Severed #3

Part Three, "It's a Jungle Out There"
written by Scott Snyder and Scott Tuft
art by Attila Futaki

The Scotts Snyder and Tuft have a gift for the truly unsettling.  The hunt for Severed's predator is as much about the seduction as the feast.  He seems more than anything, though, to relish the irony of knowing exactly what he means but his quarry mistaking every word he says.  "It's a Jungle Out There" is essentially a surrogate feast, an anticipation on the part of Mr. Porter/Alan Fisher of eating Jack and Sam.  He teases them with a duck, relating exactly how he got it drunk and massaged its muscles even as he does the same to them.

Jack persists in his naïvete.  Despite the rough encounters he's already had since running away from his adoptive mother to hunt down his biological father, and despite Sam's tales of betrayal and (near-) abuse, Jack still clings to the romance of his adventure, turning his tight escapes into riotous storytelling.  The danger, however truly close it is, is still not real to him.  Sam's far more wary of strangers, of things that might be too good to be true, because, it turns out, they are too good to be true.  All the little strange details about Alan Fisher, which Jack doesn't see for his generosity and chumminess, put Sam on alert.  She's far more accustomed to being screwed over even by those she should be able to trust, her family and her fellow travelers.

The dinner's strange enough, something Sam notices even though she's a little drunk, but it takes a turn for the overtly sinister when Fisher brings out his bear trap and tests the kids' loyalty for one another by offering Sam up to $80 to pull the pin out with Jack's hand still there, a moment which certainly recalls the one-armed adult Jack of Severed's opening pages.  And by the end of the issue, Fisher's seduced Jack into accepting a ride to Mississippi with him, no matter Sam's misgivings.