Human Target

by Len Wein, Bruno Redondo (Illustrator), Chris Sprouse (Illustrator)

This new adventure pits Christopher Chance against the organized crime of the world! When he’s tasked with protecting a highly placed informant and collecting damaging evidence throughout Europe, every assassin and goon from Paris to Prague will be gunning for the Human Target! Len Wein co-created SWAMP THING early in a writing career which has included every major hero and villain at both DC Comics and Marvel Comics. As a writer, Wein is also credited with co-creating Wolverine for Marvel and The Human Target for DC. Wein was a Senior Editor at DC, overseeing the Batman titles, and was one of the editors on WATCHMEN. He has also been Editor-in-Chief at both Marvel Comics and Disney Comics before settling into a successful career writing comic books and animation.

Genres: Comics, Fiction, Graphic Novels, Graphic Novels Comics

144 pages, Paperback

First published November 9, 2010

About the author

Len Wein was an American comic book writer and editor best known for co-creating DC Comics' Swamp Thing and Marvel Comics' Wolverine, and for helping revive the Marvel superhero team the X-Men (including the co-creation of Nightcrawler, Storm, and Colossus). Additionally, he was the editor for writer Alan Moore and illustrator Dave Gibbons' influential DC miniseries Watchmen.

Wein was inducted into the Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame in 2008.

Reviews

[J · Rating 2 out of 5]

Wein's story is well written, but it's fairly predictable and reads more like a film proposal than a comic book. Plus we never really get to see Christopher Chance as a person, just a character who does bad ass things. I got bored fairly quickly.

[Nick · Rating 3 out of 5]

This volume of Human Target seems to have been created to put something out when the TV series was on the air. Len Wein was always one of my favorite writers in the comics field, but this wasn't his best work. The body count seemed high, and Christopher Chance seemed slow to do anything about his own very justified suspicions in the main story. As a reader, the source of the information leaks seemed pretty obvious early on, and I had trouble believing the places where the documents were hidden. They were too far apart and too unguarded. At least one of them was in a package that would have been spotted by normal maintenance on the location.
That said, I've been a Human Target fan for years, enjoying most of the versions. This one wasn't terrible, but it's only pretty good.

[Tom · Rating 2 out of 5]

Best thing about it is the art. Looks great. Otherwise, this is NOT the complex epic psychological thriller of multiple personality disorder from multiple personalities Christopher Chase/Tom Mcfadden, as rebooted and revitalized by Peter Milligan & a couple different good artists, but the generic TV series Christopher Chase. "Human Target" creator Len Wein takes back over the character, but he's long past his prime, and seems to be trying to write mediocre television spec scripts here, repetitive and predictable.

There have been some great runs of "Human Target" in the past two decades but this ain't one of 'em.

[Brian · Rating 2 out of 5]

Generic action nonsense. There's nothing going on in this book you can't find better elsewhere, nothing really special about it at all. It lacks personality, character, identity, anything that might set it apart. Completely skippable.

[Mark · Rating 3 out of 5]

I would have given this only 2 stars but for the 'back up' story "Scars" with Chris Sprouse and others handling the art.
The main story is pure bunkum, just ridiculous, sub-Mission Impossible globe-trotting ridiculousness of the highest order, but not in a good way.

[Daniel Gaul · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was interesting to see new stories so many years after the show ended. The legacy of Chance, Winston, and Guerrero lives on!

[Krissy · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a quick read but without much substance. It didn't pretend to be anything more than that, which was fine. I was looking for something light to read. The repetition of each chapter was grating - Chance in the middle of action, says something snappy with his name leading into "Human Target" then a flashback to how the action started. That would have worked for me once or twice, but not every single time.

[Martin · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is the TV version of Christopher Chance, so, unsurprisingly, it reads like a TV episode, albeit a two-part season finale.

[John Yelverton · Rating 3 out of 5]

So, I realize that DC is trying to capitalize on the TV show, but they can do better than this.