell into place because of Rebecca. At this point, virtually every original member of the group except the children seem to bear some kind of responsibility for their predicament. They’re all collectively guilty.
I’m glad to see the Egyptian plotline coming together, even if we’re still unsure which versions of Grant we’re dealing with. The revelations within it also are informative, especially about the relationship between Grant and Kadir. The revelation of multiple competing Grants within a timeline is interesting, especially as it almost seems inevitable. Personally, I can’t imagine anything more dangerous than multiple versions of the same guy who all happen to be somewhat irresponsible and know far too much about the dangerous applications of science. Perhaps one of them will be able to pull this off.
Also, where some issues of Black Science move frenetically, this issue works at a slightly slower pace. A lot still happens here, but unlike the first issue, where Grant basically starts running and never got to slow down, we get to linger with people’s thoughts and dialogue for a few panels here. If the comic constantly worked at this speed, and then only occasionally sped into explosive bursts of activity, that would probably be ideal.
At this point, the only character we haven’t really gotten a good look at is Shawn, who seems to be the only cheerful and decent person in this band of miscreants. I’m sure he will either suffer terribly or have some hidden flaw exposed to the rest of the group. I hope that issue #11 keeps up this pace, because Black Science is building toward a really explosive conclusion for this story arc.
Zeb Larson
Originally published October 29, 2014. Updated April 13, 2018.
