With Issue 2 of Behemoth, we’ve arrived at the main selling point of the book: What’s it like inside those kaiju guts? For a comic about exploring the innards of a giant monster, my expectations were high, and sure enough, did the entire crew deliver with this sophomore installment of the run. Featuring beautiful colors, a true sense of dread, and an in-the-moment focus on our characters, Behemoth takes the premise kaiju fans have been asking to see for a long time. and delivers on all fronts. The book perfectly balances horror, action, and character-driven storytelling, but doesn’t leave kaiju fans at the altar. You will love being eaten by a monster!
I have to commend Grant & Ryan’s phenomenal writing & storytelling again. Every character that is now trapped inside the beast feels like a real person, and that is thanks to things like the immediate arguing despite being faced with certain death, or even the racist prick that should probably have been digested first. Every single one of these moments fleshes out the cast of characters that have found themselves in the worst scenario imaginable. To help build the world out, the choice of having real Japanese inside speech bubbles when the language is spoken by Ayako is a wonderful one. Additionally, it is pretty intriguing that one of the characters already knows what a kaiju is.
Beyond that, I appreciated the stakes being at their highest, with no character being safe. It sounds obvious on paper, but believe me when I tell you that other books may have monster fodder in the form of random people to kill off, but this book doesn’t care who it is. No spoilers, but I’m glad that there’s no plot armor going around in this book. The characters are thrust into a fight for survival, and every waking moment is a moment in which they could perish. The creative choice not to have any dramatic flashbacks during pivotal moments in this issue was a welcomed one. Typically in these books, the protagonist will flash back to something their loved ones have said in the moment they need to survive. This is not the case, as the book focuses on the here and now the entire time, and it feels so refreshing for a story to be avoiding those flashbacks.
On the art front, Jay Martin has cemented himself as one of the most impressive illustrators to work on a Kaiju comic book. Switching it up this time, Mr. Martin goes from epic, sweeping splash pages showing us the outside of the kaiju (with visuals very familiar to devoted genre fans) to smaller, more tense, and revolting once we are “eaten” alongside the characters. Jay’s choices with colors and shadows are so visually striking, with unique vehicles and human beings standing out perfectly despite being in a place with very little to no light. The sense of scale is not forgotten as well; the cavernous stomach still feels massive, especially in that page with the falling, flaming car and the reveal of the acid lake. I can’t reveal too much about what else Jay’s bringing to the table without spoiling, but we have some fun intestinal roommates that surprise us within the monster, and they’re right up there with the Cloverfield parasites as some of the freakiest little buggers in a monster story.
Overall, this issue was a nice step up for me. Previously, the story was shackled with having to be “Issue 1”, setting everything and staging our sequence of events. This issue gets to play with the concepts on a much more creative scale and initiate the real story. We are left with some exciting mysteries to be solved, some terrifying occupants that dwell within, and has left me excitedly wondering where we are headed next. Honestly, I don’t know! I cannot predict where this story is headed, but I’m happy to report that as a 20-year veteran of Kaiju stories, I am being surprised at every turn. If you have not picked up Behemoth yet, you’re missing out on one of the best kaiju comic books to have hit the stands in years..
