Human Target #4 (Miniseries)

The final issue of the miniseries begins by showing us some scenes of various players in the story. First we see Dennis dropping off Rhea at a hospital. Then we see Emerald say goodbye to her family before she heads back out to complete her contract on Chance’s life. Finally, we see Chance, impersonating Tom, pay a visit to Becky.

Chance and Becky (and her son Sam) have a typical family outing, bringing order to Becky’s life. Biukovic draws several panels of the three of them enjoying each other’s company. At the end, “Tom” and Becky end up making love. Chance even allows Becky to touch him. They both know that “Tom” is really just Chance, but Becky is okay with this knowledge and bluntly tells him that she’s just horny.

This scene sort of hearkens back to the previous issue when the real Tom (impersonating Rev. James) says to Becky, “What’s a name? What’s a personality? What’s a person? What do these terms mean? Love me. Forget which me it is you’re loving. Becky, can’t we just pretend?” (63) It’s interesting that Becky is willing to pretend when the man she’s making love to at least looks like her husband.

Later, Chance takes up the role of Rev. James and visits Bethany in preparation for his big sermon. She pours her heart and frustrations out to him, basically saying the things she wished she could have said to her real husband when he was alive. She accuses him of being a liar, and says that his sermons were lies. Again, Milligan reminds us about truth and deception, not only with the words that Bethany says to “Rev. James” but the fact that she says them with the understanding that she is talking to a man who is impersonating her late husband.

Bethany even speaks one of the most important passages of dialogue in the entire Human Target miniseries: “You’ve killed something. I used to see a run-down tenement or a young criminal and I would see the potential for change, for good. Now I just see what’s in front of me and it stinks. It all stinks.” (87) Is it better to live an idealistic lie or to live with the painful truth? In this story, there seem to be merits for both ways. At times, characters decry the falsehoods of lies. Other times, characters live in blissful ignorance. Sometimes life is easier, or preferable, when one acknowledges the lie and chooses to accept it. Truth or ideals? Reality or imagination? Certainty or chance? Milligan presents multiple facets of this idea of existence and illusion without shoving a clear-cut answer down readers’ throats.

In the next scene, Becky literally crashes into Tom as she drives her car. Apparently she wasn’t going too fast because although he’s hurt, he isn’t too badly. They have a chance to talk a little, but Tom seems to remember something about Chance and leaves before Becky can bring their son to him.

D-Noyz visits Rhea, who is comatose in a hospital. Her mother is there, and D-Noyz tries to make reparations by giving her a pile of cash. Rhea’s mother, of course, angrily rejects his money, but the whole situation seems to instill in him a new sense of understanding. He heads over to the church (where Emerald is already set up in her sniper’s perch) with new conviction.

Eventually, Chance, as the Rev. James, comes out to give his sermon. He begins with three sentences: “I am not the man you think I am. I never was. I never could be.” (93) This stands out for two reasons. Firstly, the three statements are a concise summation of Christopher Chance’s character. Second each sentence is in its own separate word balloon. I don’t know if this is intentional or not, but to me this hearkens back to Bethany in issue 3 and the scene where she speaks three timid questions in three separate word balloons. It’s a simple contrast because now we have three forceful statements.

“We’re all pretending,” Chance continues. “We’re all pretending that we’re someone we’re not…” (93) This text is yet another reminder that the themes of this story are, indeed, universal.

Just as Chance launches into the bulk of his sermon, D-Noyz spots the glint of Emerald’s sniper rifle and shouts a warning—right when Tom throws open the church doors and screams a warning to Chance. Everything comes to a head, and D-Noyz leaps over the pulpit with his arms outstretched over Chance. He saves Chance’s life from Emerald’s bullets at the cost of his own life, but this gives Chance enough time to fire his pistol and drill a slug right through Emerald’s neck. Dying, she falls from her perch and lands on the floor.

Bleeding out in Chance’s arms, Emerald still has some breath left as Chance tries to find some answers. Almost incoherent, Emerald can only repeat the very first words of this miniseries: “Who am I? I am a reputation… I am a grainy photograph with dark bullet holes instead of eyes… I am a severed penis stuffed into a dying mouth. I am a person you come to if you want someone dead…” (98) Chance asks her who wants him dead. She tries to answer, but expires before she can give a name. Cryptically, as she dies she seems to weakly point a finger at someone, but Chance makes nothing of this.

In the epilogues, we see Rhea awake in her hospital bed, watching Bethany speak at her (real) husband’s funeral. Emerald’s husband is visited by two police officers bearing some bad news. And Chance, impersonating Tom, asks the real Tom to take on the role of being the real Tom so that he, Becky, and Sam can have a life again.

The final page of the comic shows Chance and Bruno having a drink together in Bruno’s restaurant. Chance essentially says he’s back in the game, and Bruno can only sip his champagne with a smug, satisfied smile on his face. Though Chance is still at unease due to not having learned who hired Emerald to kill him, there’s nothing he can do at this point.

All in all, this is a neat, tidy ending with just enough left unexplained to warrant future stories in this world. Milligan effectively wraps up everyone’s storyarc one way or another, although some would obviously be logical to return to in future installments (the stories of Tom and Chance himself, obviously). Although the protagonist seems to come out on top, in some ways it’s a pyrrhic victory, and somewhat downbeat. It’s a fitting conclusion because enough of the surface elements of the story are answered (the various subplots involving the different characters) but the underlying, driving force of the plot (who wanted to kill Christopher Chance?) remains unanswered. There’s always something more intricate bubbling beneath the surface.

Human Target #3 (Miniseries)

Milligan’s third issue sets up all the pieces for the finale of the story. Players are moved into place accordingly, though Milligan still provides room for character development and subtext. Often times, the penultimate act of a story tends to involve moving the players around like chess pieces in a way where the characters simply feel like they’re going through the motions because we don’t see them grow or learn. I think Milligan circumvents this trap easily because so much of the drama inherent in the Human Target is psychological drama, and conversations and narrative captions give us more information to appreciate the story.


Not to say that everything in this chapter is all inner turmoil and psychological. It opens up with Dee Noyz and some of his thugs unloading submachine guns and assault rifles on a residential home. Rev. James, soon revealed to be Tom, also cleans out a den of gangbangers before inviting the neighborhood to hear his sermon on Sunday. Chance, meanwhile, has another battle with Emerald.


One of the best scenes in the issue is during their fight, when Chance knocks the pistol away from Emerald as they struggle. They talk to each other to buy some time, and Chance asks if he can buy her off. Emerald declines, because, as Chance already knows, she has a reputation to think of. It’s another example of how seamlessly Milligan reinforces the idea of identity by reminding us of a reputation and what it truly means. Is a reputation all that we are? If everyone thinks of us in a certain way, does that make them right? Does that make it true?


Then they decide that, as the pistol lies on the floor equidistant from them both, there is a fifty percent chance for each of them to reach it. They both agree to make a deal to back off. The next panel, as we flip the page, is of both of them diving headlong for it. In the ensuing struggle, with their hands fumbling over the gun, they exchange some of Milligan’s trademark deadpan witticisms. “Christopher! You lied to a lady!” shouts Emerald. (60) Chance responds, “It’s what the modern world has brought me to.” (60) He headbutts her in the nose, gets the gun, aaaaaaaaaand scene.


Tom, as Rev. James, returns to Becky, his estranged wife, and says that they can finally be a family again with their son Sam. The only catch is that he must remain as Earl James. This obviously doesn’t go over well with Becky, and there’s this great bit of dialogue that Tom (as Rev. James) says to her: “What’s a name? What’s a personality? What’s a person? What do these terms mean? Love me. Forget which me it is you’re loving. Becky, can’t we just pretend?” (63)


That dialogue is one of those bits of writing that really encapsulates what Milligan’s trying to accomplish with this series. And Biukovic does a keen job on illustrating their conversation. He captures the emotion within them both, not only with their facial expressions, but with their body language. Tom has clenched fist in one panel, then open palms in the next. It’s very fluid work, drawn from different angles. There’s a pair of panels where we’re looking at them through a window in Becky’s house, only the window panes serve as the panel borders. It’s a fantastic, yet particularly subtle way of showing how two people who are in the same room can still be light years away from each other. And their expressions say it all: Tom, with a somber yet honest look, and Becky with her eyes wide open in disbelief and shock at what she’s hearing, with both of her hands clasped to her neck.


Another interesting scene is when Emerald, who was apparently released from Chance’s mercy, is in her civilian life for a fleeting moment, and then confronts Dee Noyz in an attempt to pump him for info. Dee Noyz, in this scene, however, is actually Tom in disguise, and he later goes into the bathroom of a local diner and begins removing his makeup and disguise. As he walks out into the diner, though, he sees that he’s only removed half of his face, and he just loses it and begins shooting the mirror behind the bar. He looks a bit like Two-Face. Maybe not the most subtle scene Milligan’s written, but I think it balances out the conversation Tom had with Becky.


On the next page, we see that the real Rev. Earl James, who has been on life-support in the hospital, has finally died. His widow Bethany returns to their house. There’s an excellent panel where Bethany, framed in the doorway and surrounded by pitch black darkness, asks, “Hello? Are you home? Earl?” (69) Each question she speaks is lettered in its own separate word balloon. There’s something about seeing three separate word balloons in this panel that just adds to the sense of loneliness and uncertainty. You know it’s good comics when even the letterer (in this case, Robert Solanovic) knocks it out of the park.


Eventually, Bethany and Becky find Bruno and make him take them to Chance in one final, last-ditch effort to have him help them solve their dilemmas. The issue ends with Rhea, the junkie whore who had the affair with Rev. Earl James, slitting her wrists in front of Dee Noyz (the real one, this time) on a beach. I guess dealing with the shame of selling out “the finest man [she] ever met. . . for a few rocks” was too much for her. (77) She asks Dee Noyz (whose real name is Dennis, which is what she calls him now), if he ever loved her. It’s a dramatic, perhaps melodramatic way to end the issue, but in a way it also complements the conversation between Tom and Becky earlier. Are there any happy endings in sight?

Human Target #2 (Miniseries)

The second issue of the Human Target miniseries begins with a splash page right where the cliffhanger from issue one left us. Chance, the real Chance (we can tell because he’s wearing the trenchcoat) looks out the hotel window and shouts, “I think she’s gone!” (29) It’s a very effective splash page, with detailed architecture surrounding the area, populated with people enjoying the night. Biukovic brings L.A. to life. And the crescent moon is really well done, well-colored and with a subtle but effective glow effect by miniseries colorist Lee Loughridge.

At the top of the splash, we can see Emerald hiding on a ledge a story above. It’s fairly subtle and I remember the first time I read this, I didn’t notice her at all because my eyes moved too quickly and a I just thumbed to the next page.

The real Chance and Tom McFadden (as fake Chance) have a few moments to talk to each other a bit, and we get our first hint about their true identities. Then Emerald returns through the open window, beginning a well-executed action secquence. She pulls the real Chance out the window and the page where she and Chance tumble out the side of the hotel has a beautifully fractured layout.

I can’t stress enough how impressed I am with Biukovic’s artwork in this miniseries. He really comes through. It’s enough to me that his style appeals to my sensibilities but his storytelling is crisp and his layouts are exciting and actually add to the subtext. His characters are wonderfully expressive, not just in their facial expressions, but with their body language as well. Just look at Emerald in this hotel sequence. Biukovic effortlessly depicts her as sexy, and then pretending to be helpless, and then lethal. Biukovic excels whether it’s two people in a room talking or an explosive action scene. In this issue we get to see Emerald at her “other” life, that of a typical suburbanite mom with a husband and daughter. Biukovic draws a very cute little girl and pet cat.

It’s a shame that the artist passed away some time after illustrating Human Target. But the work he left us is something we can appreciate and enjoy for years to come.

At this point I feel morally obligated to point out a very entertaining line that the real Chance says, as he and Emerald face off in the streets. Wielding a knife he picked up from an outdoor café they stumbled into, Chance says, “In my former unreconstructed days, I might have balked at using a steak knife on a lady. So you can thank the feminist movement for your demise.” (32) I don’t know why, but I find that line very funny.

Later on, Chance and Tom (looking like he naturally looks), meet up and talk. Chance describes how the job of impersonating can eat at one’s soul and how one’s identity becomes “polluted.” (37) Interestingly, we learn through their conversation that Chance doesn’t like being touched during sexual acts. When Tom was impersonating Chance at the hotel, he told Emerald just about the same. Chance, however, never told Tom that dirty little detail. Rather, Tom intuits it himself; it’s a hint for us that Tom may be just as talented as Chance himself, if not moreso.

Another important part of the issue is when we see the real, actual Reverend Earl James. He’s just received a letter from Rhea, a streetwalker with whom he had a secret affair. Apparently, she’s sold out his secret to Dee Noyz (leader of the gang of hoodlums that have been stirring up problems in the community, as seen last issue) just to get another fix.

Again, Biukovic does a masterful job with the layout on the page where Rev. James, ashamed of his transgression, decides to take the coward’s way out and end his own life. Biukovic essentially draws a full-page splash of Rev. James sitting on his bed, holding the letter in his hands. He’s looking right up at us. At the corner of the bed, there’s a suicide note he wrote for his wife, Beth.

What makes this page interesting is how Biukovic adds four more panels: one above Rev. James, one on each side of him, and one below him. The top panel is a picture of his face as he solemnly reads the letter. The left panel is a picture of his right hand holding his glasses, as he’s in obvious shock over the consequences. The right panel is a picture of his left hand crumpling Rhea’s letter in anger and frustration. The bottom panel is a picture of her letter, crumpled into a ball at his feet. The panels form a crucifix, and the original picture of Rev. James is dead in the center of the cross. It’s made all the more poignant because of the way he’s looking right at us. Narrative captions are placed tastefully in the negative space outside of the four panels.

I also want to point out how a page like this can only be done in comics. Each of the four panels shows a different breadth of action, in sequence from top to middle to bottom tier, yet the image of Rev. James in the center of the splash remains static. Our minds understand all the actions that occur in the four panels, but we also comprehend that Rev. James is stuck in the middle of it all. The page effectively captures the psyche of how the character feels boxed in by his own actions, not to mention crucified.

Chance also takes the time to see a shrink in this issue. (I think it’s something of a recurring episode with Milligan’s works, where he has characters visit shrinks. But that could just be because he enjoys writing about psychological stuff.) The shrink’s office has Warhol-like prints on his wall: paintings of the same face only in different shades of color. Again, this reiterates the themes of identity and faces.

I also like this line the shrink says: “You do that a lot, Christopher. Turn something serious into a joke. A pun.” (47) I actually feel that this is something Milligan himself tends to do in many of his works. Is he adding some commentary about himself here? I don’t know, but either way it works.

Afterwards, Chance goes to visit Tom’s wife, Becky. He mentions that he spends two thousand dollars a week seeing a therapist. When she asks him what the shrink says, Chance answers, “He wonders what I think the answer is.” (49) An obvious joke, perhaps, but to me, still a funny one.

At the end of the issue, we learn that the real Rev. James survived his self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. The doctor, however, tells his wife Bethany that even if somehow pulls through, “He might not be the person you knew.” (50) Bethany goes back to the church and her narrative captions discuss how people change themselves to relate to others; “How much,” she asks herself, “do we invent about ourselves?” (51) Again, even at the end of the issue we return again and again to the underlying themes of the series.

The cliffhanger is another interesting one, as Rev. James meets Bethany at the church. The only question is, is this Chance posing as the Reverend, or is it Tom?

Human Target #1 (Miniseries)

[I’m basing my write-up on the original Human Target trade paperback (published in 2000), so page numbers refer to the numbers printed in the trade, not the issues.]

The premise of Human Target is very simple. Christopher Chance is the Human Target, a sort of bodyguard-for-hire who protects his employer by impersonating him and becoming a literal human target. Then, by being a human target, he draws out would-be assassins and eliminates them before they can do their damage. The catch is that Chance isn’t just a master of disguise; no, he impersonates people so well that he becomes them and thinks like them to the point where even their close friends and loved ones couldn’t tell the difference. The downside to Chance’s talents is that constantly switching identities has fractured his own psyche to a degree, and he is a man in search of an identity that he can claim as his own.

(It’s my understanding that the Fox TV series ignores most of this premise entirely and that Chance is just a bodyguard and doesn’t become other people. I have not watched the show, and I have no real desire to go out of my way to do so. It seems like the TV show took away everything that makes Human Target unique, so I don’t see the point of it.)

One of the hallmarks of Peter Milligan’s work is how so ably draws in the reader right from the get-go. Most of his best comics have outstanding first issues, and I would go so far as to say he writes the best first pages in comics. The very first page of the story is, for my money, one of the most striking first pages I’ve ever read, with some memorable narration:

“Who am I? I am a reputation. I am a grainy photograph of a man with dark bullet holes instead of eyes. I am a severed penis stuffed into a dying mouth. I am a person you come to if you want someone dead.” (4)

The imagery of those words stays with me. It’s harsh and matter-of-fact, but not necessarily without some degree of irony.

Edvin Biukovic’s art complements the text by setting the tone. The way the “camera” slowly pans out to reveal the iconic Hollywood sign is a very cinematic trick, and then we quickly jump right into an action movie on paper, with a masked figure swinging into a casino while firing a submachine gun into the crowd. Is Milligan making some sort of comparison between the identity of comics versus the identity of film? I don’t really know if that’s intentional, but I do think, with this first page, he addresses the main theme of identity.

By the time we get to the second page of the story, the narrator turns out not to be Christopher Chance, the titular Human Target, as one might expect. Instead, the gunman narrator turns out to be a woman, a female contract killer named Emerald, as we soon learn.

On page 6, we’re introduced to Christopher Chance for the first time, although it’s not spelled out completely because he is wearing a white facemask and sitting across from someone who looks exactly like Christopher Chance.

What could easily be a simple splash page of his face is instead broken up into six panels, with each panel essentially providing a cross-section of his face. It’s a very nice artistic choice, as it shows a fractured face, an obvious metaphor for a fractured identity, which is one of the things Chance struggles with throughout the entire run of Human Target. Dividing the page up into panels also allows for clarity in terms of the flow of the dialogue and placement of the word balloons. Everything flows so cleanly that it’s easy to read and follow even though there are lots of words on the page. We also see Chance’s eyes very clearly, and you know what they say about eyes being a window to the soul, right?

(The dialogue and imagery in this scene is reminiscent of another Milligan work, Face, which was a Vertigo one-shot illustrated by one of Milligan’s most frequent collaborators, Duncan Fegredo. Human Target and Face are but two of Milligan’s stories that involve some sort of plastic surgery and changing of identities.)

I also really like how Chance’s office is decorated with tribal masks. Biukovic was a good enough artist that the masks are clearly visible elements of subtext but there’s still enough subtlety that we don’t feel like we’re eating hamfisted sandwiches.

In the next scene, we meet Reverend Earl James, a black pastor in a rough neighborhood. We soon surmise that this is Chance impersonating James. As we continue to read this miniseries, we learn that this is a clever trick on Milligan’s part, and that the person we think is Chance is actually a man named Tom McFadden, who was Chance’s protégé. (To clarify: Rev. James in this scene is actually Tom. We only think he’s Chance.)

On page 9, “James” makes a passing remark, saying, “If a little truth gets twisted in order to tell a bigger truth, so be it.” The line is a nice, succinct summation of Milligan’s goals for the series.

The plot’s interesting enough, as Rev. James has been threatened by local gangbangers for trying to clean up the neighborhood. Therefore, the Human Target takes James’ place during a shootout during a Sunday service. There’s a scene where the gangbangers take some of the more older members of the congregation as hostages, only to see the tables turn as the hostages turn out to not be helpless. With the help of “Rev. James” they overcome the gangbangers. It’s another way for Milligan to remind us that appearances are deceiving.

Other things we learn in this first issue: Chance lives in L.A. It’s a nice touch because L.A. is a city associated with artificiality, lies, deception, being fake, and acting in roles. In fact, “Chance” (in quotation marks because we later learn that this is actually Tom McFadden playing the role of Chance in very accurate fashion) even says, in a narration caption, “Besides, L.A. suits me. It has a pleasing devotion to artificiality.” (21)

We also meet Bruno, a restaurant owner and Chance’s good friend and confidante. He’s sort of Chance’s unofficial agent, and in later stories he is often responsible for getting Chance involved in various cases.

I also want to take the time to point out Milligan’s humorous side. One of the reasons he is one of my favorite writers is because I greatly appreciate his wit. There’s an amusing scene when “Chance” is at Bruno’s restaurant and picks up a woman, who is actually Emerald.

“Chance”: Excuse me. I’d like to join you for dinner. Though to be honest I am seeing this as a prelude to a night of sexual intercourse.

Emerald (smiling): Keep your voice down, please. I have my reputation to think of. (22)

The two engage in foreplay in some hotel room before Emerald tries to shoot him in the head. Before she pulls the trigger, the man in the white facemask, the REAL Chance, shoots the gun out of her hand. She escapes out a window to lick her wounds while the real Chance takes off the mask and reveals himself to the fake Chance.

It’s a great cliffhanger because at the end of it, we’re left wondering which Chance is legit. (Of course, I mean that if one were reading the story for the first time. I guess I’m spoiling it a bit.)

This is a great way to end a first issue. The characters, the plots, and the overall storyarc are all introduced in an even fashion, and with a fairly high degree of prestidigitation involved. Though not everything is spelled out plainly, the story is told strongly enough, with a very strong sense of craft, that a first-time reader can have confidence in the creative team to provide the pay off in the end.