Leviathan #1

by John Layman

Poor Ryan DeLuca didn’t buy enough beer for his party, and while he was out on a beer run his idiot buddies busted out some mystical arcana and performed a summoning ceremony—a ceremony that summoned a giant monster from hell! Join multiple Eisner-winning writer JOHN LAYMAN (CHEW) and Eisner-nominated artist NICK PITARRA (THE MANHATTAN PROJECTS), along with soon-to-be-nominated-for-best-colorist MICHAEL GARLAND (THE MANHATTAN PROJECTS) for an eye-popping, face-melting, reality-defying, nonstop rush of pure adrenaline.

Genres: Comics

28 pages, Kindle Edition

Published August 1, 2018

About the author

John Steele Layman is an American comic book writer and letterer. Layman is most known for writing Chew, published by Image Comics.

Reviews

[Tony Stark · Rating 2 out of 5]

..... ok 🤨

[Chris Thompson · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was a mix of silly, messy, and dumb. The characters are too unlikable to care about, and the monster bits make very little sense. Both a bum predicting apocalypse and a priest praying about the devil in the form of a leviathan, or serpent, obviously come true - and so what?

There is an oddly placed Trump caricature in here that would work if this was a political satire. He is only there for a moment. The main character is a bland young man whose black friend runs off right away because the black guy always dies first. Nothing very original.

The artwork is reminiscent of Steve Skroce in level of detail but not in quality. The artist seems infatuated not just with the giant creature, but also with girls whose bras and cleavage spill out from the top of their shirts. The final scenes with Vivian, the girlfriend, feel exploitative and gross. Not a great debut.

[Evelyn Blackwater · Rating 2 out of 5]

Tonally incomprehensible and deeply unpleasant; lacking any thematic element that would otherwise have spared it from my disinterest.
John Layman is a genius; and after reading bits of his work on CHEW I was expecting something similar in quality with LEVIATHAN, especially as a fan of giant monsters (Godzilla is my favorite character in all of media); but this one was a struggle to get through.
At a certain point I began to feel vitriolic because there didn't seem to be anything under the surface; nothing of note on the mind worth saying that could give this property a sense of weight and meaning. We do have scenes depicting Donald Trump laying in piles of vanity; and we see the titular creature murdering a caricature of the stereotypical "fat, loud feminist." Forgive my smugness when I say I couldn't refrain my eyes from rolling. I'd say this reeks of some type of Libertarian-Centrist South Parkian jab at "both sides." But I don't want to give it that much credit.
My vitriol grows out of this idea that monster movies are perceived as mere B-Movies with simplistic plots and wooden characters. LEVIATHAN feels like a reinforcement of this trope; having stripped the historical roots of Kaiju down to "monster goes smashy smashy. People die. It sucks."
That said-
...the art by Nick Pitarra is beyond exceptional. And in spite of all my venom I simply love monsters too much to not purchase the second issue should I find it in the Half Price Books bin. I'll likely be as underwhelmed as I was here- and that is perhaps where my venom originates.

[Robert Hultman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Insane and fun and cool to look at. Nicely done.