Dustin gave this book a routing in his review of issue #4. Here’s where I ride in on my white horse like Johnny Depp in a Moroccan brothel and proclaim this book amazing, right? Wrong. Very, very wrong.

I understand what Severed is trying to do. Unfortunately comics might not be the best medium to convey this story. It’s a broad, sweeping tale that doesn’t condense well into separate, 22-page comic book issues.

Severed follows a boy named Jack who has set out to find his absent father. In this issue Jack travels with a stranger known as “The Salesman.” Turns out that The Salesman hides a sinister secret: he shaves rabbits and uses the fur to build merkins for demonic mimes. No, sorry. The Salesman eats babies.

Attila Futaki’s artwork provides an interesting spooky atmosphere to the book. I had only one issue with a bisected panel that made no sense. You can see it in the image below where the panel is broken down the face of the Salesman as he drives a car. I guess it shows a dark side and a light side to the Salesman. But why would the dark be on the same side as Jack when it’s the dark side he’s hiding from the boy?

The story, like I said, is too big for a comic book. Here’s my justification: the cover of issue five gives a nigh-on supernatural monster breaking through the image of a car passing in the night. We don’t get anything like that in this chapter. Instead, we get a dramatic scene where the Salesman confronts a local pimp, but nothing supernatural comes from it.

I got horror blue balls from this book. That’s the same sensation when you get jazzed about a Stephen King story but find out that it’s about a woman on an emotional journey and not about a giant spider from space fucking people up in the sewers of Derry.

Score: 1/5

Writers: Scott Snyder and Scott Tuft Artist: Attila Futaki Publisher: Image Comics