Please love him
This town of ours has been blessed with a secret, young lady. It's important to us that it stays that way.
"Traumatized
" by the dark, joyless tone of Man of Steel, Mark Millar decided to do something that he didn't usually do and created an idealistic look at what would happen if a quiet guy in a small town turned out to be a superhuman.
Huck tells the tale of... well, Huck, a simple-minded Gentle Giant who happens to have Super-Strength and a type of clairvoyance. Using these gifts, Huck spends his days working at a gas station and performing good deeds on the condition that those he helps never mention his involvement, especially if his powers are involved.
One day, however, a newcomer in the town spills the beans to the media about Huck's deeds, and the world now has its attention on the good Samaritan. However, it's not just corporations, military leaders, or politicians who have their eyes on Huck, but also a group of people who may have had a hand in him having powers in the first place.
Penciled by Rafael Albuquerque.
Netflix is producing an adaptation of it.
Huck provides examples of:
- Action Mom: Huck's mom managed to escape from a secret Siberian testing facility during a snowstorm while in a hospital gown, barefooted, and pregnant.Tom: Even six months pregnant, our mom was one tough cookie.
- All-Loving Hero: Huck is even worried about alley-cats he notices digging through garbage.
- Author Appeal: According to interviews, the tone of the book and Huck's personality is based on what Mark Millar loved about Superman.
- Awesome, but Impractical: Orlov's robots. They can go toe to toe against superbeings like Huck and his mother, and they are fearless and absolutely loyal, but each one costs a fortune to build and maintain and they break down after a year. His higher-ups were about to scuttle the project because it just wasn't cost-effective.
- Berserk Button: The usually soft-spoken and polite Huck becomes furious when his "brother" Tom threatens to put his mom's brain in a jar.
- Beware the Superman: Noticeably averted. While the 2010s has a the tendency to use this trope quite a lot, here the main character is a very kind person.
- Big Bad: Professor Orlov.
- Card-Carrying Villain: The Huck's "brother" Tom is perfectly aware and unapologetic for his actions, as he understands that this was the purpose he was created for and unhesitantly carries out his orders. He even compares himself to kitchen appliances that have very specific purposes for their existence.
- Chronic Hero Syndrome: Huck and Tom's search for Anna is delayed several times by Huck demanding they stop and help with some emergency. The third "emergency" turns out to be helping a duck and her ducklings cross the road.
- Compelling Voice: Anna, Huck's mom, can make people do whatever she wants as long as she touched them.
- Doorstop Baby: Huck was discovered as one with a note that simply stated "Please love him."
- The Dragon: Tom to Professor Orlov.
- Dumb Is Good: It's clear that Huck is not the brightest crayon in the box, as a discussion between his neighbors would tell, but the only thing he ever wants to do is to help people.
- Earn Your Happy Ending: Both Huck and Anna manage to survive and get back to the home. Even Ms. Davis is forgiven by the end, despite spreading the truth about Huck to everyone.
- Easily Forgiven: At the end of the story, Huck forgives Ms. Davis despite her revealing the real story about him to the world. Justified, as Huck is just simply that kind.
- From Nobody to Nightmare: Professor Orlov originally looked like a harmless enough guy who had a rather creepy interest in Anna. But by the time of the book's present, he's become a full-on mad scientist with plans to take over Russia with an army of super-soldiers who could visually give Hugo Strange a run for his money.
- Friend to All Living Things: Huck's altruism is not limited to humans but include things like feeding stray cats and helping ducklings cross the road.
- Gentle Giant: Huck.
- Good Parents: Anna was horrified at the thought of giving birth to a child in a cell and having him potentially experimented on as she had, and escaped partially to ensure that he grew up happy and far away from the environment in which he gestated.
- Heroes Love Dogs: Huck seems to like animals in general, but his own pet is a dog named Mickey.
- Heroic BSoD: Huck briefly undergoes one after having to suffer through high-class people telling him to do or be prepared to do things he clearly didn't want to do while at a party. It's enough to make him shed a tear while staring at the note he was left with.
- Humble Hero: Huck does what he does because he likes to do good and not for the glory.
- Humiliation Conga: After being defeated, Orlov gloats that he'll just start his plans over and that a mere gas station attendant could never beat a brilliant scientist like him. So Anna uses her Compelling Voice to make him forget everything he knows about science. The last we see of him, he's got a new job as... a gas station attendant.
- Ideal Hero: Huck is a reconstruction. He's extremely naive, but he manages to muddle through despite living in a cynical world, mostly by just keeping his eyes on the next good deed to do and not worrying about the big picture. And while he does attract his share of opportunists looking to exploit him, he also makes genuine friends who love him for his good nature.
- Inexplicably Awesome: We never do find out where Anna's powers come from; despite the Russians' best efforts they were never able to find or create anyone else like her.
- Let's Get Dangerous!: "Tell me to break the wall."
- Lighter and Softer: Noticeably more friendly in tone than Millar's more notorious works.
- Limited Wardrobe: Besides one occasion, Huck is only ever seen in his gas station overalls. Justified in that, well, it's his work uniform and the times we see him might be during his work hours.
- Mama Bear: Anna allowed herself to be experimented on, but the second she discovered she was pregnant, she decided to escape so Huck wouldn't be experimented on his whole life.
- Nice Guy: Huck, even towards African warlords because he didn't want to break their glasses when he socks them and towards and the person that spread the truth about his real power.
- Oblivious to Love: As they search for Anna, Tom tells Huck that his neighbor Zoe clearly has a crush on him. Huck scoffs at the idea of Zoe having any romantic interest in a loser like him. Though after he discovers her feelings, he begins to consider the idea.
- Le Parkour: Huck travels (within the country) by running, jumping, and hitching rides on the roof of vehicles.
- Pet the Dog: After forcibly putting Ethan to sleep, the boy who attends for her violin lessons, Anna tells him that "he will play better than ever before" just before touching him.
- Pregnant Badass: Anna was six months pregnant when escaping from the facility. This did not make her any less unstoppable.
- Psychic Powers: Both Huck and his mom are Clairvoyant. Huck can locate anyone and anything as long as he either has a name or a picture while Anna can see what someone is doing despite them being several miles below her.
- Ridiculously Human Robots: Orlov's henchmen can pass for human without problem despite having metal beneath their skin.
- Secret-Keeper: Basically the entire town Huck resided in. The residents understood and respected Huck's wish for privacy, to the point where one of the neighbors invite a newcomer to coffee just to warn her against telling the world about him.
- Sequel Hook: The last pages hint that Orlov might return to find Huck and Anna.
- Shout-Out: Huck and Tom are named after literary heroes Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer. It ends up being a darker interpretation of the Meaningful Name, as the story ends up taking Tom Sawyer's rather antagonistic portrayal in Huckleberry Finn much further with Tom.
- Sliding Scale of Idealism vs. Cynicism: Huck is a rather idealistic series, especially considering who wrote it.
- Small Steps Hero: Huck's heroic creed is simple: he does one good deed per day. Whether the deed involves traveling around the world to save hostages from terrorists or mowing his neighbour's lawn seems to depend mostly on which one he thought of first.
- So Proud of You: Anna tells Huck as much while they're imprisoned together.
- Spiritual Antithesis:
Word of God said it was an optimistic response to Man of Steel and much of Millar's own career writing Darker and Edgier superheroes. - Super Breeding Program: Huck is the product of such a project carried out on his mother Anna. Professor Orlov is elated to discover Huck, because as a male he can be used as a sire to impregnate multiple women at once instead of waiting on a single pregnancy.
- Superman Substitute: Huck's a rare variation that never got past the growing up in Smallville stage.
- Take That!: According to Mark Millar, the whole point of the miniseries is to be one of these to the very concept of an Anti-Hero, even going as far as to describe it as the "antidote to the anti-hero." Millar's reason for creating the series in the first place might make it one towards Man of Steel.
- Tempting Fate: Orlov tells Anna that he can still start over since he was the mastermind of the whole project in the first place. Not really a good idea to say to the woman who can tell anyone to do anything, including forgetting everything about science.
- Tuckerization: Huck is named after Huckleberry Finn while his not-brother Tom is named after Tom Sawyer.
- Villainous Crush: Professor Orlov had a crush on Huck's mom while she was being tested. After she used him to escape and smashed his head into a wall, he seemingly got over it, only for it to turn out that he still has feelings for her as her name is the self-destruct passcode for Orlov's servers.
- Wham Line: "I only had one son..."
- You Are Number 6: Orlov's robots are named XV and XVI. Since they are said to have a limited lifespan, they were presumably preceeded by I through XIV.
