Severed #2

Part Two, "New Skin"
written by Scott Snyder and Scott Tuft
art by Attila Futaki

Severed is as much about the disparity between the relentlessly optimistic American spirit—the belief that one can make one's own way, live free and independent on the road—and the hard reality of predatory opportunism that feeds off that naïvete.  After having been robbed of his violin and money by a train cop in the previous issue, Jack makes a play to retrieve them, but finds himself instead under threat of rape.  Only with the help of a fellow stowaway does Jack make an escape with his things, and just like that a hesitant but honest friendship is formed.  It is, in some ways, a survival strategy for the moment, but the cooperation of decent people may prove a more necessary strategy for survival than they yet imagine, more than teaming up to earn a little traveling money as a street musician.

Meanwhile, the predator formerly known as Mr. Porter continues to loom ominously beside Jack's relentlessly hopeful quest to find his birth-father.  In the abandoned house where he took Frederick, two curious boys discover the cannibalized body of the young orphan in the basement.  Futaki's full-page depiction of the horror is even more gruesome for its restraint.  The skeleton, hung from the rafters like a grotesque marionette, is still patched with the chunks of remaining flesh, but it is cloaked mostly in shadows, making it difficult to discern the details of his torture.  By the end of the issue, Jack has landed soundly on "Mr. Porter"'s map, and he begins to take steps to trap the young musician, including taking the name—Alan Fisher—and the occupation—phonograph seller—as well as the life from a traveling salesman to provide an excuse for contact with Jack.  But it's his final scene, the one in which he self-tattoos a violin on his chest for his next victim, next to countless other reminders of countless other children.

Severed provides a fictional, yet honest, vision of an era of American history that often receives the benefit of rosy-eyed nostalgia.  In addition to the dangers close to the story, the unappetizing smell of slaughterhouses next to the train tracks in Chicago and the racism undergirding the blackface performance at the Majestic are details of a flawed age, not necessarily qualitatively worse than our own, but one which cannot be divested of its defects.