New Year, New Comics — Revisiting The Onion In ‘Black Science’

Welcome to the table,

With the year 2025 getting into full swing its time to set some new goals, make some new mistakes, and find some new adventures to go on. One of the biggest things I’m working on this year is reading more, reading for fun, and reading things I have not read in a long time to return myself to a headspace where I feel more inspired and creative.

A book that has long been part of my library but I have only ever read through once is Image Comics Black Science.

Created by Rick Remender and Matteo Scalera, Black Science tells to story of Grant McKay, a former member of The Anarchistic Order of Scientists, who has broken through the barriers of reality and set himself and his team on a trek across the multiverse where they collide with a multitude of possible realities formed from the variety of choices made by everyone everywhere.

I remember as this book was coming out I was fascinated by the suites the Dimensionauts wore. I had been following Matteo Scalera on DeviantArt, I think, and had run into him a few times at various comic conventions and had an opportunity to view his work in person. The energy he brought to the page always delighted me and the way he could capture a moment with pen and ink blew me away.

Rick Remender had been touted by the people who frequented the shop I had worked at that I trusted and I had many friends working within the industry that said he was not only a solid storyteller but a rad person, so the creative team for this book had me hooked from jump.

The first few issues of the series were nothing short of spectacular. It’s this fun and frantic pulp series that shows family falling apart and in a weird way coming back together in an ever changing landscape of chaotic reality shifting adventure.

I say pulp because one of the things I loved about the old pulp stories I read when I was a kid was that you just kind of get dropped into things as they are happening and you hold on tight as the adventure dashes across who knows what to who knows where all the while never stopping to catch its breath while you just roll with it gleefully from one chaotic moment to the next.

I have never finished the series though. I have them all, I have just not ever had a chance to wander back to them and as we are slipping into the new year this story seems to be exactly what I need to shake off the gloom and doom and sink into something that scratches the itch of adventure I have been looking for.

If you like chaotic stories with devastatingly good art and brilliant storytelling then I suggest you jump on board the reality rippling ride that is Black Science!

Until next time, I think I made it to around issue #12 so I have a ton of ground to cover but writing this up and flipping through the first few issues has me truly excited for this reread.