Overlooked Gems - The Human Target - Action #425

One series I completely missed out on in 197? was the Human Target, a strip which started out as a back-up in Action Comics #423 and has run under the radar of most fans for the past fifty years, as the character has only intermittently appeared in comics and on TV.

I was not a collector of Superman or Action Comics in the 1970s, and so a particular gem of a story in Action #425 drawn by Neal Adams completely passed me by when it turned up on UK spinner racks at the end of June 1973. I had never read the story about the Human Target until last Sunday when I found a copy in a back-issue box for $6.

© DC. Action #425

Created by Len Wein and Carmine Infantino, the Human Target is man called Christopher Chance who places himself in harms’ way, impersonating his client to draw out and neutralize a suspected threat against the client. (There was an earlier Human Target, not to be confused with an earlier incarnation.)

© DC.

The story in Action #425 is actually a Part One of …”The Short-Walk-To-Disaster Contract”… , packed into 6 pages. I do wonder why Adams took up the challenge of drawing the story, interleaved between his partial completion of Amazing Adventures #18 and the legendary Batman #251 (The Joker’s Five Way Revenge), but the story is a visual Masterclass in getting the full narrative into as few panels as possible. Take a look at page 2 where Adams manages to compress three pages worth of story into one page by having images and dialogue flow as the reader's eye tracks the action.

© DC.

Reader response in the lettercol of #429 was very positive. Debbie Hetherington of Wallaceburg, Ontario was typical in her fullsome praise.

Unfortunately, the readers' enthusiasm for awaiting Adams to draw the concluding  part of the story was not rewarded. Dick Giordano pencilled and inked the conclusion to the story solo in Action #426. No explanation was given for Adams’ absence in the lettercol of #430. 

This was the only time Adams drew The Human Target. For Adams fans this is an issue worth seeking out.

For Human Target fans, I also very highly recommend the recent 12-part Human Target series by Tom King and Greg Smallwood, which contains stellar art on a stellar story published under the DC Black Label imprint.

© DC Black Label

The Human Target has all the attributes for a great episodic TV series. There have been a couple of attempts in the past. The most recent incarnation was back in 2010-2011. I’ve picked up a copy of Season One blu-ray of the Fox TV series from 2011, which is pretty good. Season Two can be found on Dailymotion, but you’ll need to download it and flip the image L-R to see it in a decent format.