Write Now and Later

 “Huck“, by writer Mark Millar and artist Raphael Albuquerque; published by Image Comics, is a story about the people of small town living with a special gift, named Huck.  We see Huck taking “super-human” action to recover something from the bottom of the lake…a small gold chain belonging to a woman named Diane.  We learn that Huck, as a baby, was left outside the doorstep of an orphanage with a note that read, “Please love him.”  This orphanage raised him to do a good everyday.

Huck always documented his good deed in a journal.  His good deeds consisted of pulling a truck from  a river, running to California delivering a Christmas card, helping remove a tree stump to clear space for someone’s new barn, buying lunch for everyone in the drive through line behind him (he wasn’t in a car) and taking out the trash for the entire town.  Diane encounters Huck, in the middle of a road, late one night noticing his shoeless feet wearing wet socks.  After a conversation the next day with her neighbor, Mrs. Tayler, Diane learns that Huck saved a missing fisherman.  “Huck just likes making people happy.”

One morning, Huck watches a television news report of two-hundred schoolgirls kidnapped in North Africa.  Hitching a ride on the outside of a passenger plane, Huck finds the kidnapped schoolgirls and conducts a rescue.  He gives them candy in exchange for the favor of keeping his identity a secret.  Diane, watching a television news report of the rescue, deduces that Huck saved them.  The next morning, Huck wakes to a crowd of reporters outside of his home.  The continuation is in “Huck” issue two.

I enjoyed reading the first issue.  The story is simplistically conveyed and the art is eye-catching.  Image comics released this issue in November and the second issue is out now.  It is a different take on a “Superman” type of story and it does a great job of selling the premise that the gift of happiness is in the little things we do.