Event Leviathan Hardcover

I walked into my local comic store in the day it was destined to close as part of the COVID19 pandemic. All non-essential businesses were asked to close their doors. And for some unknown reason, comic stores were deemed non-essential.

It was a good week for books. I had 9 on the pull list so I knew I would have at least a good amount of new stuff to parse out while waiting out the social distancing mandates.

But then I saw this on the shelf ... the Event Leviathan hardcover collection.

I wanted to help my store. I knew I needed some new stuff (or at least new format of stuff) to read.

And, let's face it, Event Leviathan was a big deal for me this last year.

 Who is Leviathan?

It was a question I was determined to answer. Or at least to think about. Or investigate.

I looked at all the clues. I had my main Leviathan Theory. But I also had others. And I tried to back up my claims. I tried to get Brian Michael Bendis to weigh in or maybe give something away on Twitter.

I was pretty obsessed with the mystery.

So I decided reward the engagement of the mini-series as well as my store and bought this collected volume of the Leviathan Rising special and the mini-series itself.

 This edition also includes all the covers and the variant covers.

I thought this variant cover for Event Leviathan #3 might have been a hint that this was Hawk and Dove, one of my back-up theories.

 But the biggest bonus of this collection, at least for me, was the process pictures in the back.

Here we see Alex Maleev's design pics for Leviathan and his troops.

It is clear that the mask/helmet was the most tinkered with element. You get pages of widely different looks and takes.

I am very intrigued to see a horseshoe crab on several pages. I guess that look was intended to be an inspiration for both Leviathan and hi troops.

I looked at the final design and thought I saw both a bird and a beetle in the design. Never saw the crab.

But the helmet looks are wild.

Some of them are borderline wonky.

The top one on this page looks unwieldy.

The bottom one looks like it could be an angel on Neon Genesis Evangelion.

We see more designs, hats, armors on several pages.

For a long time comic veteran, these peeks behind the creative curtains are especially pleasing.

So my Leviathan Theory was wrong. I'm over it .... sort of.