Swamp Thing Annual #1 – Review

By: Scott Snyder & Scott Tuft (story), Becky Cloonan (art), Andrew Belanger (pencils), Karl Kerschl (inks), Tony Avina (colors)

The Story: What’s more romantic than a historical tour of a village on a barren mountain?

The Review: If you’ve noticed nothing else about Snyder’s work in the last few years, you’ve at least realized by now that he’s had big ideas for the DCU ever since he started working on Detective Comics.  As amazing as his work has been, though, only lately has he begun to stretch his legs and take command of the material like his own.  He now sees much more comfortable taking the familiar characters and twisting them to his own vision.

You might be thinking that he’s always done this, which is true, but you have to admit he’s become quite a bit more radical in the last few months.  The early issues of this series displayed a huge amount of knowledge and respect for the Swamp Thing mythos, retaining as much of the preceding authors’ continuity as possible.  In #0, you saw Snyder muck with Alec’s origins in a pretty significant way, and here, that mucking turns into full-on historical revisionism.

Severed #7 – Review

By: Scott Snyder & Scott Tuft (writers), Attila Futaki (art), Greg Guilhaumond (colors) & Fonografiks (letters)

The Story: It’s the finale!  How does little Jack get away from the cannibal?

Four Things: 

1. Creepy and disturbing! – Man, does this team understand horror or what?  Most monologues by villains/killers are contrived, but hearing the killer in Severed go through his motivations for picking Jack was really something: The dude actually gets off on crushing the dreams of children.  The bigger their dreams, the more he likes to eat them.  I also love that there was no attempt to make this guy redeeming.  We didn’t have to see his childhood and understand what made him a monster; nope, he’s just an evil monster who devours children.  A couple other moments really stuck with me too: the panel on page 2 where the killer is shown from above with a long shadow behind him AND the ending when the killer is yelling after Jack.  This story will stick with us!

2. Excellent art! – There isn’t much more to say about this art that I haven’t already said here and here.  But, for those who haven’t been following along, the art is splendid.  Futaki is laying down some wonderful lineart.  I mean, this stuff is among the most vital and lifelike art you’ll see from an artist who is working in a mostly realistic style.  If we had more artists like Futaki, I probably wouldn’t mind realistic art so much.  I only hope that less talented artists aren’t being inspired by him.  But, it doesn’t stop there.  Usually with lineart as good as Futaki’s, the colorist needs to just not screw up: don’t add stupid highlights, don’t ruin the light sources, don’t mess up the depth in the panels, etc.  But Guilhaumond actually improves the overall look of the book.  His colors are what make this book look so smelly, sweaty and dusty.

Severed #6 – Review

By: Scott Snyder & Scott Tuft (writers), Attila Futaki (art), Greg Guilhaumond (colors) & Fonografiks (letters)

The Story: Don’t follow creepy old men into backwoods tool sheds!

3 Things: 

1. The cat is out of the bag. – The creators have kept this game going for a few issues where the reader knew more about the bogeyman than young Jack did.  Honestly, they managed this suspense about as well as I’ve seen in comics and gave us all these ‘No! Don’t follow the strange man into the _______!’ moments.  But, the creators also knew when to stop the game and just let the story come to its climax.  What I loved about the scene with the shed in the woods is that the set up wasn’t much different than all the other teases we’ve gotten AND this scene happened early in the comic, so I half-expected this to be yet another tease.  However, the one difference in this scene is that Jack knew the bogeyman was a bad man so it really made sense to pop the balloon and move on with the story (even if I DO miss the masterful teasing from the last few issues).

2. Still a lot of little mysteries about the bogeyman. – Who is he?  Where did he come from?  Is he just a cannibal or is he some kind of meta-human?  How did he know Jack’s father?  Is he Jack’s father (in a Darth Vader/Anakin Skywalker sort of way)?  Why all the fucking around?  Why not just eat him when they first met?  Is there more to the story with Sam?  How did he get away from the bear trap?  How in god’s green earth is Jack getting out of this mess only losing an arm?  Would the Old Man Jack we saw in issue #1 be able to even walk by an old shed without wetting himself?  I can’t wait to find out.

Severed #5 – Review

By: Scott Snyder & Scott Tuft (writers), Attila Futaki (art), Greg Guilhaumond (colors) & Fonografiks (letters)

The Story: A little boy is unwittingly on the road with a horrible cannibal monster posing as a traveling salesman.

Five Things: [With SPOILERS]

1. Creepy impending sense of doom pervades this book – This series did such a clever thing by showing the little boy as an adult in the first issue.  He was clearly missing an arm and this whole series is kinda, “Grandpa, tell us a story about how you lost your arm” vibe to it.  So, the reader knows that the arm is coming off at some point.  We just don’t know when or how it will happen.  Further, it looks highly likely that Jack (the little boy) will get attacked by this cannibal dude at some point, but we don’t know when the shoe will drop.  So, every scene before a page turn that shows something ominous really builds the anticipation.  Oh god! They’re going into a dark house!  Oh god! He drugged his water!  Oh god! He’s going to slam the hood of the car on his arm!  It’s quite well done and it’s hard to think of a comic that has effectively carried this sense of tension for as long as this creative team has.

2. Miss the little girl – It’s hard not to miss Jack’s budding-girlfriend/traveling companion, Sam.  She was such a neat character and had become so well developed in just a few issues that her absence is felt.  Clearly, she had to go away to get to this point where Jack is truly alone with the bad guy, but she’s still missed.  Maybe that’s just a testament to what a great character she was?

3. What’s this cannibal up to? – It’s really hard to figure out what this man is up to.  Perhaps he isn’t hungry yet because he just ate a few days ago?  In that case, perhaps it’s easier to just keep Jack around and alive (as opposed to killing/butchering and keeping the pieces in a freezer).  But, it almost seems like he’s taking on a fatherly role towards Jack.  The thing that makes this comic so great is that you know that something will happen.  But, we also know that it probably won’t be a straightforward ending with the cannibal gnawing Jack’s arm off with Jack miraculously escaping.  Something weird will happen involving Jack, the cannibal and perhaps Jack’s real father and it’s going to be really fun to watch it unfold.

Severed #3 – Review

By: Scott Snyder and Scott Tuft (writers), Attila Futaki (artist)

The Story: Jack and his cross-dressing friend start making their way to Louisiana by busking, using Jack’s violin playing. Then they run into Victor the Travelling Phonograph Salesman, version 2.0. He invites them to his apartment and starts feeding them liquor and playing bear trap games.

Review: It’s probably best to review this book in the context of the two that have come before and the four that will come after. We began with a framing narrative of an old man with one arm missing, and old man who was hiding the truth about how he’d lost his arm. Go back in time and we follow Jack and, in parallel, an orphan boy. Jack is exposed to the creepy, disturbed dangers of travelling unprotected. The orphan boy is partially eaten. Will the cannibal eat Jack’s arm? The story looked simpler in issue #2. Then, in this issue, they meet Victor, and Snyder and Scott really show that they know how to create suspense and sustain it. Throughout the meal, I kept waiting for the shoe to drop. And the waiting turned into a cringe when the bear trap came out. I mean, WTF? I’ve maybe become desensitized to psychotics while reading Gotham books for the last two years, but Victor 2.0 brought in a whole new creepy, one that is as powerful in its way as the best of Grant Morrison’s early issues of Batman and Robin. Yet the tension in Severed is much more taut. There’s just not enough to be said about the writing of Severed as a perfectly paced, perfectly controlled story.

Severed #1 – PREVIEW

Severed #1

Story: SCOTT SNYDER & SCOTT TUFT
Art / cover: ATTILA FUTAKI

‘NOTHING WASTED,’ Part One 1916. A man haunts the roads; a man with sharp teeth and a hunger for flesh. When 12-year-old Jack Garron runs away from home, he’ll see how quickly the American Dream becomes a nightmare. Be there at the beginning of the series that everyone will be talking about! From Eisner-nominated writer SCOTT SNYDER (American Vampire, Detective Comics), SCOTT TUFT and ATTILA FUTAKI (NYT Best-Selling-Artist: Percy Jackson) comes the most terrifying horror series of 2011–SEVERED.

Severed #1 – Advanced Review

By: Scott Snyder and Scott Tuft (writers), Attila Futaki (artist)

The Story: An old man receives a letter that sends the story backward to an innocent, menacing time forty years earlier, a time before he lost his arm.

The Review: Snyder, Tuft and Futaki were in complete control of this story. From panel one, I was hooked by the authenticity and gravity of the story. The first hook was visual, with a modern house of the 50s and an older couple watching TV. The architecture and expressions of boredom were evocative and fascinating in their still normalcy before the storm. The dialogue did its work too, cleanly and economically establishing staid, worn domesticity and a bit of unexpected jadedness. Then back to visually again, when the grandson comes running in, I was struck with the old man’s slouch and the lean of his neck. It was so unexpectedly lifelike, that it stopped me for more than a bit.