Written by Peter Milligan; Art and Cover by Javier Pulido, Vertigo, May 2004

Christopher Chance is the Human Target in the comic book of that name. A master of disguise, he takes the places of clients whose lives are threatened to smoke out their foes. With each assignment, however, Chance becomes more disconnected from his own identity, and his linkage to reality grows more tenuous.

This collection includes the cases of a Hollywood producer stalked by a decrier of violent films, a corrupt accountant who faked his death on 9/11, and a baseball superstar blackmailed into throwing games. That all three clients turn out to be different than who they purport to be heightens the stories' common aura of deception and confusion. Milligan's complex plots take unexpected turns, but Pulido's clean, elegant artwork imparts gratifying clarity to the convoluted goings-on. A departure from standard comic-book fare--Chance is a mercenary who only seems heroic compared to the unsavory characters surrounding him-- Human Target, an ingenious revival of a concept created in the 1970s, appeals like a good action film, one with more intelligence than explosions. Gordon Flagg

Asiaing Links:

The book Official Web Page

Download Issue #1 (Pdf, 7.2MB, 36Pages)

Book Description:

A new Softcover collecting the first five issues of the acclaimed series. Christopher Chance has left L.A. for New York City, but his strange career as a professional assassin decoy continues to blur the boundaries between illusion and reality, leaving him ever more uncertain about who he really is — and how much that really matters.

From Publishers Weekly:

This tricky reinvention of a lesser-known DC character from the 1970s (created by Len Wein and Carmine Infantino) is worth sampling. Christopher Chance, the title character, is the perfect investigator/bodyguard/impersonator. He can not only look like someone else but in effect become the endangered man whose place he's taking. Thus solving a case means not just preventing a murder but also figuring out how the victim created his own predicament. Chase has to admit that he (and his assumed identity) is somehow responsible for the mess, then resolve it (usually violently), and then struggle to escape from the guilty role he's been playing back into his own somewhat more innocent personality. This may sound abstract and pretentious, but Milligan's scripts deftly put Chance in situations that neatly illustrate his hero's identity crisis and also the uneasiness of many 21st-century people who discover that their behavior doesn't match their self-images. Milligan knows Chance isn't the only one perplexed by the attractiveness of media violence, the morally ambiguous aftermath of 9/11 or the temptation to enhance one's professional performance by using drugs. Pulido's art is less successful; it's better in overall design than execution of details. However, the pictures tell the stories well enough, and this is a comic that relies more on an intellectual concept than visual excitement.

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