Desmond lives a boring, stagnant everyday life in the isolated city of Knightsville, until one day he sees the improbable: a lone car heading into the city. At school the next day, a new transfer student takes a liking to him, and the two begin a series of adventures exploring the city's abandoned underground.
Paendemic was created in late 2015, and went through multiple iterations before I finally settled on a traditional pen and ink comic format. The comic as seen here began in 2016 and completed in early 2018, marking the completion of ~470 pages over three-ish years. The comic was drawn and inked completely traditionally in black and white, scanned, and typeset digitally. The bulk of the pages were drawn in 2017 alone.
I uploaded all of Paendemic chapter by chapter over the course of 2018, to little fanfare. At the time, I was crushed at the reception and removed the comic from Tapas (it's original host) and pretended it never happened. I still think Paendemic was very poorly executed and had the potential to be far better than it ended up being. However, the power of nostalgia goggles cannot be overstated -- hence why Paendemic is being reuploaded online. I will be the first to admit that it is a clumsily executed story complete with amateur art. However, it was important to me when I was younger, so here it is for posterity.
Unlike many of my other comics, Paendemic is darker in tone and requires some content warnings. This story has depictions of death, sickness (a spreading paendemic - and yes, this story was finished in 2018, way before. Well, you know. ), a hospital setting, blood, violence, transphobic and homophobic harassment and slurs, and self harm (note: I feel like I dealt with this depiction particularly clumsily). And, of course, content warning for cringe.