Black Science, Vol. 8: Later Than You Think

Black Science

by Rick Remender, Matteo Scalera (Illustrator), Moreno Dinisio (Contributor)

The Anarchist League of Scientists are scattered to the cosmic winds. Abuse of the Pillar's power has gnawed at the very foundation of reality, as all that ever is, was, and will be is falling in on itself. Beaten and dismayed, it falls to Grant McKay and what allies he has left to start a hail-Mary mission to the center of the Onion, and the chance of salvation that rests there.

Rick Remender and Matteo Scalera set their sights on the End of the Eververse as the Dimensionauts begin their final journey into the Onion construct to fix everything that ever went wrong--or damn all of eternity to the void.

Collects BLACK SCIENCE #35-38

Genres: Comics, Graphic Novels, Science Fiction, Graphic Novels Comics, Fantasy, Fiction, Comic Book

112 pages, Paperback

First published October 31, 2018

About the author

Rick Remender is an American comic book writer and artist who resides in Los Angeles, California. He is the writer/co-creator of many independent comic books like Black Science, Deadly Class, LOW, Fear Agent and Seven to Eternity. Previously, he wrote The Punisher, Uncanny X-Force, Captain America and Uncanny Avengers for Marvel Comics.

Reviews

[Richard · Rating 3 out of 5]

★★★1/2

"I've likely endangered us both. Likely endangered all of existence.

But if the universe wants to take my children from me, if that's how my fate is set to look...then I'll burn the entire motherfucker to the ground with me."

This is the shortest volume in the series so far but it's also one of the most emotionally potent. Estranged couple Grant and Sara are now stuck in the Neververse, separated from their kids and on a desperate search for them through all of reality. The action slows down A LOT in this book in order to take a deeper look into Grant and Sara's tumultuous relationship. Remender continues to cover compelling ideas and plot twists (like the cosmic couple's therapy), but there was also some material here that got a bit dense and confusing, especially near the end of the volume. But now it's all leading to the final installment in the series, the end of everything.

[Baba · Rating 3 out of 5]

Another rather confusing and somewhat underwhelming volume that really needed to give me more being the penultimate volume?
.
Grant and Sara have lost everything and everyone thanks to Kadir taking their reality to the Neververse! What will they do next. Everytime they use the Pillar they cause damage to the dimensions they travel through, so surely they won't do it?
.
7 out of 12.
.

[RG · Rating 4 out of 5]

When I start a Black Science volume is like coming home to the craziest house ever. The start confusee me but as all of these volumes do they slowly begin to make sense right at the end. I feel like this was more of a linking story to tie up the final arc. Im guessing its to be finished soon. Still one of my fave series at Image. The artwork by Scalera is still one of my faves as well.

[ScottIsANerd (GrilledCheeseSamurai) · Rating 5 out of 5]

The volume where Grant and Sara finally get their shit together.

Or do they?

This volume packs an emotional punch, it was beautifully written and the art was stellar, It also solidified Black Science as my favorite work from Remender to date.

So sad that there is only one more book to go. It's been a helluva ride!

[James DeSantis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Black Science is nearly at the end, and Grant and his wife have to fix things before they can move forward.

That's the thing about Black Science. It has crazy worlds, awesome monsters, over the top action. It's all of that but it's not about that. It's all about family. What we would do to save them, protect them, and maybe even die for them. This volume really focuses on Grant's and his wife time together and if they can fix what went wrong. The only way to overcome the past is to move on with your future, and it's up to them to do it.

I personally really loved the first two issues. They were near flawless look into fixing relationships in life. I, as always, enjoy the art a ton. The last two issues here are good but can get convoluted with all the jumping around and fixing things. I did however love the last page and for once, it gives me hope in this bleak world. A 4 out of 5.

[Craig · Rating 4 out of 5]

I keep thinking this comic has pretty much played itself out, yet Remender keeps proving me wrong. This time out, the focus is on Grant McKay and his ex-wife, Sara, as they move through the multiverse, desperately searching for their children. We see how this relationship has gone wrong, over and over, threatening the existence of all reality, as well as a few realities where things worked out for the best. Continual great artwork from Matteo Scalera. And the ending suggests a whole new direction. Here's hoping (fingers crossed)...

[Valéria. · Rating 5 out of 5]

#36 bol čistý doják a vlastne celé toto volume bol rollercoaster emócií. Už som začínala mať celkom smútok, keď som videla, kam to celé smeruje, ale našťastie to posledné dve strany zachránili. Ani jeden book ma doteraz nesklamal, tak dúfam, že posledný to skvele uzatvorí a nebudem nasratá.

[Joni · Rating 3 out of 5]

Si bien el final es impactante, casi todo el tomo es confuso por abusar de las diferentes versiones de los personajes y los planos.

[Rolando Marono · Rating 5 out of 5]

Es curioso que tanto el tomo 4 como el 8, ambos con colores de tonos parecidos en la portada, abarcan la misma temática de profundidad a los personajes. A algunos podría no gustarles que la construcción de los personajes se haga tan directa, hay lectores que prefieren las sutilezas. Yo soy de la idea que aún con sutilezas, siempre es bueno un momento de quiebre muy específico y evidente donde podamos ver a los personajes destruirse y re construirse. El tomo 8 es otro momento así para Grant y en este caso, Sara.
El tomo está compuesto por cuatro números, siendo los primeros dos con más desarrollo de personaje y establece las líneas para lo que sigue en la trama. Los últimos dos números avanzan la trama, establecen una amenaza real y muestran lo que está sucediendo tras bambalinas pero de manera muy compleja.
Al fin llegamos al centro de la cebolla, y aunque ya habíamos visto a estos series "Dios" serpientes aladas, finalmente vemos qué están tramando, y cómo es su mundo. Lamentablemente no es tan claro como uno esperaría. Pero para cuando terminas el volumen entiendes algunos aspectos muy específicos que establecen lo que tiene que suceder para que la historia se resuelva en el siguiente tomo, el último.
Personalmente, para ser alguien que ha pasado con procesos psicológicos, este tomo me pareció muy real, a pesar de toda la fantasía que introduce, y muy emotivo. Gran volumen para Remender, y un buen paso para cerrar esta serie definitivamente.

[CS · Rating 3 out of 5]

Bullet Review:

I don't say the following lightly: This was probably the best volume since Volume 1.

Sure, I don't like the Protagonist Centered Morality (poor Grant, his life was oh so much worse than everyone else's, it's totes okay he ramrodded his ex, Sarah, to get to his goals! His heart was pure and he was emotionally damaged after all! No need to fret over her own childhood trauma), and maybe it has to do with the personal crap going on in my life currently, I felt the message was poignant and heartfelt. And don't faint, but there might be some semblance of an cohesive story, instead of whatever Remender dreamt the night before.

[Patrick · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nice to see this get so much deeper than the last few volumes led us to believe it might. The excessive action set pieces and constantly trying to one-up the last scene kind of had me worried we were going to end on a Hollywood note.

Nope. Remender has totally brought us back to the side of thinking pretty hard about what all this means.

One more book.

[Imogene · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well, after a who,e bunch of over-complicated story lines that were putting me off, this arc is finally tightening the narrative. I’m back to enjoying this, way more than the last 3 TPB’s. Looking forward to the finale. Also, yay for that last page in #38. I was starting to worry

[Lost Planet Airman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read at your own risk.
Pace yourself and brace yourself. Anarchist League of Scientists' Grant McKay has reached the end of the line traveling the Eververse again…
And again…
And again…
And again…

[Roozbeh Edjbari · Rating 5 out of 5]

Non-linear but interesting story with a twist at the end, creating suspense at the end to keep you waiting for the next volume. The graphic is amazing and the layout is well done. I'm a harsh reviewer of comic books -- rarely I find one interesting -- but this series caught my eyes.

[M.i. · Rating 3 out of 5]

It’s amazing how this book keeps going and throwing out ideas that stays germane to the dimension hopping subject. This is the science fiction never ending story.

[Bill Coffin · Rating 3 out of 5]

This review isn't just for the this particular volume of Black Science, but for the entire nine-volume series, since I read it all in one go, and honestly, the entire thing is so consistent in its writing, artwork, tone, pace and quality, that it becomes fairly difficult to tell were one chapter ends and another begins.

I came to Black Science as an ardent fan of Rick Remender's Low, a series so sublimely good that it's earned me a huge amount of goodwill with Remender. So it was that i dove into Black Science, not knowing what it was about, but fairly certain that I would have a good, if not great time. And I'd say that, ultimately, is what I got. A good, but not great time.

The story is kind of a hyperactive mash=up of Lost in Space and Quantum Leap, with Grant McKay and his League of Anarchic Scientists jaunting endlessly through the Eververse, an infinite onion-like structure of alternate realities densely layered upon each other. The tech that enables this is the Pillar, a supertech-widget McKay invents so that alternate realities can be plundered for their resources, but the whole thing goes sideways and he and his team and his family are stuck in a super-perilous mission to survive as each alternate reality they visit is more hostile than the last. The further they go, the more they realize that they might not just be putting themselves at risk...they might be endangering all of reality itself.

First, the good. Remender and artist Matteo Scalera work very well together, and the amount of imagination put forth in this is terrific. Each new world is a blast of fresh images, ideas and story hooks. In the first half of the story, especially, the world-building and destroying on display is a thing of wonder. And Scalera's art seems perfect for this particular story. It's a little wild and stylized, but for this tale, it works rather well.

Now, the bad. What works so well in this story also works against it - the wild energy and loopiness often comes at the expense of continuity. You ever get that feeling in Heavy Metal stories that the story itself just kind of lurched forward a bit because they've only got 4 pages left to tell 6 pages of story? Yeah, that happens all the time in Black Science. Sometimes, it's "Wait, where did McKay get that suit of armor from?" And sometimes it's, "Wait, how did a huge plot point happen entirely off-stage?" This gets really distracting in the second half of things, especially when we have parallel stories that offer little to no visual cue that we're jumping from one story to the next. It doesn't help that for much of this, we've got three female characters who look almost identical to each other, and while Scalera is a fine artist, he's got about four facial expressions on him, so sometimes telling certain characters apart becomes difficult. And when different versions of those same characters from other dimensions begin bumping into each other, you kind of throw your hands up and keep reading on the hopes that eventually when Remender has to stop and catch his breath, he'll explain exactly what is going on.

Ultimately, this is a good-ish series. It's far better in the first half than the second, and the ending, to be honest, feels like a huge cosmic-level cop-out. A lot of McKay's exposition makes you wonder if Rememder is using Black Science to work through some mid-life crisis of his own. But at least Black Science feels like a story for the sake of a story, and not an elaborate storyboard pitch for a Netflix adaptation, which is more than can be said for many graphic novels coming out these days. If only Remender and Scalera had throttled back just a little bit and didn't try so hard to be the anarchists they are depicting.

[Wing Kee · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5! A lot of reveals and a lot of emotions.

World: The art is beautiful, with the reveal of what those winged creatures we’ve been seeing for a while, they are gorgeous. The world building is great, this is the reveal of the onion and what it is and all these pieces we’ve read since the first issue. It has the same feeling you get when you first watch the “Matrix” that feeling of revealing the truth and seeing the reality behind it and it’s well done. The emotional core of the world is also giving a lot of development here, as I’ve been saying that I need these character or matter and their emotions to be real and this pieces of the world is developed this time.

Story: The story is small and intimate and hugely wide at the same time. I’ve been saying that this book needs to spend a bit more time on the emotions of the characters and allow for Grant and Sara to fully develop so their relationship means something tangible, and this is the case here. We spend a lot of time on that and somewhat we get a kind earned payoff, it was better this time around for sure. Then we get to the world building and the reveal of the onion and the entire premise of the book. It’s kinda well done, could use a bit more pacing and panels to smooth it out, but it’s a nice reveal and perfect setup for the last arc.

Character: We spend a lot of time with Grant and Sara and I like that. Throughout run I’ve been saying that this core relationship needs more time to develop and this time we get that. It’s not fully earned but it is a lot more depth than we’ve had in a while. The small intimate story of their relationship and the difference in their personalities and their wants is well done.

A good setup for the finale to come.

Onward to the next book!

[Alex E · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rememder slows things down in this volume to give us some major character development before the final chapter. It centers around the relationship of Grant and Sara, who have grown apart even further , after all the shit they have been through so far.

However after learning of multiple versions of themselves trying and learning to love again, they realize they must do what everyone is trying to prevent, they must travel to the center of the eververse to look for their kids.

This book is such a mind fuck at times that I literally sat and thought about what I had just read afterwards. Is the multiverse a simulation that weird lizard angels are playing like a videogame? Or is every universe an actuality where changes just create new universes? Who knows? and you know what? who cares? This book is freakin awesome, the art is great, there are some emotionally resonating moments that you cheer for (last page anyone?) and of course heartbreak and tragedy that inevitably accompany this kind of story.

Onward to the finale, where we see how Grant fucks things up again. ... or fix them, there's always that option.

[Rocky Sunico · Rating 4 out of 5]

It always has to feel dark before the end, and this volume mostly has that feeling. It feels that hope is lost with so few options left to our protagonists in order to deal with the truth of the reality they're in. We oddly have Grant and Sara being put through some sort of therapy session that is centered around trying to get them to give up their Pillar and focus on healing.

There's a lot of confusing back and forth in terms of what may be real or what isn't, but Grant is determined to gut through all that and find their kids, who were once again lost in the events of the previous volume. And with all of reality collapsing around them. they may not be in time.

The loftiness of some of the ideas in this book is what I like the most about it and this volume really plays on a lot of these things. But it's all coming to a head - or in this case an onion?

[Abigail Pankau · Rating 3 out of 5]

Grant and Sara find that their quest to find their children is threatening the entire Eververse. They reconnect, fall in love once more, and continue to seek out their children, no matter if it destroys everything else. Continued mad-science dimension-hopping.

I really enjoyed where Grant and Sara reconnected, because for a brief moment there was personal growth as they admitted mistakes. But then once they were back together, it was back to the same old mistakes with disastrous results, again. *sigh* I will still finish this series because I want to see how it ends, but at this point, do not have hope that things will turn out well.

[Andy Hickman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Black Science, Vol. 8: Later Than You Think
This volume has the most empathy and restoration of McKay & Sara’s humanity of all volumes so far. Looking forward to the finale.

#35 – “If you check your files, you’ll see I test VERY high on insubordination.” – McKay. “Your favorite line from ‘The Big Sleep’.” – Brenda

#36 – “I used to wonder if dreams were just visions into other dimensions. Our minds slipping into other possible worlds.”

#37 – “But if the universe wants to take my children from me. If that’s how my fate is set to look … then I’ll burn the entire mother###er to the ground with me.”

#38 – “Thoughts scatter … a vast, disorganised library.”

[Tjibbe Wubbels · Rating 4 out of 5]

In the first two parts (35 & 36), Grant and Sara are visiting a psychologist. What a change in story and pace after the complete fantasy world of the first few collections and the superhero action of the last two collections. Suddenly it's all about Grant and Sara and their relationship. We are left in the dark about what happens to the others in the neververse. So the first half of this collection is a bit slow and not particularly exciting, but then things really pick up in volumes 37 and 38. Exciting! What will happen next?

[Paul Allard · Rating 3 out of 5]

Black Science Vol. 8

Lots of dimension-hopping and time-travel in this sci-fi comic series

Why I decided to read this, not having read Volumes 2, 4, 5 etc.. is an odd decision. This volume has Grant and Sara moving across space and time, meeting all sorts, trying to find their children. It’s all quite complicated and fairly confusing. The artwork is interesting, colourful and quite clear and the whole experience is relatively enjoyable. There’s more to come.

[MsPink · Rating 5 out of 5]

Every volume of Black Science feels epic and ambitious, but Vol. 8 takes an introspective downshift as our characters are forced into multiverse-mandated couples counseling. Because this is Black Science, "slower paced" means a warp-speed emotional roller coaster ride through memories, regrets, alternate realities, wrestling with the meaning of life and the possibility of redemption, all while staying one step ahead of a chain reaction of annihilation threatening to destroy everything.

[Sean · Rating 3 out of 5]

The penultimate chapter of Black Science gets a little too philosophical for me. The book was still good as Grant and Sara do everything to find their kids. They're shown new worlds, ideas, and even family members in this possibly hopeless quest. Remender does a great job of pulling heartstrings in this book and series in general. Scalera's art continues to impress. Overall, a good read but not up to the caliber the series has been thus far.

[Rick Ray · Rating 2 out of 5]

An exceedingly quick read that I felt underserves what seems like the beginning of the emotional coda to Black Science. Grant and Sara work together to fix things in order to move forward together, and while I imagine a lot of readers will find this touching, I've been more checked out of this series to really feel the emotional punch. Scalera's artwork somehow continues to find ways to be bombastic and exciting page after page.

[Roman Colombo · Rating 5 out of 5]

What I love about this series is that the quiet volumes without the big action and more character nuance, is just as great as the big crazy stories. This is all about Grant and Pia going through interdimensional marriage counseling...and that's not just wit. They actually do. The art is also brilliant still.

And now there's just one volume left to come.

[Luke John · Rating 5 out of 5]

The penultimate Black Science volume feels exactly like that, a set up for the finale. Yet it is, as with everything in the series, executed flawlessly. There is a huge revelation here, but also some smaller, more human moments. With only one volume to go now I am beginning to realise I may well miss the dimensionauts when I am done.

[Andy Cantrell · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5/5 ⭐️ rounded up

It was cool to finally get to the center of the onion, but it felt like a bit of a cop-out if I'm being honest. Simulation theory and Grant's a virus? I guess it doesn't matter because it has all been destroyed.

I am bummed out that the second-to-last volume was kind of a bust given the ramped up quality of the past few.

[Daniel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really, really good. This series is plowing ahead like an unstoppable freight train. If you want a great scifi graphic novel series to read, this is it. I will likely reread this entire series at some point.