Mark Millar is a comic book writer known for his remarkable self-promotion, his incredibly cynical heroes, and a knack for getting Hollywood to adapt his comics into feature films. Wanted, Kick-Ass, and Kingsman: The Secret Service were all adapted into movies, with more on the way.
This week, Millar released Huck # 1, his new comic with artist Rafael Albuquerque that was published by Image Comics. Unlike most of Millar’s heroes, Huck is a very kind and simple superhuman man who enjoys his life in a small town by performing random acts of kindness to strangers. However, Huck’s idyllic life is threatened when his existence is finally exposed to the world.
In a new editorial on Games Radar, Millar spoke at length about what drove him to create Huck. And apparently a lot of it came from Millar’s negative reaction to Man of Steel.
“[In] Summer 2013 as I sat there on Father’s Day and saw Superman beating the bad guy by twisting his neck so hard he broke it and murdered him I really wondered if we’d come to the end of that particular road…Now I got the logic of that scene and it absolutely made sense within the context of the movie as the villain had taken down half of Metropolis and killed hundreds of thousands of people.”
But even so, this was Superman,”continued Millar. “This was like seeing Sylvester the Cat finally getting his hands on Speedy Gonzales. Elmer Fudd blowing away Bugs Bunny. I loved Superman as a kid not because of his edginess or his potential for a fatal solution, but because he could do anything he wanted and still chose to be nice. This was always the moral of a superhero comic to me.”
Millar added that “when things are tough we maybe need a nice, uncomplicated hero a little more and so, like I said, I’m trying this once just to see what happens. As a reader I’m desperate for it. As a writer, it’s been a sheer joy. But both myself and artist Rafael Albuquerque have created something we haven’t seen in a very long time with our new book and that’s a lovely, sweet, Jimmy Stewart/ Tom Hanks/ Steven Spielberg kinda good guy. It’s out this week and we called this thing Huck.”
You can read Millar’s entire editorial on Games Radar. He also suggest that Channing Tatum would be his choice to play Huck in the feature film, which was also recently picked up for development.
What do you think of Millar’s argument in favor Huck? Share your thoughts below!
