3 out of 5

A sweeping first issue sets up a “Before” and “After” structure for Tate Brombal’s five-part Behold, Behemoth, which is key to its themes, and how Tate and artist Nick Robles play with our need / expectations for the between of those milestones to be filled in. With its broken characters – social worker Greyson has a troubled history with his recently passed brother, and relies on an unspecified medication to keep him steady; the orphan Wren, one of his charges, has bounced from home to home, and can’t seem to square her hope with the world’s cruelties – Behemoth’s narrative keeps that “between” broken as well, using the blurry edges of its dialogue bubbles and scratchy art to establish a world where there sometimes isn’t a clear link from A to B.

Until, of course, there is, filled in by exposition dump.

The gap I’ve mentioned is referred to as The Fall; prior to The Fall, Greyson wears a suit and gets headaches, and Wren is a young girl with possible anger issues; after The Fall, Greyson and Wren travel together through a wrecked landscape, hunted by military types, Greyson now bearded, muscled, and carrying a long, glowing staff, and Wren, her “issues” manifesting a gigantic, rampaging beast the duo call Behemoth. That’s… a change, for sure, and part of the series’ genius is in making the two eras in the story interesting without necessarily puzzle boxing what The Fall entailed. This is achieved by giving us some big events in the “Before” that hint at the link between our leads, but also leaving a lot the particulars around those events in the panel gutters, grounding the strangeness: things happen, and they just have to make sense to us in their own way.

I mentioned the exposition dump, though. Sometimes what comes across as smart story structure ends up being an accidental affect; a delaying tactic. That’s not exactly what’s happening here – Brombal’s dialogue and characterizations are strong; he has a good sense of this world and the people in it – and the way we slide around time even within the “Before” and “After” moments, and how perception and reality are toyed with (as well as more standard hero / villain archetypes) are indicative of this being purposefully presented as described above. But we still have books to sell, and we’re structuring comics to fit into trades, and trying to lure folks to a second arc / volume, so at some point the structure does become a delaying tactic to get to that exposition bit, and after that, it’s puzzle boxing to get us to a See You in Volume 2 stinger. I don’t exactly mind that, but I wish Tate / his editors either had given the story more room up front so the transition to tactics and hooks wasn’t as clunky, or that the whole series had been written more in that style. (Although perhaps I wouldn’t have been led in had that been the case.)

Touching on the art: Nick Robles manages something that would’ve otherwise sunken the book: he makes Behemoth intimidating, without going towards more typical creature-feature territory. You view this as a monster; not some giant-with-a-heart; and Robles avoids doing anything too typically Lovecraftian or demonic, finding a design that is striking but “believable;” functional. The figurework is interesting, as they kind of look like Brad Bird-style humans in some ways (like Iron Giant characters), but the scratchy, patchy colors rough it up so it ends up working with the tone. I do wish there was a bit more of a difference between the Before and After besides colors, but I also appreciate that even the word bubbles got a pass to make them sync with the art style overall.