this is the voice of re:mote induction.Thursday, September 25, 2003
human target - peter milligan returns to an ongoing comic series for vertigo with his third human target outing, following his initial 4 issue series and graphic novel. milligan was a regular contributor for the imprint for a good number of years - with the ongoing series shade the changing man and a series of one-shots and limited series including: enigma, the extremist, egypt and the ill fated minx. many comic fans are more likely to spend time talking about the likes of grant morrison, but for me peter milligan was always doing more interesting work.
with human target one gets the impression that milligan is returning to shade territory. taking the opportunity to use the human target to highlight weird america, to provide a different take on current events. christopher chance is a specialist, he takes the risks for you - he becomes you - he becomes a human target. with the previous graphic novel chance took his absorption of another persons personality too far. he came to believe that he was that person. years of taking on the identities of other people have resulted in him losing his own. the first issue of this series set up chance up, set him up as a lost soul, retreating from who he was before. no doubt this will set us up for a journey across america in classic milligan style.
an america which is post 911 as demonstrated by the second issue which came out last week. on september 11th a man spent the morning shredding documents, convinced that at any moment his company will be investigated for fraud and that his bosses will put him in a very difficult position. then everything changes. staggering through the debris he swears that if he survives who he was will disappear. time has passed though and his bosses have got away unharmed by their financial indiscretions, while he has given up everything. so he returns to new york, and it is there where a chance meeting means he meets christopher chance.
having struggled with his own identity issues and what the future holds chance recognizes this man as someone who is going through similar issues. so when the man makes his move, he has the human target on his side. though even then, things are not entirely straight forward. the result is milligan playing it more seriously than the shade material that went before, though his style is certainly maintained. javier pulido provides the art, following on from the late edvin biukovic, who did the original 4 part series. his style is more along the lines of caricatured, somewhat cartoony, and is reasonably distinctive, perhaps most similar to the work done by gilbert hernandez on his recent vertigo series. the covers are also by pulido, with the cover to the second issue being a particularly striking image.
with human target one gets the impression that milligan is returning to shade territory. taking the opportunity to use the human target to highlight weird america, to provide a different take on current events. christopher chance is a specialist, he takes the risks for you - he becomes you - he becomes a human target. with the previous graphic novel chance took his absorption of another persons personality too far. he came to believe that he was that person. years of taking on the identities of other people have resulted in him losing his own. the first issue of this series set up chance up, set him up as a lost soul, retreating from who he was before. no doubt this will set us up for a journey across america in classic milligan style.
an america which is post 911 as demonstrated by the second issue which came out last week. on september 11th a man spent the morning shredding documents, convinced that at any moment his company will be investigated for fraud and that his bosses will put him in a very difficult position. then everything changes. staggering through the debris he swears that if he survives who he was will disappear. time has passed though and his bosses have got away unharmed by their financial indiscretions, while he has given up everything. so he returns to new york, and it is there where a chance meeting means he meets christopher chance.
having struggled with his own identity issues and what the future holds chance recognizes this man as someone who is going through similar issues. so when the man makes his move, he has the human target on his side. though even then, things are not entirely straight forward. the result is milligan playing it more seriously than the shade material that went before, though his style is certainly maintained. javier pulido provides the art, following on from the late edvin biukovic, who did the original 4 part series. his style is more along the lines of caricatured, somewhat cartoony, and is reasonably distinctive, perhaps most similar to the work done by gilbert hernandez on his recent vertigo series. the covers are also by pulido, with the cover to the second issue being a particularly striking image.
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