Comic Review: Pandemica Vol.1 (IDW Publishing)

IDW Comics releases an apocalypse like a comic that is inspired to the same apocalypse that we’re in right now in Pandemica on its first volume of the graphic novel.

Before, there’s the COVID-19, and then there’s the pandemic and the rules, and then there exist mutants over the disease and people without face masks, so someone has their time to create this comic-inspired from the pandemic, and it’s going to be disturbing for the readers, please expect no positivity over this. The story is written by the New York Times Bestseller: Johnathan Maberry and illustrated by Alex Sanchez. Johnathan is a veteran writer who wrote several genres of novels like Rot & Ruin, Dust & Decay, and such, but he is also the creator of V-Wars which is a vampire anthology from IDW and made with some sequels. There’s more of his novels than meets the eye, even for that he writes one of the best novels that you’ll ever read.

The front cover shows every sight of the cover is at war, everything is engulfed in flames like seeing some giant mutant of insects swarming around the city from Miyazaki’s film, Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, I love that movie, but THAT IS NO WAY TO HAVE AN INSPIRATION TO SET EVERYTHING ON FIRE. But that’s not the point, the main character is going on war to fight the mutants which can be told later, holding her gun and a mask just like we have right now. However, one of the workers is using a flamethrower to burn everything on that building. And wait, am I taking a color blind test right now, because on the back of the main character there is a baby hanging around her back, the baby with the mask, I don’t get it, since when does the character had a baby with a mask? At the start of the story there’s a spy going around the factory and putting a liquid inside the tube, but what is it for? Anyway, there is a virus that spreads rapidly in human society called Chikungunya which anyone gets infected by mosquito bites. Apparently, the whole mosquito bite is inspired by the fact that last year and the year before that there exists a mosquito bite disease that makes pregnant women more vulnerable for childbirth. However in this comic, this virus is contagious and later at its state, it would turn anyone into mutants, zombies. It happened to be spread from across the pooer countries from around the world.

You know this is like the story of 2020 where things to get change throughout the decade, like the movie Akira, this sort of events that are happening rig- oh my god, I just said it twice, YOU’RE TEARING ME APART LIFE!! So the idea of the story is nothing alike from the virus that we’re going against right now, but the story backfired with mosquito bites. Although the whole city is in the middle of the pandemic, this comic brings you a siege, where the city is burned down. Now everyone is playing the victim, just shooting down just to get one of the chemicals, however, the whole world is under attack between humans and monsters. One of the panels shows some serious studies of the monster’s veins, as it seemed that they’re holding some kind of bioweapon from the inside. And mostly everything that expected to see is all survival of the fittest.

The story seemed to be true to be a realistic one because everything of the storytelling seemed that it supposed to happen that way in 2020. I wouldn’t think that all of this is true, because besides the pandemic and the protest, I have not seen any apocalypse of this city yet, and one of the parts of the city is opening one by one. Reading this comic makes you think that you’re reading The Walking Dead with the main characters wearing face masks and all. This one gets to have some preparations of war, to launch some purity bombs which is related to a nuclear explosion in World War II. The illustrations between the characters are well detailed, but the monsters turned out to be intimidating, because of the mutation. I don’t see the difference in real life except some people are turning into idiots or zombies. Simple-minded people are left to die because they don’t even care if the super germ affects you and everyone is in panic. You’re stuck at home all day without doing anything and having an urge to go outside. However this comic is different because the main character is protecting that child which is the key to human survival or extinction. It’s amazing, to begin with if there’s something left to protect this world. Either way, it’s an amazing comic to read, rather than going around the news to listen to those simple-minded humans about the virus and violating its rules because they’re bored. If you rather want to read something that realistic, then this is for you.