Webcomic / Huckleberry

Huckleberry is a superhero Webcomic created by Matter Cosmic. It embraces the silly aspects of the Golden and Silver Ages of superhero comics, featuring wacky science, a lighthearted tone, a Fantasy Kitchen Sink setting, and many puns.

The eponymous protagonist, Huckleberry, is a young Plant Person and a fruit-themed superhero. His career begins in Chunkystew, a small, eccentric desert town of humans and monsters. The comic follows his progression as a costumed adventurer.

Not to be confused with the book Adventures of Huckleberry Finn or the Hanna-Barbara character, Huckleberry Hound.

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Huckleberry provides examples of:

• Acid Attack: One of Huckleberry's primary powers. His hands can produce a powerful citric acid.
• Added Alliterative Appeal: One location is called Mock Mountain. There is also the Desert of Disorientation. There is also Sae of Sand.
• All Deserts Have Cacti: Given its desert setting, cacti frequently show up in the background of outdoors panels.
• Alliterative Title: All the main issue titles so far are alliterative.
  • Issue 1: "Hello, Huckleberry!"
  • Issue 2: "At war with a worm"
  • Issue 3: "Colorful Chaos"
  • Issue 4: "World of worms"
  • Issue 5: "Fowl & Flashbacks"
• Alt Text: It's often used for jokes at the expense of the characters.
• Amicable Ants: The Banana Ant is a good-natured Talking Animal who follows Huckleberry around, gives him advice, and provides exposition.
• Animal Facial Hair:
  • Wormatt from the cover of issue 4 is a small worm with a head of hair.
  • Wormius is a giant worm with a mustache and beard, giving him a professorly look.
• Another Dimension: The introduction gives us a glimpse of a portal that opened several years ago, bringing extradimensional heroes and villains into the desert and starting the Heroic Age. Most of them eventually went back to their universe.
• Author Avatar: The cover of issue 4 includes a small worm with a head of hair. The author notes describe this as "Wormatt, an annelid equivalent of myself, a joke character created long ago by my sister."
• Big Ball of Violence:
  • When Huckleberry fights Mechaworm, it creates a cloud of dust with impact stars and fists flying out.
  • Wormius sees Huckleberry fighting a gnaworm that chewed on his head leaves. Huck's movements are throwing up a cloud of dust around him.
• Blade Enthusiast: Lord Razoredge introduces himself as a "collector of sharp blades", and wears an armor made of knives and other pointy things.
• Blah, Blah, Blah: A closeup of a newspaper shows a paragraph consisting mostly of repeated "blah"s.
• Blinded by the Light: In battle, Morning Star uses his elemental light to dazzle opponents and shorten confrontations.
• Bullet Seed: One of Mechaworm's weapons is an apple-shaped gun which fires seeds filled with cyanide.
• The Cameo: Stan Lee briefly appears in the first issue to sell a comic to Huckleberry. It was intended as a tribute after he passed away.
• Catching Some Z's: Sleeping characters often have Z's emanating from them. On one occasion, the Z's turn into Symbol Swearing during an unpleasant dream.
• Clue from Ed.: Mentions of previous chapters get this treatment. Characters can have custom asterisks in their speech bubble, such as Huckleberry's small berry.
• Color-Coded Speech: Morning Star's bubbles and text are teal, matching his color scheme.
• Cranial Eruption: In issue 4, lumps show through Mechaworm's helmet after Huck repeatedly hit him on the head.
• The Darkness Gazes Back: Nihk-Nahkt the mummy is introduced this way, with red eyes shining inside an underground cavern.
• Demonic Possession: Nihk-Nahkt the mummy possesses the Diamondback's body by wrapping it in bandages.
• Dishing Out Dirt: Pulpland controls earth, sand, and rocks.
• Domino Mask: Huck wears a purple one that covers almost half of his face. He also keeps spare masks around.
• The Face of the Sun: Some pages show a sun with a face and various expressions, even looking sadistic when scorching an evil mummy.
• Fastest Thing Alive: Superfast is said to be the "fastest superhero of all".
• Fearsome Critters of American Folklore: A newspaper shows an artist's depiction of a hoopsnake — a snake spinning hula hoops around its body.
• Feathered Serpent: There is at least one "serpixie" slithering in the background. It's a normal-sized snake with feathered wings, described as a "nature-aligned amphiptere".
• Frustrated Overhead Scribble: Squiggly or jagged lines often appear above characters when they're frustrated, angry, or yelling. The scribble-in-thought-bubble variation is seen when a worm is caught in a box.
• Fun with Acronyms:
  • All the pages that explain the protagonist's powers have titles beginning with HAHA (Huckleberry's Awesome Hidden Abilities).
  • Every page of the Diamondback Under the Desert short story is titled "DUD page 1", "DUD page 2" and so on.
• Fuuma Shuriken: In the second issue, Morning Star successfully throws a person-sized star ornament like a big shuriken.
• Gem Tissue: The Diamondback is a desert snake with literal diamonds on its back.
• An Ice Person: Winter Princess can create and manipulate snow, as seen in this Christmas side story, where she uses it to make a snowman and create a snow arm to lift and throw a ball.
• In-Series Nickname: Huckleberry is called "Huck" for short.
• Kid Hero: Huckleberry's exact age hasn't been revealed, but he was born during the recent Heroic Age, and everyone calls him a kid. He also survived many encounters with supervillains or powerful creatures.
• Life-or-Limb Decision: When Professor Wormius is caught in a trap with no one around, he ends up ripping off the end of his tail (which was caught in the trap's chain) to escape. Being a Big Worm, fortunately he can regenerate.
• Malaproper: Huckleberry sometimes mixes up words and sayings, like saying "armordingo" instead of "armadillo", or "who in tarantula" instead of "who in tarnation".
• Morning Routine: The first issue uses half a page to show Huckleberry waking up, singing "awful shower songs", and having a big breakfast. The following issue also shows him waking up... then skips ahead to the actual plot.
• Mummy: Nihk-Nahkt the mummy is an undead predator who possesses bodies by wrapping them in bandages. According to the author notes on DUD page 3, there are many kinds of mummies.
• no punctuation is funnier: In issue 4, when Huck slips on some oil and goes flying, his reaction is just "why".
• One-Way Visor: Mechaworm's helmet has a red visor that conceals his eyes.
• Our Kobolds Are Different: Kobolds are humanoids with greenish skin. They're said to be very capricious.
• Pictorial Letter Substitution:
  • On the cover of issue 2, "At war with a worm", the "o" in the title is an apple with a hole in the middle, representing Mechaworm and his apple armor.
  • In "Diamondback: Under the Desert", the "i" in the title is dotted with a diamond.
  • For issue 4, "World of worms", the "o" in "World" is a picture of an Earth-like planet, the "o" in "worms" is a donut, and the rest of the letters in "worms" are worms arranged into the appropriate letter shapes.
  • When Huckleberry and Mechaworm meet again in issue 4, they both say "You!" The letters making up the word are angry/tough-looking faces shaped like a "Y", "O", and "U".
• Plant Hair: As a plantman, Huck got a full head of leaves. They occasionally molt like feathers.
• Plant Person: Huckleberry is a plant-based humanoid. He has green skin, leaves for hair, and plant-based powers like generating citric acid and wooden shells.
• Primary-Color Champion: Interestingly inverted with Huckleberry, the heroic protagonist, who wears the colors of a Secondary Color Nemesis (purple and orange costume, green hair and boots).
• Protagonist Title: The comic is named after its main character, Huckleberry.
• Pun-Based Creature: The Diamondback is a desert snake with literal diamonds growing on its back. Its name is a play on the real life diamondback rattlesnake.
• Rock Monster: Huck discovers the "Rock Giant" in the first issue. It's so big that its head alone passes for a mountain.
• Semantic Superpower: Huckleberry is a fruit-themed plant person. This means he possesses a variety of vegetal abilities, such as citric acid projection, generating a thorny protective shell, or sliding like a banana peel.
• Species Surname: Olaus Wormius is a Big Worm.
• Speed Stripes: They sometimes fill panels when Huck uses his Elemental Speed. In one page it's subtle and sky-colored, in another the lines make purple and green stripes.
• Spontaneous Weapon Creation: In issue 4, Huck uses his shell generation to create a club-like mass he calls the "Shell Saber".
• Sssssnake Talk: Snakes such as the Diamondback draw out their s's when they talk, and even in their thoughts.
• Super-Speed:
  • Huckleberry's banana-based superspeed makes him go very fast, with immunity to air friction and some control over his direction.
  • Superfast, "the fastest superhero of all", is shown outrunning Huck.
• Super Sliding: Huckleberry can produce banana atoms and slide on them, giving him a slippery, vegetal version of super speed.
• Sweat Drop: When Huck shows off his "Shell Saber", Mechaworm has a sweat drop appear on his head as he points out that it looks more like a club.
• Symbol Motif Clothing:
  • Huckleberry wears a purple costume with many orange fruit shapes.
  • Morning Star wears a star-patterned robe.
• Symbol Swearing: Turns out Huck takes it literally, and utters things like "Skull and percents!".
• That's No Moon: In the first issue, Huckleberry climbs a mountain that turns out to be a rock giant.
• Themed Cursor: The website has an orange arrow cursor, like the arrows of the orange golem.
• Villain: Exit, Stage Left: When Mechaworm's first fight against Huck is interrupted by the more powerful Morning Star, he immediately calls it quits.
  Mechaworm: I'll be back with a better scheme, and Morning Star will fall! Until then... bye!
• Visual Pun: In a page titled "Nightcrawler", a worm is seen crawling his way into town at night.
• We Need a Distraction: In the 2021 Advent Calendar story, Winter Princess creates a snowman to distract the Ochre Golem so she can get past it.
• Worm in an Apple: Mechaworm, a Mad Scientist worm, invokes this when he wears his apple-shaped armor. He also had an apple-shaped laboratory, and uses an apple seed gun.
• X-Ray Sparks: During a fight, Mechaworm throws an electrified weapon at Morning Star, who catches it. The shock turns his body translucent and we see his alien skeleton.
• You Mean "Xmas": The Desert Towns have a Christmas-like midwinter event where extradimensional plants inside Mock Mountain produce gifts and send them to well-behaved people.
• "You!" Squared: When Huckleberry and Mechaworm run into each other again in issue 4, they say "You!" at the same time.

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