I've come to realize, having read the four issues of Shuck so far, that the stories tend to revolve around holidays. In these two issues, the holidays are a birthday and Christmas. The common threads of the issues are a surreal world where small town life interacts with magic and creatures of myth and a focus on Shuck, a surprisingly down to earth character given his very strange origins. Shuck is a stylish comic, with strange and beautiful artwork and a distinctive dialogue style that is not always easy to read, but which helps to give the book its unique charm.
Shuck has a style that can best be described as folksy. The dialogue, with its phonetic spellings and southern accents, is an unusual but fitting match with the strange world that Shuck and his friends inhabit. While the circumstances of Shuck's birth and some of his family and friends could easily be played as sinister, the friendly and genuine tone that the dialogue brings instead makes them seem like kind and friendly people. And even while I have to struggle to figure out what the phonetic spelling symbolize at times, it's hard to deny that the unusual speech patterns give the book its flavor.
Actually, the concepts themselves contribute as much to the charm of the book as the dialogue. Shuck is a demon born of witches who used to collect souls for Satan but who now lives peacefully in a small town. Not your usual premise, and what impresses me is that Smith combines the weird with the mundane to make for an interesting read. Though there is some danger in some of these stories, such as the townsfolk's attacks on the witches or the emotional struggle of Shuck and Gaia to find happiness once again, the pacing is sometimes leisurely, exploring the characters and settings at a casual pace. However, the dialogue and the sheer weirdness of the book continues to draw me in, even during the most mundane of events.
Smith's artwork is also unusual, with plenty of background detail and action but using only a few lines to make it work. The graytones are quite beautiful as well, giving the art a lot of depth and shading that helps to make it come to life. It's interesting that Smith uses simple shapes to convey so much meaning, whether it's the grotesque but still benevolent appearance of Shuck, the blind old man appearance of Cupid or the ugliness of the townsfolk with manifests their internal ugliness.
In each issue of Shuck, Smith and Menesse tell a self-contained story that centers around a holiday or occasion, but he's also weaving a story of love, loss and isolation into the book. Though Shuck fits in remarkably well with the humans that he lives among, he must hide his true self to some degree, and he can't reunite with his true love, and so there's an element of tragedy in what is otherwise a light and somewhat fun book. The result is a book that is an enjoyable read, but which has deeper meaning at the center of it. Those who have patience for unusual dialogue, or a taste for the somewhat strange, should definitely check it out.
