Alright! Day 183493452987508934820 of social distancing and I am ready to bring to you Pandemica #4! We finally get to find out why crazy De is carrying around a baby everywhere!
We left off at the lab full of children and babies. Now Chick and De are finding out why they have a lab full of children. Some of the kids are infected some of them are getting immunity shots and one has every single disease that has been unleashed, but she is healthy and alive. However, if she gets let out she can obviously infect everyone with everything she has, so there’s that.
The lab guy won’t let Chick and De take her because she could destroy the world, but De wants to take her because she thinks the baby holds the cure inside. Chick is like hell, no. Leave her we’ll find another way without committing suicide ourselves. I mean, I think I see what’s going to happen here, considering they spoiled it in the last issue, that De takes the baby and Chick threatens to shoot her. Don’t remember that? Read the Recap.
You thinkin’ what I’m thinkin’?
K then we get a flashback of De trying to save another baby in the Congo while on a mission and that baby died so now she has to save this baby which they call “lucky bunny” which in the comic they say is a stupid name, but I think it’s fucking adorable. If I was there would have named her Dolores, tho. BUT THAT’S JUST ME.
Back to the present, the lab man reveals that the baby has a perfect mix of all the races in her DNA and that’s probably why she is surviving, and the white people behind the ARK don’t like that because she’s like perfect because she’s all people, and these white people only like other white people. Which is boring because most white people are lame…well, minus this white person.
He’s pretty entertaining.
Chick and De start arguing over whether or not they’re going to take the kid with them or not, meanwhile lab man dials his phone with his hands tied behind his back and his Evil Lady boss overhears their whole argument, so now she knows that they’re taking lucky bunny and she gotta stop ’em.
He must do yoga.
Moses’ lab has just been attacked by Loverboy they killed a doctor, Raj in cold blood and Loverboy then threatened the lives and families of the remaining scientists. Moses wants to give up, some want to call the police, others want to keep fighting. They’ve all been affected personally by the virus. It’s all v emotional. They all stop crying and fighting long enough to see military peeps on TV just shooting at all those virus mutants.
Gob voice: BUT I’M WHITEEE!!
Loverboy has exited the building and calls the Ark lady, does she have a name? I don’t remember it if she does but she’s the daughter of the billionaire and she doesn’t care when Loverboy walks around without a shirt on. Anyways, he calls her and their conversation goes like this…
Evil lady – Um, we’re getting backlash from the white house because our bloodhound counter agent isn’t working, white people are just turning into mutants.
Loverboy – Cool.
Evil Lady – Not really, we might have to lay low for a while and burn everything we’ve done to the ground. Your friends Chick and De are taking Lucky Bunny.
Loveryboy – I’ll go get ’em!
EL – Nah, let’s save that fight for the penultimate issue, just kill that jew.
LB – YAY!!
DENESSA AND CHICK SCENE
They’re suiting up in biohazard suits to take the baby out of the tube. Chick cries a bunch and points his gun at De too many times. Meanwhile, Evil Lady has sent SWAT after them so they got that to deal with.
MOSES SCENE
Moses orders his scientists to grab every hard-drive they can and go the safe houses that he has set up for them. He stops Dr. Esteban and tells him to head to a Jersey lighthouse instead of his original safe house location because he’s special I guess? Moses has passed on plans to him and names of people that he trusts, the second he is done explaining, the UPS murderers come back and start shooting up the place and Moses straight up covers for Esteban like a mo’fuckin G.
Oh shit, he’s still holding the files. How’s Esteban gonna figure it out???
Meanwhile, Chick decides to rat on De’nessa by calling Moses and telling on her for stealing the baby. Chick gets his comeuppance and De puts a gun to his head this time. Their love is V dysfunctional.
Why can’t it be black and white, Chick? Why does it have to be white or black? Bitch.
Chick and De split up because De wants to keep the baby, as that old story goes.
De decides that she is going to the safe house at the lighthouse where Esteban is going, unfortunately she has no idea where that is. BUT SHE IS SURE SHE WILL FIND IT. I am so bad at directions I can’t imagine getting into a car with NO directions and magically landing where I need to be, but I’m also not a bad-ass military spy like De, so I’m sure she will find it. Otherwise this comic would not be very good. Imagine she just drives around in circles like, not even heading to the water where a lighthouse would be?
The SWAT catches up to DE but she manages to outrun them. She heads to Moses’ lab instead of the lighthouse, the one that was just destroyed by the UPS drivers.
I think Esteban died tho, because she finds his paper with the coordinates to the lighthouse soo….
Hazmat baby chic.
SO now her and the hazmat baby can ride off into the polluted, virally infected air and find their lighthouse. Which is in Jersey. They’re on A PAHHKKWAAAYYY.
Once in a while I stumble across a comic book that really gets me thinking. Pandemica is one of those.
I was blown away by the awesomeness of this comic book, but when I shared the plot with a friend of mine he said it was a bit too “on the nose” for his taste. Well, now YOU can be the judges of that. For me, Pandemica was the fucking shit. For him, it was just shit. So I definitely want to know ya’lls opinion.
Now for the thankings. This story was written by Jonathan Maberry. ART by Alex Sanchez. COLORS by Jay Fotos. LETTERS by Shawn Lee.
We begin with Chapter 1: APTLY TITLED- GET DOWN WITH THE SICKNESS.
Which honestly, would be such a great name for a hip hop album, but I digress.
We begin two months ago with this dude or female IDFK in a hazmat suit pouring some green liquid into the pipes of detention complex while one lone and old ass security guard walks around with a gun not noticing shit. The mission was so easy that he is legit in and out.
He looks so guilty.
So, cut to, all of these detainees, dead and their bodies in bags. None of the guards were hurt by it, none of the staff of the detention just the fucking prisoners. It is baffling.
What is in the plug.
Now the news got hold of it and some fat man with a cigar that gives off way too much smoke is talking to his daughter about the news and what they’re saying. I’m assuming these two are the bad guys because they’re upset that the media figured it out. BUT HOW THE FUCK WOULDN’T THE MEDIA FIGURE IT OUT. THEY’RE BEING SO DAMN OPEN ABOUT IT. Yeah 90,000 people are dead. That’s fine. Look the other way.
Daddy, look we’re on TV!!
Let me explain,
The news guy is all “CHIKUNGUNYA is a virus usually spread by bug bites that had a mortality rate of one in a thousand, but there is a new strain of it, (New strain as in someone fucked with the original strain and weaponized it) that has a mortality rate of 70%. The pattern of its spreading makes absolutely no fucking sense because only certain people are dying from it. Like tribes that are literally right next to each other, one will die and the other tribe will have no deaths. And places that are getting hit are detention centers filled with immigrants, poor neighborhoods in Mexico, in Haiti, Puerto Rico, poor areas of India. BASICALLY IF YOU ARE BROWN AND POOR THEN YOU ARE GETTING KILLED BY THIS VIRUS.
Hazmat Man 1: Whoa dude there’s like a camera here. Hazmat Man 2: Whooaaa.
(So, basically I’m next.)
Now there’s an interview with a handsome black newsman and one Mister Dr. Katz.
Dr. Katz believes this is a weaponized attack on the poorest people and people of color. The newsman is like “you’re quite bold to say that. It’s not possible.”
Nice suit, Edgar.
And Dr. Katz is all “Oh mother fucker it is possible look at all this damning evidence.”
And the newsman is like “What? Are you saying someone is deliberating mass murdering people?”
And Dr. Katz is like “Yeah. It’s not mother nature. She’s a bitch but she ain’t a racist. This is an ethnic bio-weapon. Someone is selling GENOCIDE.”
IT’S PRETTY FUCKING OBVIOUS, EDGAR!
BUHM BUH BUHHH!!!
Oh it’s so crazy and it hit me in the heart because damn we are so close to this happening and what a damn shame amiright? Like how scary!! America already kind of does this shit on not a bio-level attack, but they make it impossible for people of color to get decent paying jobs and insurance and education…and OMG WE ALREADY DO IT! DON’T YOU SEE???!! AMERICA IS PANDEMICA.
I digress again.
So, now everybody is worried about Dr. Katz because he went on TV and called out the higher ups for planting genocide attacks. And now all of the congressmen want him fired and the President is off tweeting about what a liar Dr. Katz is, so he decides to quit his job which I have no idea what his fucking job is. I guess he is a Doctor with a TV show or something. Anyways, he goes on multiple TV shows and speaks at multiple town halls getting the word out as best as he can. Luckily he is a secret millionaire. ALWAYS A V LUCKY THING TO BE.
So he decides to create a taskforce of doctors, nurses, scientists, lawyers, and investigators so that he can get to the bottom of this genocide.
YEAH SO SCARED I’M SHAKING IN MY $5,000 SUIT! WORST THING THAT COULD HAPPEN IS I SPILL SOME COFFEE ON MY $6,300 SUIT!! COME ON!
BACK TO THE FAT MAN WITH THE CIGAR.
Now fat man is talking to a hit man named Loverboy. Loverboy chooses to wear a large winter jacket but no shirt underneath. He has very strong pecs and a six or maybe 8 pack while in a sitting position. So he is jacked. But it is never answered to why he doesn’t wear a shirt but chooses to wear a heavy jacket that he leaves open. I will be emailing the artists to ask them if this was an artistic choice or maybe I’ll email the writer and ask him if this is truly something the character of Loverboy would do, and then I would want to dive into his psyche to figure out why. Because, to me, this makes absolutely no fucking sense. OKAY THANKS BYE.
Redhead: Loverboy, did, um…did you forget to put on a shirt today?
Dr. Katz is on his car phone, ya know where you can talk on the phone but it comes out of the speaker of the car so you can keep your hands on 10 and 2? Eyes on the road buddy.
He decides to get the “band back together.” Seems he was on another special forces team. He’s not just a regular Doctor, he’s a cool doctor. SO he’s on the phone getting this special team together when a truck comes out of NOWHERE and hits him.
Whoops.
And that’s the first hit. He survives but the truck driver says he just left a bar so he’ll get arrested for drunk driving and they’ll deal with him in jail. UNFORTUNATELY FOR LOVERBOY Dr. Katz is a reformed alchoholic and no longer drinks. So he passes a breathalizer and asks the cop to check the traffic cam. The traffic cam doesn’t have any footage conveniently so Dr. Katz goes home.
Loverboy says there are other ways to kill him, so give him a week and Dr. MOSES Katz will be dead. A little too ON the NOSE of a first name as well, but we’ll let it happen.
The next day, Moses meets up with a woman that he used to work with. ON his special team or whatever. They meet up for coffee and discuss working together again she thinks his idea is illegal and she reminds him that after Syria their “team” stopped working together for good reason. Mostly the reason is that the team is dead except for one other guy and the other guy, “Chick” blames the woman for “what happened” and I believe the “what happened” is that all their team died.
This bitch nails’ are fleeky
She isn’t quite keen on joining him in his conspiracy theory thing, but she does find the accident to be a little “hinky” because the traffic cam wasn’t available so she agrees to investigate that at least.
She checks out a little bodega near where the accident occured. The man at the bodega says he does a camera that faces that way and he found it odd that the police did not want to check it.
She checks out the security footage and lets Moses know that he is not crazy and there is indeed someone following him and blah blah.
What she doesn’t know is that someone is following her too. She takes to the streets after making the call and a homeless man bumps into her and calls her a bitch, then these three people attack her.
OOO SHE DONE USED ONE GUYS BODY TO HIT ANOTHER GUY IN THE HEAD LOL
After beating all these people up she gets fired at by a gunman in a car. She pulls out her own gun and fires at the people who attacked her when she notices where the other gunfire is actually coming from. Loverboy is in the car. And guess what? She fucking knows him. FROM SYRIA. Omg they used to be friends. This goes DEEPER than we thought.
And a single tear fell from her eye. Okay it didn’t but they should have played that shit up.
De’neesa is the woman’s name, so I should probably start calling her that instead of woman, and she makes a call to “Chick” Chick is a ginger with freckles and he’s gross and I don’t trust him. He is also wearing an army uniform so that adds to my distrust. Never trust a man in uniform. ANYWAYS she makes a call to Chick and she’s like guess what Chick, I didn’t kill Loverboy he’s alive I saw him. And he’s like “well he must be a zombie then because we both saw him die.” Whatta fucking goon.
Hey, stay on your knees while I make this phone call? Thanks.
Anyways more convo:
D: So we took away a briefcase from the Russians, that was one of Loverboy’s tricks you know that one. He pulled that same one on me outside of the Bodega.
C: Okay, now I believe you because he used the same style to jump you as he did to the Russians. That’s all it took, I am 100% on your side now.
D: Loverboy’s death broke us apart, our entire team. But now we know that it was all a part of something bigger. He scammed us. This was part of his plan.
C: Well now I feel like a patsie. Whatever that is. I mourned him like a brother and he’s still alive according to you and this one story which I 100% agree with even though I saw nothing with my own eyes. And it does seem out of character for me as I held a grudge against you for several years but all of a sudden you call me and say “hey I didn’t kill loverboy he faked his death” and now everything is PEACHY.
D: Great. So uh, what you up to?
C: I heard about Moses’ conspiracy before this and honestly I’m dealing with the same thing over here in Africa or something. I caught these Bantu cocksuckers trying to dump some biohazard waste into a Congolese village. I’m going to go beat the shit out of them now, so I gotta go. See you soon, I’ll be on the first flight out. BAII!!!
D: Have fun!! Baiii!!
Even that guy who is about to get his ass beat is just rolling his eyes at how corny this Chick dude is.
NEXT SCENE
Moses and De’Neesa call a meeting so they can their new team together and it’s a bunch of weirdos and POC. THE RESISTANCE!!!
“Designer bio-weapons” by Givenchy out now.
Moses gives them a beautiful speech about how “We have to stop this” Because “no one else will” and because of Chick they now have the evidence to show that they are right.
Loverboy and the Fat man and his daughter the girl catch wind that Moses has now formed this team and they’re scared.
The daughter says that because they have what they sold to the Bantu they can reverse engineer it and tie it all back to them. Loverboy is like “Don’t get your panties in a bunch, doll.”
He don’t GAF. AND he is still not wearing a SHIRT!!
Shocking how they could fit the fat man in that small of a panel.
Comic Book Bitch 