Comic Book Review: Black Science #8- Anarchy and Science

Writer: Rick Remender
Artist: Matteo Scalera & Dean White
Publisher: Image Comics
Released: 27th August 2014


Black Science is a book that I picked up mid-run for two reasons. Firstly, I didn’t have that many books to read this week, and secondly, I read the preview and it said something about ‘anarchism.’ Of course when ever people read ‘anarchism’ they get images of black face mask wearing goons chucking bricks through the windows of Starbucks, but you have to bear in mind that this image is about as far from anarchism as you can get. The black mask wearing goons are usually cops, or idiots paid by the cops to cause some chaos, thus giving the cops a reason to declare martial law and kick the crap out of all of those pesky, peaceful protestors who are concerned about banks raping and pillaging the planet.

Anarchism just means freedom from state control, or as it should be called, state imposed slavery. An anarchist wants people to live free from state-sanctioned coercion and the threat of imprisonment for the mere act of peaceful non-compliance, that’s all. You can see why the mainstream media demonises anarchists, can’t you? It’s simple. The anarchist wants freedom. The corporate whore mainstream media career obsessed journalist wants state-sanctioned slavery. I’ll discuss how this theme relates to the comic a bit later on in the review, but first off I want to briefly discuss the narrative core of the issue.

Black Science #8 has a very clever beginning with a first person narration helping the reader to build empathy for two children as they battle against weird alien creatures. The kids mouth the usual clichés about hitting back against bullies, but even though the message is verging on the cliché it’s still a good, positive thing to hear.

This action scene involving two apparently lost children fighting against a strange alien threat is duplicated at the end of the book. This means that the book begins with action and threat, and closes on action and threat. I like the technique as it gets the readers straight into the story and leaves them on a high as well. The middle section is not as exciting as the two sections with the kids, but I understand that this is a standard technique when writing comics. You begin and end with some action, and you put the slower, story/character based stuff in the middle.

This middle section consists of a team of ‘scientific anarchists’ having tense conversations before one of their previously taciturn members goes into narrative exposition mode, giving the readers a brief history of the strange device that they are all using. From what I can understand it’s an alien machine that causes more trouble than what it is worth. That’s where the ‘Black Science ‘ of the title comes from. This device appears to be alien technology that offers great benefits to those who possess it. The device offers huge technological advantages, but corruption inevitably follows.

This book is arguing that having high scientific technology in the hands of centralised human control systems is always a recipe for disaster.  Perhaps the only way to avoid disaster is to stop letting these centralised control systems exist in the first place? That’s where the idea of ‘anarchism’ comes into play.

This book is exploring what happens when a group of anarchist scientists get powerful technology that is usually only in the hands of the state. There is no such thing as an anarchist scientist who works for the state. These anarchist scientists must be working independently, free from state control. The question is, will they act any differently to the states that have always had this power in the past, or will human nature dictate that they act just as badly as their supposed opposites? I say ‘opposites’ because anarchists don’t use ‘Black Science’ technology to completely obliterate civilian populations, but states certainly do. The United States has done it twice quite recently, in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Black Science is a comic book obviously put together by an experienced comic book professional. Rick Remender has been doing this for a while now, and for an issue mid-way through the story-arc it is very easy to follow. The art has a frenetic energy. It looks dirty and exciting, and although it took me a while to get to grips with the underlying themes of the narrative I think I have it now.

Some of the readers of this review might think that I’m projecting a lot of my own ideas into this book, making it into something that I want to read, rather than what is actually there. Perhaps you are right, but that’s what all good art does. It makes you think about the important things in your own life, and you take and consume it to fit your own needs. This book surprised me. It’s a grower, a book that made me think, and after a couple of reads, and a good amount of time digesting what I had read I’m very happy to recommend it to all readers of this review. Of course I now realise what I have to do next. I need to get those first seven issues, and get my thinking cap on. I want to know more about this group of anarchist scientists, their philosophies and their individual personalities. It’s going to be a real pleasure to go through those previous issues and discover the context behind what has happened in issue #8.  I’m so happy that I took a chance on what I thought would be just another silly comic book about evil anarchists. It’s not that, it’s a lot better book than that.

Rating: 9/10