Severed #5

Written by Scott Snyder and Scott Tuft
Art by Attila Futaki

Jack and the creepy imposter salesman cannibal guy are on the road together, with Jack thinking that his friend Sam has abandoned him and stolen his wallet.  This gives Mr. Fisher (not his real name) a number of opportunities to teach Jack about what life on the road is like, as he takes him with him, Jack thinks, to record his music and then help him find his father.  We readers are pretty sure Fisher plans to eat Jack, but we don't know when, so every creepy looking roadside house or dive bar looks like it's going to be the place.  This adds a lot of tension to the book.

And really, the book is tense enough.  Fisher expounds at length on how great life on the road is, but quickly we realise that this is the same road the traveling circus traveled in Carnivale.  To drive home that point, Snyder and Tuft give Attila Futaki the opportunity to show how twisted things are out there in a manner that reminds me of Eduardo Risso's penchant for including strange little silent stories on-panel in books like 100 Bullets.

As this issue opens, we see read Fisher's speech about how on the road, if you want something, you take it.  These words are shown over a sequence that has a man with a knife running across a field to where another man appears to be holding down a naked woman.  This looks like a violent rape scene, but what we find out on the next page is that it is instead a birthing.  It's a cool visual trick, which helps remind the reader that things aren't as they appear in this book, which is something Jack takes the entire issue to catch on to. 

I've been very impressed with this comic since it started.  At times, the characters behave in a very naive fashion, but when one remembers the time period, and its relative lack of sophistication around things like serial killers, it's a little easier to suspend disbelief.

With two issues remaining, I'm looking forward to seeing how Jack is going to get himself out of this situation.  I'm also hoping that we haven't seen the last of Sam, as she was a pretty cool character.