Severed #7

Written by Scott Snyder and Scott Tuft
Art by Attila Futaki

I feel like I was a little harsh when I wrote about the sixth issue of this mini-series last month, but I did feel that the writers had pushed the limits of credulity a little too far.  This final issue of the series is much better balanced though, and the story ended in a satisfying fashion.

Severed has been about Jack Brakeman, a young boy who set out across Depression-era America looking for his father, who had given him up for adoption as an infant.  Along the way, he came across a cannibal serial killer, posing a a record player salesman.  This guy got rid of Jack's traveling companion, a young girl dressing as a boy, and lured Jack into a particular home with the intent of eating him.

This issue begins with Jack in the guy's custody, and things look pretty bleak.  Help does arrive, in the form of someone I didn't expect to see in this comic again, but ultimately, it is the very quality in Jack that has made him such a tantalizing victim, his hope, that leads him to act on his own behalf.

Severed is a standard horror story in many ways, but it is nicely grounded in the era in which it is set.  Snyder and Tuft made Jack a very likeable character, and gave the reader many reasons to keep coming back, even when the conventions of the genre, and their reliance upon coincidence and the characters' naivety made things a little hard to swallow.  I will definitely be keeping my eye out for more work by the talented Attila Futaki, whose art really made this comic work.