Beast of Borikén #3 Review: Boricua Fury, History and One Badass Monster

You already KNOW a comic called Beast of Borikén is gonna get my attention. That’s my island, my people, my history, and now we got a supernatural creature making armed fools regret stepping into the jungle! Julio Anta and Daniel Irizarri bring issue three of this Dark Horse and Tiny Onion joint with a whole lot of heart, some nasty creature action, and a reminder that Puerto Rico’s past ain’t some dusty chapter you close and forget. This is a story about what gets stolen, what survives, and what happens when the thing everybody calls a monster might be the only one willing to fight back. Coño, somebody tell these invaders they picked the WRONG forest!

The book opens in the present with armed men creeping through a rain-soaked landscape, lights cutting through the darkness while the Beast watches from the trees. Anta knows exactly how to build that kind of suspense. You see the rifles, you hear the orders, and you know those guys have no idea what they’re walking into. The creature is terrifying up close, all sharp teeth, spines, and glowing red eyes, yet the scenes refuse to reduce it to some mindless horror-movie animal. There’s intelligence in its stare and an unmistakable connection to the land. I love that tension. You want the humans to get away from danger, until you start wondering whether THEY’RE the danger in the first place.

Then the story pulls us back to 1493, and fam, the temperature changes. Spanish colonizers arrive with guns and an attitude, treating the island and everything living on it like something they can claim by force. The Taíno people aren’t standing around waiting for history to happen to them, either. There’s movement, resistance, and a brutal clash between weapons and the Beast’s raw fury. Anta doesn’t turn this into a history-class speech with somebody waving a pointer at a map. He lets the action show the collision of worlds. For a Puerto Rican reader, seeing that year on the page carries its own weight. The fantasy gives the history teeth, but the history is already plenty ugly without a monster helping out.

Irizarri absolutely goes OFF during the beach sequence. The Beast charges into gunfire, bodies tumble, and those wide panels make every collision feel like somebody just kicked open the theater doors. The creature design is ridiculous in the best comic-book way, part nightmare, part ancient guardian, with a silhouette you can recognize even when the whole scene is exploding. There’s also a wonderfully human touch to the Taíno characters. Their expressions, body language, and quick reactions make the encounter feel like a lived-in world instead of an illustrated museum exhibit. The action choreography gets wild, especially when the Beast tears through the armed men, but the geography stays clear enough that you can follow who’s in trouble and where the next attack is coming from.

Patricio Delpeche’s colors deserve some serious flowers. The nighttime jungle is soaked in deep greens, blues, and purple shadows, then the 1493 beach erupts with sun-baked oranges and the red flash of violence. Those shifts do more than make the pages pretty. They tell your eyes when you’re moving between eras and change the emotional rhythm of the book. Lucas Gattoni handles the lettering, and he’s got his work cut out for him between the dialogue, gunfire, and the Beast’s guttural noises. The sound effects have that proper comic-book punch without swallowing the artwork. When a creature roars or somebody opens fire, you FEEL it. That’s the kind of collaboration I want to see from the whole crew, not just a shout-out for the writer and penciler.

The modern-day family scenes are where Anta starts twisting the knife emotionally. After all the teeth and bullets, we spend time with women trying to make sense of illness, responsibility, and what the older generation has been carrying. There’s an uncomfortable argument about care and the burden of being the one expected to handle everything, followed by a hospital visit that reveals more about family memory and the struggle over Puerto Rico’s future. The references to activism and independence aren’t tossed in like random slogans. They belong to a conversation between generations, with one person still holding on to old convictions while another is trying to survive the mess right in front of her. As a Boricua, I appreciate seeing that disagreement on the page. We’re not all gonna see the island’s future the same way, and pretending otherwise would be corny as hell.

Now, I gotta give the book a little grief. The jump from the historical creature rampage to the domestic drama is pretty abrupt, and the modern conversation packs a LOT of family history and political context into a short stretch. I wanted a little more breathing room with those women before the next burst of danger. The issue is also clearly building toward the next chapter rather than delivering a complete resolution, so that final ambush lands as a big, nasty cliffhanger. I’m cool with a serial comic leaving me hungry, but don’t act surprised when I’m yelling at the last page like the issue owes me five more! There’s also a black-and-white Tombstone Thunderbird backup, written by Anta with art by Naomi Franq and letters by Aditya Bidikar, giving readers a different flavor of creature storytelling after the main feature.

Beast of Borikén #3 gives me the things I want from an indie-minded genre comic: a memorable monster, confident visual storytelling, characters with actual emotional baggage, and a cultural point of view that isn’t afraid to be specific. Anta, Irizarri, Delpeche, and Gattoni deliver an issue that’s bloody, thoughtful, and proudly rooted in Puerto Rican history. Yeah, some transitions are rough and that ending comes at you FAST, but I’d rather read a book swinging this hard than another cookie-cutter creature feature. Big respect to Dark Horse and Tiny Onion for putting this story in front of readers. From Brooklyn to Borikén, this one’s got my attention.

Crusaders Score:
4.5/5

Script: Julio Anta
Art: Daniel Irizarri
Colors: Patricio Delpeche
Letters: Lucas Gattoni
Cover A: Daniel Irizarri
Cover B: Pablo Leon
Created By: Julio Anta and Daniel Irizarri
Tombstone Thunderbird Backup Script: Julio Anta
Backup Art: Naomi Franq
Backup Letters: Aditya Bidikar
Tiny Onion Editor: Greg Lockard
Dark Horse Editor: Daniel Chabon
Assisting Editor: Chuck Howitt-Lease
Assistant Editor: Foster Kuppens
Publisher: Dark Horse Comics / Tiny Onion