The Human Target: A Secret Comic Book (but not really...)

FOX is rolling out a new action/adventure show, called The Human Target, and it's not bad.  Mark Valley, not known as an action star (at least not in Boston Legal or even in his strange dead-partner appearances in Fringe) is remarkably convincing at Christopher Chance, the private operative who protects people who need protecting and elminates threats to the innocent, or semi-innocent.  The show has a wicked sense of humor as well as failry interesting supporting characters in Chi McBride, whom we've loved since Night Court, and Jackie Earle Haley, whom we've loved since he was a child actor stomping people to death in Day of the Locust (and oh, yeah, there was that Watchmen thing, too, but a guy's got to eat).  Anyway: Valley isn't bad, the script popped right along, and it's worth a second look.

You'd never know it was based on a comic book.

The fact is The Human Target has been a C-grade superspy hero in the DC universe since ... well, for more than fifty years, if you go back to his very first appearance in a single Batman story.  He was re-invented by comics writer Len Wein and artist Carmine Infantino as "Christopher Chance," a master of disguise who put himself in the place of threatened innocents, way back in 1972, and he's been skipping around the edges of teh DC Universe ever since. (If you're interested in the complete and almost psychotically details history of this minor faivure, there's an excellent article at http:/at Human Target Online.

In this version, however, FOX and serires devleoper Jonathan E. Steinberg has really retained nothing except the cool name for the series and the equally cool name of the hero: Christopher Chance.  Gone is the 'master of disguise' schtick and any other high-tech or superpowerish elements.  This is just a truly resourceful guy with your typical mysterious past, either in Special Ops or Gangsterland (which will no doubt soon be releaed as episodes progress; they're certainly dropping enough hints about it).  Valley has a couple of good fight seens and plenty of snappy repartee; this doesn't seem so much of a breakout show as it does a competing action-adventure we could all enjoy for a year or three.

Not that he's any Rick Springfield, 'cause, come on, who is?

The thing is, Springfield, back in his light rock "Jessie's Girl" days of 1992, actually starred in a pretty awful version o the same comic for ABC TV.  Barely half a dozen episodes aired (this was from the same production company, Pet Fly, that had perpetrated a couple of other equally horrid action/adventure shows -- Viper and The Sentinel, as well as another comics-based show, the near-career-ending version of The Flash starring John Wesley Shipp and featuring a pre-Munch Richard Belzer.  The "master of disguise" schtick was stil in place for this show, but that didn't help much: it chalked little more than half a dozen episodes before cancellation, and Christopher Chance went back into hybernation for 18 years or so.

It's interesting to note that FOX is not playing up the comic book aspects of the show at all; in fact even the credit to DC comics is buried deep in the end credits, with a card that goes by so fast you're not sure it's there at all.  This is much closer to a James Bond (or Remington Steele, really), and relies pretty heavily on the charm of the key actors and the cleverness of the plots.  Which, after exaclty one whole episode, it has displayed in adequate amounts.

DC, however, is not about to let the connection be forgotten: they've just released a trade paperback of Peter Milligan's re-imagining of the character, and character creator Len Wein, still in there kicking (and making not a dime on all this, we assume, since he created the character back in the days of work-for-hire, pre-creator's rights) has authored a brand new six-issue mini-series -- a kind of back-door pilot all its own -- that premieres in comics stores on February 10.

Any actual relationship bewteen the the Christopher Chance of the comics, the Nineties, and today is almsot entirely coincidental.  But it is a cool name.

Check out the first episode on Fox On Demand

Buy the Trade Paperback of the Human Target's Earlier Incarnation here.

Battle for the Cowl: Batman is Now a Big Dick

It's been the talk of comics this Spring -- or at least DC hopes it's been the talk of comis this Spring.  At the end of the stunning (and horribly confusing) crossover extravanaza called Final Crisis, Batman -- the original Batman, the one and only Bruce Wayne -- was fried in his suit like a lobster in its shell, right there in front of Superman and everybody.  He is presumed dead , once and for all ...

...and yet the world still needs a Batman.  As does the Trademark and Licensing Division of Time Warner, owner of DC Comics. 

Over the last three months, a host of interconnected series and one-shots have followed the "Battle for the Cowl.," as various characters in the DC Universe contemplated taking on the Bat-identity"  For all the hoopla, however, the serious list of major contenders was pretty short: the three Robins and a couple of dead guys:

Tim Drake, the current Robin, #3 in a series (collect 'em all!) seemed a little too young and, well, short, to put on the suit (he's just about to graduate from high school, and smart and determined as he may be, he's still just a Robin, y'know? 

Jason Todd, the fully grown #2 Robin, seemed equally unlikely.  He was infamously killed a few years ago -- blowed up real good by the Joker -- and then brought back to life in a complicated parallel-world-Ra's A Ghul resurrection process, sometimes playing the diabolical villain in a red hood, sometimes the reluctant hero in a leather jacket, and sometimes acting like a flat-out psycho, as in the Battle for the Cowl series where we wears a kind of BDSM incarnation of the Batman suit and shoots people alot (this descent into pure psychosis comes after his lengthy and far less nutso portrayal in the previous big crossover.  Talk about being ill-served.) 

Other likely candidates, like the grimly homicidal Jean Paul Valley, who put on a high-tech version of the suit a few years ago when Bruce broke his back (man, that guy has had it rough!), is also dead and not resurrected, and the new Azrael -- the subject of one of the more interesting series out of "Battle" -- is a newbie in the DC Universe.  The Powers that Be are certainly not going to turn over the company's #1 icon to an unknown -- especially a (gasp!) black man, since that open-bottomed cowl would make it a little tough to carry one without questions.  And all the other contenders presented during the "Battle" -- Hush, Catman, Bane -- don't ask unless you want a five-hour dissertation on recent Bat-History -- just didn't make sense.

No, from the very beginning there's been only two real possibilities: ( 1 ) Bruce himself would come back from the dead, like Superman did after his "death" a few years ago, or ( 2 ) Robin #1, now known as Nightwing, good ol' Dick Grayson, would finally assume the position (so to speak).

One Dead Bruce to Go.  It's generally believed that Bruce is not, in fact, dead; the last couple panels of Final Crisis make is clear (as clear as anything in that series) that some version of Bruce does, in fact, persist -- though how much he's like 'our' Bruce is uncertain.  And he's clearly out of reach at the moment.  At last report no one in the DC Universe knows he exists, and he's stuck in the distant prehistoric past.  And only Tim Drake, now in the guise of an 'adult' Red Robin, is even looking for him.

At last: Bat-Dick?  Dick-Man?  Bat-Boy?  In retrospect, it was pretty obvious from the outset.  Everybody kept saying, "Do it, Dick, DO IT!" and though he refused at the beginning -- after all, he'd worked pretty hard on the whole "Nightwing" persona for a number of years -- it wasn't clear why he was so dead set against carrying on the tradition, especially in view of the other pathetic alternatives.  Ultimately, he mumbled something about a promise that Bruce himself had extracted, that he wouldn't take up the cowl ... but ultimately, he decided, the hell with that.  Gotham's falling apart, despite the best efforts of about twenty other superheroes.  And the only available Bat is Dick Grayson.  Thus, at the end of the third and final issue of the "Battle for the Cowl" series: Dick does it.

The Bat is Dead, Long Life the Bat.  What this will mean for the Nightwing persona is unclear.  Though never as popular as the "A" list heroes, he has a long and well-respected tradition, and no one likely to pick up the Nightmask.   

So who's going to be Dick's Robin? Bruce Wayne's biological son Damien, fathered during his seduction by Ra's al Gul's daughter Thalia, has become Robin#4 while #3 gets the hell outta town. Which, considering he's a spoiled brat and a bit of a violence-prone nut job himself, makes for an  'interesting' duo ... at least until Bruce comes home to claim his birthright and kick some ass.

We're guessing...March 2010 latest: Bruce Wayne reappears and the real battle begins!