Zeb Larson reviews Black Science #12…
Stranded deeper in the Onion than ever before, lost in the void, the Dimensionauts set out on a bold new course: no longer merely explorers on the frontier of forbidden science, can they become saviors of the Eververse?!
After a two and a half month hiatus, Black Science is back. It’s the nature of this series to hit the ground running, and it’s no exception in the newest world that the explorers have landed in. Indeed, this is almost a frustrating issue. With only 24 pages to land in the new world, rehash some of the lingering questions from the last issue, and introduce the new place that they’ve landed, what we get feels maddeningly short. Still, it’s good to have this series back, and it looks as though we’ll get to delve into some serious darkness in this story arc. I’ll keep spoilers to a minimum in this review, so read on without any concern.
None of the problems from the team’s last have been resolved. Grant gives the reader some narration of how he survived among the gas monkeys and eventually made it back to his children. Sara is upset that her version of Grant is dead, and after arguing with the others, she and Pia run out into the street. The team has landed in the midst of a civilization that is in the midst of violently collapsing, and the fall of that civilization is somehow connected to Grant’s people.
Remender promises that in the course of this arc, they’re going to take the car and drive it off the cliff (metaphorically speaking). I only question this because I don’t think any of the readers think that delving deeper into the Onion is a good idea, and I imagine that the people in Grant’s team are on roughly the same page. Do any of them think this is going well, or that what they’re going to discover is going to make anybody happy? There’s no indication of that happening. Still, it’s exciting to see the whole idea of interdimensional travel just being deconstructed into one long, terrifying journey.
One of the interesting patterns in the art that I’m seeing in this series are the ancient civilizations of Earth mixed with technology. Part of Grant’s lengthy sojourn was spent in an alternate Egypt, and the civilization they’ve landed in now is sort of an alternate Rome. Are Remender and Scalera just including this because those civilizations make for cool art styles? Or is there some deeper connection with ancient history and the nature of the civilizations that they’re encountering?
Now that it’s back, I’ll be curious to see what the team has done to ruin this latest world. Has a past incarnation of them come through here already and disrupted what they found? Is this the inevitable result when they return home: brief empire followed by a dramatic collapse? There are a lot of interesting questions raised in this issue, especially as Grant figures out just what’s happened in this world.
Zeb Larson
https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PL18yMRIfoszH_jfuJoo8HCG1-lGjvfH2F&v=SMekjOsexHs&feature=player_embedded
Originally published March 4, 2015. Updated April 13, 2018.
