Breathless

It's Buffy the Vampire Slayer if the villains were big pharma. “Brilliant.” -Horror Talk “Vibrant and visceral.” -Black Nerd Problems “Fresh and compelling.” -Multiversity Comics Scout Turner works as a cryptozoologist, examining and cataloguing supernatural creatures for scientific purposes. When she discovers the cure for asthma in the venom of a new breed of monster, she quickly finds herself on the run from Kenilworth Pharmaceuticals and the monsters that they've hired to kill her. With no one by her side but her clueless assistant, a morally ambiguous succubus, and her geriatric dog, Scout goes on the run... but in a world controlled by money and drugs, can she escape the reaching claws of a medical monopoly? From Pat Shand (Destiny NY, Guardians of the Galaxy), Renzo Rodriguez (Hellchild), and Mara Jayne Carpenter (Jade Street Protection Services) comes this healthcare horror story about the monsters creeping in the dark... human or otherwise. Collects issues 1-4. "Anyone who’s living with a chronic illness requiring that they take prescription drugs knows the infuriating agony of making their way to the pharmacy to pick up their meds... only to learn that their insurance, or lack thereof, means that they have to pay an arm and a leg just to survive. That’s a reality that Scout Turner, a freelancer for a huge pharmaceutical company, knows all too well given her line of work and a lifelong battle with asthma. Scout understands that the outrageous co-pays on her inhalers are the result of a multi-pronged problem tied to both the nature of the country’s flawed healthcare system and big pharma’s obsession with profits over people. But her experience is unique in that the company she works for specializes in developing new drugs that use materials collected from cryptids like chupacabras and succubi to develop its products. As Breathless begins, Scout’s dismayed to learn that her recently-purchased albuterol inhaler has a puncture in it, but her entire life takes a sharp turn when, while dissecting a newly-captured specimen, she’s exposed to a strange gaseous substance accidentally released from the creature’s chest. After breathing the gas in, Scout realizes that her asthma’s seemingly cleared up, signaling that the creatures might just be the key to her company’s latest miracle drug. But in the same way that the Umbrella Corporation swears up and down that it’s behaving and just trying to keep people safe, Scout’s company soon gets involved with a danger (potentially of its own making) that could end up throwing the world into complete chaos." -io9