In this week’s installment of The Goggler Pull List, we review the ComiXology Original, Afterlift, and Tom King’s take on Christopher Chance in The Human Target.
Afterlift (Chip Zdarsky, Jason Loo)
Chip Zdarsky is quickly becoming one of our favourite comic book writers. His ComiXology Original, Afterlift, released in April 2020, takes the concept of ride-share from hell to its most literal conclusion. Correction. It is, in fact, the ride-share to hell.
Afterlift follows Janice Chen, a ride-share driver who is about to have the weirdest night of her life. After picking up a passenger, Janice finds that she is unwittingly transporting a demon from hell and his catch for the night, to hell. And as difficult a concept as that may be for Janice to grasp, there is also the competing demons that have come for the soul.
Zdarsky’s Afterlift is, as any good stand alone story should be, multilayered. There is the adventure/heist story of Janice and Suzanna, the soul she is transporting. There is the drama of hell, of Lucifer pitting his demons against one another. And there is Janice’s own history, only ever told in glimpses, of her family and her sister. Zdarsky does enough with the supporting stories to build up a bigger picture. Even though the focus of Afterlift is that ride-share to hell, that isn’t all there is.
The art in Afterlift is also gorgeous. Jason Loo’s character and panel designs feel grounded, even as the comic bounces cars off each other, or when Janice drives up the side of a building. Loo’s design of the demons are new and, as he tells it, drawn from the designs of Indonesian wooden masks that he saw in his uncle’s home. But what truly stands out is Paris Alleyne’s bright, glowing colours. His ability to mix and pull colours feel like the next evolution of comics. Alleyne’s panels and colours feel digital, and in the best way possible. With ComiXology Originals being (mostly) digital, Paris Alleyne’s art really takes advantage of that by mixing hues and shades creating contrasts that are brighter than bright. (I may be making this up,) but it feels like he’s been able to put on screen what print could never do.
Afterlift feels like Collateral, only with demons and angels, and hell and heaven. There are no discussions as to what is the correct hell or heaven, or whose version of it they are heading to. It doesn’t matter which religion you subscribe to.
At only five issues long, Afterlift cleverly avoids all of that big stuff to tell this one intimate story of Janice and Suzanna. There is probably enough here to take on a longer story arc (purgatory, the crossing of the river between earth and the underworld, hell), but in keeping the story focused on the journey that Janice and Suzanna take, this was more than enough.
Human Target (Tom King, Greg Smallwood)
My first encounter with Christopher Chance wasn’t by way of the comics. It was instead in that short-lived, but incredibly fun, television series (no, not the seven episode, 1992 version with Rick Springfield – yes, THAT Rick Springfield) starring Mark Valley, Chi McBride, and Jackie Earle Haley. (The series even had this fantastic theme song!)
Now if you don’t know The Human Target, and we wouldn’t blame you if you didn’t, he began life back in the 1950s as a side character in Detective Comics called Fred Venable. He provided a very specific service based on a very specific set of skills. Venable would impersonate his clients – people who, for some reason or other, were marked for death – in order to catch their assassins red handed. Two decades later, Len Wein and Carmine Infantino would revive the character, rewrite him as Christopher Chance, and give him new life.
The Human Target appealed to all of my pop-culture preoccupations. One part Mission: Impossible, one part Quantum Leap, with plenty of comic book sensibilities thrown in for good measure. He was essentially a gun for hire, but one who was lead by his own moral compass, and who was always there for anyone who needed him. Here was a character who harked back to the men I used to watch on TV growing up, those do-gooders and vigilantes, the likes of Michael Knight, and Stringfellow Hawke, and Colt Seavers. Christopher Chance was all of the A-Team in one. And I loved it.
So imagine my excitement when I heard that one of my favourite comic book writers, Tom King, was taking on the character in a brand new DC Black Label series. And boy does he deliver.
The story begins with Christopher Chance taking on a job to protect Lex Luthor from being killed. Why is he helping the most villainous of villains? We’re not sure yet. We know he’s broke, down on his luck, and hopelessly in love. He’s coughing a lot and that’s never a good sign. And just when he thinks he’s thwarted the assassin and saved Lex, something goes horribly wrong. The Human Target is poisoned and he needs to find out whodunnit before it’s too late.
Everything about this first issue just sings. From the very first page, we meet a Chance who is tired, aging, and world-weary. Christopher Chance isn’t quite a superhero, but he perfectly inhabits their world. In his trademark style, with an economy of dialogue and an intriguing mystery, King sets the character up as a true enigma. He’s got Bogart’s swagger. He speaks like he hasn’t quite left the 1950s. And like all the best noir characters, he is as much a mystery to himself as he is to us.
Like much of King’s work – Strange Adventures, Rorschach, Mister Miracle – this story also plays it fast and loose with time, jumping back and forth within a narrative, using it as a method to build tension and surprise. I love writing that makes demands of the reader and this is a comic that all but insists you revisit it as soon as you’re done.
Which brings me to Greg Smallwood, whose immense talent is on full display on every page of this first issue. His art is beautiful. It is hypnotic. It is utterly engrossing. There is something so cinematic in the way we frames this story, in the angles he picks, in his close-ups, in the finish of every panel. You will get lost in these pages. There is so much to see. Everything feels tactile. This is a very different kind of noir. One that pulls from the style and sensibilities of the classics, but adds colour and texture, making it pop in every sense of the word.
If you love hardboiled detective fiction or old noir movies, then this is definitely a must read. King and Smallwood don’t just wear their inspirations on their sleeves, they build on them, they elevate them, in order to give us something that feels both familiar and fresh.
It’s been far too long since Christopher Chance has had his time in the spotlight and The Human Target feels like the perfect start to an adventure that truly befits the character.
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