Black Science #3

by Tori B. on January 30, 2014

Being stuck in a war-ridden dimension as well as being brutally injured to near death, while you’ve accidentally dragged your children into your dimension-jumping disaster, can’t be easy. The series has just started and Remender isn’t putting any brakes on putting this ensemble of characters through the ringer.
 
 
Writer: Rick Remender
Artists: Matteo Scalera, Dean White
Cover: Scalera, White
Publisher: Image
 
 
After the first couple of issues where Remender layered down a little more of the groundwork of Black Science, issue three is where Black Science picks up a little more in action, story telling, character development and understanding. It looks like it found its footing in the story that they’re trying to tell. Before readers get too swept away in the different dimensions that Grant and his team are sure to visit, there’s definitely more a character based progression in this issue, because what’s a better time to evaluate a man and his worth than up in a space of war. Of course with Grant seriously injured, we don’t see a lot of how he survives in this particular dimension, but we are given flashbacks to what his life was like prior to Pillar going haywire and sending them around the Eververse. So while we see everyone else grow a little bit in their desperate time of survival, it’s almost an opposite effect for Grant whom we see being less than a great guy back at home.
 
The pacing is well strung together, never focusing on one character or relationship for too long before moving on to the next point of action. It’s certainly not a boring read, and coming from Fear Agent where Remender had focused on a single character, his handling of an ensemble cast so far is impressive and the character that we’ve seen little of (unless in a flashback) is the protagonist himself. In this way Remender is getting readers to become more intimate not with just Grant but the rest of the team as well. Each character has a different personality and for readers, they’ll find a particular character that they’ll relate to most and want to see come out on top of this; which is storytelling at its finest.
 
It’s definitely a more character heavy issue, given that the first issue especially was much more about blowing readers away with world building, immersing everyone heavily into the science fiction of it all. Not that Scalera and White have stunned everyone and proven their talents, they work to compliment Remender’s incredibly human and relatable story telling. Not only do they excel in great scenic panels and extraterrestrial characters, but they can also put expressive characters to paper. Each panel is different from the next, but the flow of the story is never lost.
 
Black Science is different than anticipated but Remender’s signature is laced throughout. A thrilling sci-fi adventure with stunning art, but at the very core a story with characters that everyone can relate to.

Our Score:

8/10

A Look Inside