Behemoth #1 is written by Ryan Engle and Grant Sputore and published by Dark Horse Comics. Artwork and colours by Jay Martin and letters by Frank Cvetkovic.
Behemoth #1 is available now, in print and on digital platforms where all good comic books are sold. Grab your digital copy from Amazon Comixology UK right here.
Synopsis
When a giant monster attacks a city and swallows a bus full of civilians, one woman must fight for her life. Trapped inside the enormous beast, Sara and her fellow bus passengers soon find out that they’re not alone. But what dangers lie within the belly of this beast? And who—or what—will they have to contend with in order to survive?
Review
Whenever stories of Kaiju’s wreaking havoc on civilisation are shown in media, mostly through film, they more often than not tend to focus on the perspective of the humans caught in the middle of all the destruction, as is the case with any of the Godzilla films. Occasionally, these perspectives can be changed to offer a slightly different experience to the mass destruction, whether it’s from the high up viewpoint of the monsters themselves with something like Pacific Rim or everything being shown from the literal POV of a human in Cloverfield.
With the release of this new comic series Behemoth, film writers Grant Sputore and Ryan Engle look to tackle this story from one very specific angle, what if the characters you were following in this disaster were swallowed by the monster and survived?
Considering the approach this series is going for, this first issue opens things up in a way that should be very familiar for those who have seen any Kaiju oriented movie. We witness a small fishing boat caught in a deadly storm as they pick up something on their radar and encounter a huge cargo ship…as well as a giant creature that rises from the sea. This cold open only lasts a couple of pages but ends on a glorious double page spread of the monster bursting from the ocean and ripping straight through the cargo ship. With his illustrations, Jay Martin chooses to use one or two key colours for a given panel, making the palette and lighting of each scene a lot more dramatic in their visuals, which works wonders for a story like this.
After this we are introduced to our protagonist for the series, Sara, who runs her own Cuban food truck as a side hustle whilst her normal job is packing boxes in a warehouse. Engle and Sputore do a great job of getting across Sara’s relatability in a very short space of time. She’s running low on money and is struggling to make ends meet as she merely tries to tackle one day at a time. However, as is common with these stories, her day to day struggles become the least of her worries once the creature attacks the city, forcing Sara and her mechanic friend Manny to jump on a nearby bus as their only means of escape.
The bus narrowly outruns the creature’s path of destruction in a nail-biting chase which sees buildings collapsing and trucks exploding after being whipped by the monster’s tail. Just as the passengers of the bus think they’ve escaped, the creature suddenly reappears and swallows the bus whole. It’s during these final few pages that Martin’s artwork really comes into its own. From the chaotic chase through the city as buildings crumble around them to the striking final image of the bus sitting at the bottom of the creature’s stomach, lit only by the red glow coming from its mouth and the fire of other vehicles the monster has eaten.
This first issue throws a lot at you very quickly and expects you to keep up with everything it does. It is evident that this opening issue is trying to rapidly tick all of the boxes it needs to so it can then get to the concept we all want to see, which unfortunately we will have to wait until the next instalment to fully watch unfold. I honestly couldn’t imagine a more intense, full-throttle way of kicking things off than what we have been given here.
Verdict
Behemoth presents a familiar premise from, quite literally, a unique perspective. All the archetypes of a Kaiju story are on display but are presented with genuine care for the human characters and artwork that captures the sheer intensity of the creature and the devastation it causes. A great concept with solid execution that can only get better from here.
⭐⭐⭐⭐
