By Pagot & Alcante, coloured by Christophe Araldi and translated by Jerome Saincantin (Cinebook)
ISBN: 978-1-905460-81-6
European comics have never been afraid of progressive ventures or ruffling feathers and have a wonderful way of confronting headline-grabbing issues in a manner certain to keep a broad assortment of readers intrigued and engaged.
Pandora’s Box is the ambitious brainchild of Belgian author Didier Swysen – under his nom de plume Alcante (Jason Brice, Rani, La Conjuration de Cluny) – and boldly blends Doomwatch-style contemporary scientific, imminent society-changing concerns and carefully calculated technological extrapolation. These are then framed against a metaphorical backdrop of classical mythology and delivered as foreboding warnings to the political and plutocratic powers-that-be…
Couched in evocatively near-to-now science fiction terms, the series comprises eight self-contained tales, all informed by burgeoning ethical issues we’re daily dealing with and each revealing the ultimate cost of succumbing to one of the “Seven Deadly Sins†that have afflicted humanity since that fabled box was first breached…
Each tale features a different illustrator. Initial tome Pandora Box – L’orgueil was deftly and subversively rendered in the superbly understated line-work of Didier Pagot (La Dame qui est une Rivière, Les Traine-Ténèbres, Transgénèse) and coloured by Christophe Araldi, recounting how a man with a mission compromises his ethics and endangers his soul for the sake of a putative legacy…
In a secret location a heavily-pregnant woman is rushed into the emergency room and delivers a very special baby. After checking the newborn boy, Dr. Mathias Turpin dismisses the attending staff so that they never learn what becomes of the exhausted mother…
It’s election year in America and incumbent President Narcissus Shimmer is in the fight of his life for a second term. His reforming programs, the American People and his immortal legacy depend on another four years to finish his grand work…
Less than a week before the crucial vote, polls have finally put Shimmer ahead of his ruthless opponent Costner and the challenger has resorted to desperate tactics: hiring private detective Ron Grubb to dig up dirt which will end the President’s campaign…
Although less than keen, the money offered is irresistible and Grubb quickly uses his formidable intellect, infallible instincts and vast network of resources to uncover a potential scandal. For some reasons Shimmer has been given billions in campaign contributions from the biotechnology industries. A potential bribe…?
Moreover, even in these crucial final days, POTUS keeps slipping his Secret Service detail and fanatical, brilliant campaign manager Claire Dale to visit Geo-Center: a small, expensively discreet gynaecology and maternity hospital.
The first thought is that Shimmer has fathered a child on a mistress: a tempting possibility for a straight-laced straight-shooter famously estranged from his drug-addict son and standoffish wife…
Further digging reveals Geo-Center is run by Mathias Turpin: a maternity specialist whose real life’s work is cloning. Of course, human cloning is illegal but…
With an horrific notion forming, certainty comes after Grubb secures a clandestine blood sample from Shimmer and has it tested.
The President has been sterile for decades and is dying. Only a bone marrow donation can save him. Has his drive to complete his life’s work pushed the dedicated humanitarian into compromising all his principles and breaking the law? If so, how much further will he go to achieve victory and keep his secrets?
Rather than reporting his latest suspicions to the vile Costner, Grubb opts to get his own hands dirty and infiltrate Geo-Center, but events there are already spiralling out of control and a bloody confrontation leads to a horrific conflagration and one final test of all the key players’ moral fibre…
Dark, bleak, painfully astute and fearfully prophetic, this examination of the depths men will stoop to in pursuit of their “destinies†also shows how heroes come in many guises and, that for almost everyone, there is an ethical Rubicon they cannot cross…
© Dupuis, 2005 by Pagot & Alcante. All rights reserved. English translation: © 2008 Cinebook Ltd.