Compelling Narrative And Great Art Hindered By Flat Characters: Pandemica #2
by Josh Davison
Mild Spoilers Ahead
De and Chick have discovered one of the laboratories responsible for the designer ethnic bioweapons slaughtering large populations across the globe. They attack the lab and manage to capture a scientist for questioning. However, the scientist is killed before De and Chick get too far, and the lab is destroyed before they can get much information from it. They only get a name: the Ark. This is still a major roadblock for Pandemica, and it isn’t helped by the grotesque mutations these bioweapons have begun exhibiting. Plus, the diseases have begun jumping to the “ethnically pure,” but this isn’t slowing down the Ark’s project. In fact, it’s only driving them forward.
Pandemica #2 continues this apocalyptic horror story with action and grotesque escalation. We get to see De and Chick taking the fight to the people designing the bioweapons, but they’re far from the people who are running the Ark.
While the story remains interesting, the characters still fail to be particularly engaging. Moses, De, nor Chick stand out in this tale. At best, Ron, the head epidemiologist for Pandemica, is at least a little relatable. Chick is the most insufferable, and his one-liners fall flat at the best of times.
A lot of the dialogue is shaky, and it’s pretty damn heavy-handed. That’s not always a bad thing, and there is endless historical grounding for diseases being used to target minorities, and the comic cites a lot of those instances.
Alex Sanchez’s art is the strongest aspect of Pandemica. It’s gritty and often unnerving, and its depiction of the disease and body horror that emerges over the course of the story is chilling and gripping. Jay Fotos’ color art is dour and atmospheric too, and compliments Sanchez’s art quite well.
Pandemica #2 is still a decent read despite its problems. The narrative itself provides a lot of good and disturbing moments buoyed by the excellent visual work of Sanchez and Fotos. In the end, it’s still worth a recommendation. Feel free to pick it up.
Pandemica #2 comes to us from writer Jonathan Maberry, artist and variant cover artist Alex Sanchez, color artist Jay Fotos, letterer Shawn Lee, and cover artist Alex Sanchez with Jay Fotos.
Final Score: 6/10
