Written by Scott Snyder & Scott Tuft
Illustrated by 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.
I’ve traditionally never been one for horror movies, but for some reason I am A-OK with horror comics, and this has been a good year for them (especially at Image). However, this one stands out as the one horror book that does not include the words “walking”, “dead” or “the” in its title that I was actually looking forward to cracking open. The reason for being that it sprung, in part, from Scott Snyder’s (digital) pen and after a landmark year on both Detective Comics and American Vampire, Snyder has built a whole boatload of expectations surrounding his work (at least from me). Click on down to find out how this one stacks up with the rest!
One of the standouts of this issue right off the bat is that Snyder’s tendency to inject copious amounts of real American history into his books (don’t believe me? Read American Vampire) continues here unabated. There sheer depth at which Snyder and Tuft embody the early days of the 20th century and all the wonder contained therein is impressive. The tail end of the Second Industrial revolution made America an immensely exciting place, which Snyder and Tuft use to fully accentuate the horrors that go on within this story. Most, if not all eras of prosperity throughout history are covering up some seriously bad juju, it just so happens that in this story that the bad juju in this story literally has fangs.
The story begins with a prologue of sorts taking place some time in the mid-1950s (or so I can extrapolate based on the footage of Elvis being shown, but the exact date is never specified) with our protagonist Jack Garron well into the twilight of his life. The story then flashes back to our “main” story, which splits time between young violin phenom Jack Garron running away from home in search of his birth father and the unfortunate tale of a young boy named Frederick being adopted into an apprenticeship with who I can only assume is the book’s primary antagonist Mr. Porter, who is masquerading as an employee of General Electric (or at least I assume they did not actually employ the man given what he does later in the issue.)
If you boil these two stories down, they fundamentally exist on two distinct tracks right from the onset: one boy is heading toward the rest of his life (literally and figuratively) and one boy is heading toward the end of his life (mostly literally). By juxtaposing these two stories, the two Scotts demonstrate their range in creating a sense of dread. While Jack’s story is shrouded in uncertainty, we pretty much know Frederick’s fate almost immediately and are powerless to do anything about it. Which is why when the tension builds to it’s ultimate payoff, despite knowing it was coming, the delivery still brings chills along with it, and THAT is effective storytelling.
However, that story would not be anywhere near as effective without Futaki’s art. A comic story specifically designed to build and then play with the reader’s tension lives and dies by the art that accompanies it. Without the proper nuance in the eyes of the characters, or proper placement of character in relation to background, the story would fall flat. However, Futaki’s style is perfectly suited for a book like this. His lines have a soft touch to them, creating an almost ethereal feeling to the work itself, which helps to both ground it in reality and separate the book FROM reality. It’s almost as if the imagery puts forward the attributes of a daydream that you just can’t shake out of your mind, which I suspect is much the point. Not to be forgotten, the coloring is also perfectly suited to make the characters pop out of their setting (ALA the scene on the train) and menacingly blend in with it (ALA the expected but still stunning final page) and also works to keep the book grounded within the time period in which it takes place. Or, at least the way that time period is generally portrayed.
Overall, this was a really solid book. While I can’t quite get a read on where exactly it’s going, or what its motivations are, I am intrigued enough to keep going to find out. Which, given how many comics I tend to read in a given month, says quite a bit. Mr. Snyder could have another hit on his hands, we’ll just have to wait and see how it plays out.
