Faster than a speeding bully. More powerful than an evil motive. Able to leap tall siblings in a single bound…
No, it’s not a bird, it’s not a plane— it’s just mild-mannered “social reject” Mac Coolidge, boy blunderer and super-multitasker: doing homework, performing household chores, making a bad impression on the girl of his dreams, hoisting a “ten pound piece of chalk” to solve a math problem on the blackboard, and suffering the torment and taunts of the neighborhood hooligans. Not to mention daydreaming in class about having the ability to “fly like Superman or be as fast as The Flash.
Lately, such burdens of boyhood--as chronicled in Marc Waldman’s amiable and action-packed Mighty Mac--have preoccupied Mac most of all, lately. Call it a mid-school crisis, the bitter-patter of little feat, call it what you will--deep down Mac knows he was meant for greatness. “I was meant to be a hero, and not a zero,” he ponders. And if it means a few high school thugs get beat up in the process of a little unfriendly fired-up power trip—after he’s done his homework, naturally-- well… that’s just icing on the piece-of-cake life that awaits him.
Not that Mac needs to wait too long. Great expectations are thrust upon him sooner rather than later during the occasion of a big Mac attack, with Mac on the receiving end being beleaguered by the local disaffected youth. Seemingly emerging from nowhere to Mac's rescue, however, Mac is the enigmatic Jake, a take-charge guy who looks “like an older version” of our put-upon protagonist. Intervening in and untangling the pile of brawling and busy bodies, Jake puts in the finishing retaliatory touches--but he isn’t done with Mac, yet.
Promising bigger and better things in store, Jake invites Mac to join a secret society of Protectors, who uphold a mission to safeguard society and fight for “the little guys.” But “there’s more to it than that,” according to the highest muckety-muck of the organization. Which Mac--who ostensibly has never heard the adage “be careful what you wish for”— learns in quick enough order, along with his new sense of duty and responsibility.
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