Home | Best Seller | FAQ | Contact Us
Browse
Art & Photography
Biographies & Autobiography
Body,Mind & Health
Business & Economics
Children's Book
Computers & Internet
Cooking
Crafts,Hobbies & Gardening
Entertainment
Family & Parenting
History
Horror
Literature & Fiction
Mystery & Detective
Nonfiction
Professional & Technology
Reference
Religion
Romance
Science
Science Fiction & Fantasy
Sports & Outdoors
Travel & Geography
   Book Info

enlarge picture

Human Target: Strike Zones  
Author: Peter Milligan
ISBN: 1401202098
Format: Handover
Publish Date: June, 2005
 
     
     
   Book Review

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. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
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
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved




Human Target: Strike Zones

FROM THE CRITICS

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. (May) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

     



Home | Private Policy | Contact Us
@copyright 2001-2005 ReadingBee.com