DC's Human Target Series Gets Black Label One-Shot
DC's Human Target maxiseries is getting a new addition. On Wednesday, DC announced plans to publish Tales of the Human Target, a 48-page one-shot that will expand upon the world of Tom King and Greg Smallwood's buzzed-about series. The one-shot anthology will be written by King with art by an impressive array of artists, including Smallwood, Mikel Janín, Rafael Albuquerque, and Kevin Maguire. All of them will be teaming up to tell stories of what happened before Chance drank the poison intended for Lex Luthor, which kicked off the events of Human Target late last year.
In this one-shot anthology, Christopher Chance "teams up" with members of the Justice League International – some of whom already are prominently involved in this story – in four connecting mysteries, and one of them may be responsible for the poison that has The Human Target living on borrowed time. The issue will feature a main cover by Smallwood, which is reminiscent of hard-boiled detective novels of the 60's and 70's. The issue will also feature a variant cover from David Marquez, and a 1 in 25 ratio variant cover from returning Batman artist Jorge Jiménez.
Tales of the Human Target comes at an interesting point in the series' story, with the book going on a several-month hiatus following the recently-released sixth issue. That installment took Christopher Chance and Tora Olafsdotter's exploits into a deadly territory, after the two of them killed Guy Gardner in a violent fight. The back half of the series still has a number of Justice league International members (and potential suspects) to go through, so it will be interesting to see who is covered in Tales of the Human Target.
"What Giffen and DeMatteis put into these characters, they all feel very fleshed out," King told reporters late last year. "They all feel very real. When you picture them in your head, you just see that Kevin Maguire face looking up at you. They're very easy and very fun to write. The thing I most love to do in comics is to take silly ideas seriously and find the depths in them, and tnd that concept was all over this — the idea that these little silly flaws that are implanted in these characters actually show real heart and real depth. Like I wrote this thing for Booster, why Booster's good. And the idea is, Human Target expressed my opinion on Booster as 'Booster is a joke. He makes mistakes all the time, but he doesn't hide them. He shows himself. He is himself. Booster is Booster. Yeah, he's a joke, but everyone is. At least Booster's funny.' That kind of stuff is incredibly fun to do. These characters have such potential — each one of them could launch their own series."
Tales of the Human Target is set to be released on Tuesday, August 23rd wherever comics are sold.