Writer Rick Remender and artists Matteo Scalera/Dean White's comic book series, Black Science, is not so much a comic book as it is a mind bending trip into the bizarre world of alternate dimensions. If you flip through its colorful and dazzling pages, which are loaded with visionary and imaginative artwork, you may think you're drunk, or even high, but 'tis not so: you're merely in an alternate world, a place far removed from any reality we know. It's a fantastically dangerous dimension where frog men chase you while riding giant lizards, ready to cut you in half. A place where dream and nightmare co-exist together, but in various quantities.
At the center of the first Trade Paperback issue, Black Science: How to Fall Forever, is Grant McKay, a scientist who's discovered a way to travel through different alternate realities that exist just outside of our own. Using a device called the Pillar, he travels to various dimensions in order to collect anything he can do better our own society, but when the Pillar's function goes awry, Grant and his team get stuck in horrible realities that they can not get out of, facing deadly dangers and potential fatalities in each world they're bolted through without any control of their own.
The originality that Remender presents us with here is quite exciting, and it results in a story that is at once exhilarating and marvelous to engage in, while simultaneously giving us characters with conviction that we care about. The art by Scalera (covers are by White, and equally impressive) is almost surreal, bordering on bizarre and overly fantastic, while still keeping the tone of the illustrations in sync with the story. Black Science may not be for everyone, but for the hard core graphic novel reader this is a fascinating sci-fi adventure on par with Remender's other current work, Low. I can't wait to see where McKay and his team of scientists end up next.
B+
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