Welcome to Ghostliness & Nerfherders Presents: Black Science, Issue #4! In the previous installment, we see more of the black science insidiousness! Actually, nothing new happens at all, honestly. Grant’s having an extramarital affair with Rebecca, which will prove to be a vastly unnecessary plot point for the ages. We see a flashback of when the Pillar actually transported everyone to the warzone, which offered no new information. Half the Pillar team (the men) get ambushed by giant robots while the other half of the Pillar Team (the women) hunker down in a trench with their German hostage.

Lots of setup. Will there be payoff? I’m going to keep going regardless. Onward.

Black Science, Issue #4 [February, 2014]
Written by: Rick Remender

“To get through a war, a man needs something bigger than himself to fight for. The fate of people he cares for. The state of the world he leaves behind. The honor of a promise.”

Shawn and Ward, carrying Grant, are about 100 yards from the Pillar. Through minefields and bomb shelling. Ward will stop at nothing to help Grant. NOTHING! YOU HEAR ME?!?!

Ahem… so, a couple of Native Americans on horseback notice Ward and Shawn trudgin’ along. As Team Pillar board a jeep, the Native Americans begin tailing them. Only two minutes, two measly minutes, before the Pillar jumps and they’re left stranded in the middle of some bullshit German/Native America war planet.

While driving, Ward aims his ol’ six-shooter behind him and BLAMM’s these dudes off their horses. Their high horses, if you ask me.

Ward thinks of the children. Those poor children. Poor, hapless, dumb children. Without their stupid father? Say it ain’t gonna be so!

One of the Native American dudes launches a rocket at the jeep, blowing it up into many smithereens. Now Ward has a concussion and Shawn is scrambling to get out of the way.

Ward is able to pull some barbed wire tight and decapitate this last mofo. Decapitate him right through the neck.

GAKK, sir! My poor noggin’!

Kadir shows up out of nowhere grabs this really neato laser hatchet that the dead guy was carrying. Ward appears to be missing a few teeth now, the sexy beast. Only thirty more feet to the Pillar, and it’s starting to glow! Too bad that another wave of rocket-launchin’ Native Americans show up. Kadir poops his pants while Ward yells at him to help him hold them off. Kadir’s a businessman! He doesn’t have the wherewithal for laser hatcheting! But Ward’s scary, toothless face lights the fire under Kadir’s tender rumpus and… he doesn’t really help. Ward gets ambushed, and now he’s fighting this guy one-on-one while leaving the rest of his team vulnerable.

Kadir looks at the hatchet like it’s about to expel semen all over his face.

Ward is in the trench now, and he has subdued his opponent. Ward asks Kadir very kindly to throw him the hatchet, and what does Kadir do? He fucking runs off scared in the opposite direction! The lack of honor in this one shames everyone! This will be on his tombstone: “HERE LIES KADIR. HE POOPED HIS PANTS LIKE AN IDIOT. STUPID PANTS POOPER.”

Long story short, two Native Americans corner Ward and hatchet his head off while Kadir keeps running toward the Pillar.

Oh, I see! It wasn’t Grant that the team was carrying. It’s the shaman! And they still have him. This is why they’re getting ganged up on by fiendish Native Americans! It all makes sense now! Enlightenment!

Poopypants needs to be saved too, you guys! Let the nice guys win once in a while!

Eight seconds until Pillar Jumpy Time. The team is all there, except for Ward of course. “He was right behind me!” says Kadir, like a little doofus weenie. “He told me to run!”

DEEP. Large bright, white flash of light. Who knows where they’re at now? Probably fighting Zoidbergs in the year 3002. Grant wakes up in a bed, healed, in a high-rise building. Through the enormous windows there are dirigibles floating everywhere! A sight to behold!

Here’s another sight to behold: Rebecca shows up in her sexy underwear, fresh out of the shower, with a bottle of scotch in one hand. Yeah, buddy. Fill that glass to the brim.

She tells Grant that the shaman didn’t want to help at first until his kids were bawling. The kids are next door with Shawn, by the way, playing Guitar Hero or something. “We finally jumped into a place where everything isn’t immediately trying to kill us,” she adds.

Grant gets briefed: “The Pillar is fucked.”

Grant gets briefed further: “And we don’t have any of the materials to fix it.”

After throwing his own pity party, Grant circles back to the original problem at hand: someone tried to sabotage the Pillar. Remember? I barely do! Rebecca doesn’t want to even bother thinking about that until they’re all safe at home. Whenever that will be. Good thing they seem to be in some sort of advanced tech world. Maybe they can scrounge up some unobtainium sooner rather than later.

They’ve already pillaged some useful goodies, though! That’s a start. Maybe a couple more lucky jumps will allow them to get some more stuff they need, right? Optimism and all that.

Grant’s like “Well, good thing Ward is here. Good ol’ Ward. Definitely-Not-Dead Ward, right where we need him. He’ll continue to be a great asset to our team! Never gonna let you down, never gonna die Ward. Love that guy. How’s he doing?”

Hey, the locals are just as smart as we are!

Awkward… let’s leave that unpleasantness for now. Downstairs in the lobby, where the many alien specimens meet and greet, Chandra was able to pawn her gold bracelet for some cash for the vending machine. This stuff might be edible and not at all poisonous, who knows? Who cares? Gotta eat or we’ll all die, that’s my motto.

“We need to talk,” Chandra says to Kadir. “It’s important we’re on the same page, Kadir.”

“Talk?” he responds, mouth full of dog food or whatever was in that vending machine.

“I saw what happened. I saw you leave Ward behind.”

Kadir chokes on his puppy chow, but Chandra assures him that it’s ok. “It was the right move,” she says, groping Kadir’s inner thigh. “Self-preservation is a basic instinct. And Ward was going to make things difficult. Now he can’t push you around anymore.”

Uh oh! Drama! Let’s leave that ugly scene and see what Shawn and the kids are up to. Shawn is marveling at all the new alien species they’ve encountered during their stay! Like, wowzers! Far out, man! Meanwhile, the kids are huddled up in bed with nary a wink of sleep ‘tween the two of them. “Nate needs his insulin,” Pia says. “Mom told me to bring some with. But I forgot. Didn’t think we’d stay at the lab very long.”

Insulin! Insulin my left foot! Who needs insulin?! CHECK OUT THE ALIENS!

Pia imagines that her mom found the insulin. She imagines that her mom has been calling the lab for hours and hours now. Maybe the police have shown up by now, too. Shawn assures her that, pretty soon, they’ll all be back at home. “Rebecca, Grant, and I built the Pillar. We can fix it.”

Well, sure, there’s that. But look on the bright side! He only forgot, like, eight of your birthdays!

Shawn is taken aback by this weird “asshole” remark. Shawn’s about ready to suck Grant’s dick as a rebuttal, actually. That’ll show Pia. “Look… I know this has been scary. But you gotta have some faith in your old man. He knows what he’s doing.”

Almost concurrently with Shawn’s stupid-ass words, a giant figure ZZRRPs into existence. The figure is wearing a gas mask so we can’t see his face, but I’m certain it’s Richard Lewis’ ghost. “They’re here,” he says into a radio. “Alive and well. They’re with him.”

“Hurry then,” responds the voice at the other end. “Get them back!”

“Don’t worry. They won’t be making anymore jumps. We’ll all be together again soon.”

Final Thoughts

This comic better hurry up on making me care about what’s going on because all I’ve seen so far is a sexy, scantily clad engineer and something about a Pillar? I haven’t been paying much attention at all! Where the hell is Superman at, by the way?