Hum
Graphic Novel
Written By Scott Marcano and Tom Lenoci
Illustrated by Renzo Podesta
Diablo Productions
Cover price: $15.95; 250 pages, B&W w/ partial Color
March 2009

Throughout the history of humans, also apparent in our own everyday experience, the affluent have taken advantage of the downtrodden. Humans are also great adapters. We eventually, as a people, make the best of the situation we find ourselves in. We are also susceptible to the promise of ease and ecstasy. Well, off world and in the future people are no different.

Such is the story of Hum which is slowly, masterfully untwined over the first few chapters of the book. Earthling colonists travel through space and find what they believe to be a perfect new world. However, most of the population is debilitated by a natural element of the planet. The non-afflicted take this as a sign of their superiority and use the disadvantaged to do their bidding. This is a story all too familiar in our human history. It seems like a natural extension of our progeny. Just as it is that the afflicted rise to overcome their disabilities and begin to live life anew and begin…hum. But the masters won’t give up easily, using their own people with the vices of the time and planet, to fight their battles for them.

The two warring groups finally come head to head when two former lovers, one master and one slave, come face to face and realize that they are both the same. As one fights off his dependency, Vol, and one realizes hers, Lum, the two groups fall into battle and revolution and possibly resolution. Along the way we meet some memorable characters like the blind daughter who can see feelings, Zuz, and the mad man with the master plan. Hum is a beautiful little story wrapped in an epic struggle. Hum is a mostly black and white graphic novel. The only color sections are where Vol has visions from a drug. That idea in and of itself is pretty cool and very well done. The artwork is stylized, minimal. Sometimes it is too vague and it’s hard to follow the characters or the action. Throughout the 5 extended chapters of the graphic novel there are only a handful of these instances and they are easily overcome.

Hum is a solid, easily digested read. Writers Scott Marcano and Tom Lenociseem to be able to take the main characteristics of humans and extend them into the unknown and create the probable. Renzo Podesta captures the mood and then brings it on home. Hum makes you realize the horror capable of our human heritage, but also makes you aware of our potential.