Things Get Salty in The Human Target #5

Christopher Chance’s clue chasing has led him to a meeting with the Martian Manhunter, the League’s resident telepath. What does it take to keep your secrets from a world-class psychic … and what secrets does one give up to get to the truth? Human Target #5 is written by Tom King, drawn by Greg Smallwood and lettered by Clayton Cowles. 

Armaan Babu: I’ve always been a big Martian Manhunter fan, so I was looking forward to this issue. I shoulda known better. This issue, it’s done J’onn dirty, Dan, and that upsets me. King’s noir mystery reinterpretations of the Justice League International have intrigued me so far, but I’m taking his take on J’onn personally! 

That aside, I am deeply fascinated with the issue as a whole, so I’m conflicted. What’d you think?

Dan Grote: This is the first issue I came away with a little cold, which is of course funny because it prominently features a character with ice powers. King is indulging here in the parts of his writing I’ve come to like less. It also drives Christopher Chance too far down Batman lane. We’ll get into all this, but first, I wanna know…

Me and Mr. J’onzz Got a Thing Goin’ On

Dan: … what troubles about King’s portrayal of Martian Manhunter, my friend?

Armaan: There are a lot of familiar roles you see in a noir mystery, and with a cast this big, we’re going to be seeing a lot of them. J’onn J’onnz has been cast here as the patsy. His general sense of loneliness is exaggerated to make him a scared and desperate man, one who longs for companionship but clearly thinks he doesn’t deserve it. When he does get it, it has to hurt … and who could hurt J’onn more than Fire?

Dan: Oh man, I didn’t even think about the whole Martians-hate-fire thing!

Armaan: Rather than a different interpretation of J’onn, it feels like a complete 180 from the J’onn I know best. Someone who is lonely, yes, but also someone who finds strength in his compassion, in his ability to understand other people, if not connect with them. Most importantly, though, I believe in a J’onn who doesn’t root around in other people’s heads without their permission, especially given how deep into Chance’s mind he goes here. 

I feel I tend to give King a lot more leeway for these bizarre character reinterpretations because more often than not, they’re characters I know very little about. Easier to view them with fresh eyes. Here, though, buying into this version of J’onn? It’s taking a lot more effort. The gorgeous artwork certainly helps.

Dan: Smallwood slaps, of this we can be sure. And this issue gives us a rare Smallwood splash page. There’s something so sad about that page — seeing J’onn, in his non-superheroic Martian form, cradling himself in bed post-coitus, Fire turned away from him, smoking a cigarette off the side. She’s using him, and he’s just lost in his own head. I can see why fans of the character would hate that. He’s perceived to be weak, like Chance’s dad in his last moments.

That said, I wonder if Fire will fare any better, being portrayed as the manipulative, hot-tempered temptress screwing J’onn for money — another noir role to be filled. She hasn’t truly gotten the spotlight yet in this book, but I’d say she’s about due.

Armaan: Yes, I’m apprehensive about her chapter, given what we’ve seen here, but at the same time I’m dying to find out just how she fits into the mystery as a whole, and I hope she’s not just a redirect to the next suspect, like J’onn seems to have been here.

Dan: One more thing on the green-folk tip: J’onn’s human guise in the restaurant scenes, with his green suit and brown hair, look like a more muted take on Guy Gardner. Could have been unintentional, but I like the idea of Chance’s to-date biggest antagonists within the JLI being similarly outfitted variations on a theme, one physically aggressive, one psychically so.

Overall, green is the color of danger in this comic. Not just in this issue, because of Fire and Martian Manhunter. Guy’s green was a danger, too. Not as dangerous as the poison inside Chance, eating him away, but still a danger to his quest to uncover the truth. It pops up in sharp blocks when the psychic scenes change characters from Chance and Ice to J’onn and Fire. It separates Emra from Ra’s man when we learn their working relationship is abusive. Green is all over the alley walls when Chance’s dad begs for his life over and over again, and in the block lettering of the BLAM when the gun finally fires.

Green, in this book, is a red flag … but, y’know, green.

Armaan: That’s really interesting, I hadn’t thought of it that way. When I saw the green — for this issue at least — the only thing I could think of was that it must be what J’onn’s thoughts feel like. The influence of the green as he invades Chance’s mind, the shadows of it all over Chance’s most relevant memory. But you’re right, it’s also come with a fair bit of danger in the series so far. Definitely something to keep an eye on in future issues — is it intentional, or just a coincidence given these three green-themed heroes? 

Human Target Begins

Dan: So apparently one day, Christopher Chance and his father took a walk down an alley and a bad guy shot his daddy dead. Chance, brooding in darkness, thought about this moment and vowed, “Yes, father, I shall become a target.” And then he trained with lower-level functionaries of Ra’s al Ghul for a while.

Now, as I’ve established, I am not steeped in DC lore. I am not aware whether this is the established origin of the Human Target, or King is giving him a grim-and-gritty new origin for the Roaring-for-a-Different-Reason ’20s. But this is just Batman, right? Tom King is just doing a Batman?

Armaan: Yes, this origin was silly, but how much King can be blamed for it is a matter of debate. Out of curiosity, I decided to take a look at Action Comics #442, the first appearance and origin story for our man Christopher Chance. What King and Smallwood have done is almost a panel-by-panel recreation of this scene from that comic. The art tells it in its own way, but King hasn’t changed a single word of the dialogue, and even the narrative captions overlap pretty heavily with the original.

As for someone going around the world to pick up skills, I buy that. Sometimes the best of the best just can’t be found where you live. Heck, our featured mentor in this issue comes all the way from Titan, noted birthplace of the Legion of Super-Heroes’ Imra Ardeen, aka Saturn Girl.

The thing is, it didn’t need to be a recreation. The way this was put down, it seems like it was meant to look silly. King enjoys ridiculing the ways of the Silver Age just as much as he enjoys tearing its characters apart. You saw it a lot in Strange Adventures, too — a sense of “Ha, look at how silly these stories were. In my opinion, the truth is that they’re all terribly weak human beings.” 

Terribly weak human beings make for fantastic noir storytelling, which is why Human Target lands a lot better for me than some of King’s other work (to say nothing of that art (though readers should note we love the art and do in fact plan to say many things about it)) — but he also leaves a pretty sour taste in your mouth as he tears down characters you love. Characters, and the medium that introduced you to them in the first place.

Dan: There are things about King’s writing that have grated on me over the years. His use of repetition, the hit-you-over-the-head formalism he can bring out in his artists as a result; his meditations on masculinity, his reliance on “Let’s take a thing you like and make it SAAAAAAD.” A lot of those worst instincts have come to bear in this issue, and maybe that’s because we’re dealing with an origin story wrapped in a psychic assault. 

I hated that I could figure out quickly that “Oh, this is all what’s happening in Chance’s head as he passes the salt to J’onn, and he knows just how to win this game.” It’s a tonal interlude that feels disruptive, or, maybe, a book about a dying man was just inevitably going to get sadder.

Take This with a Grain of Salt

Armaan: So, putting aside the silliness of Chance’s origin, and the character assassination of my beloved J’onzz, I loved this issue. If I take away one thing from this series and leave all else, it’s going to be this chapter, because I think it’s a beautiful interpretation of a psychic duel. To put it as simply as possible, instead of coming up with some sort of psychic defense against J’onn, Chance lets J’onn in completely. He lets J’onn become overwhelmed with everything going on in Chance’s mind, while Chance himself uses the established connection to steal the one memory from J’onn that Chance needs: J’onn’s affair with Fire. It looks like Fire’s jumped up the JLI list to Second Most Suspicious!

(For those who missed it, my #1 suspect is Ted Kord’s secretary, Nancy. How does she tie into this issue? No clear way, but I am convinced that she is the one who set Fire up with J’onn in the first place, and manipulated schedules in ways that helped keep their affair a secret.)

Dan: Of course! Let us not lose focus on the true mastermind of these events. Who else is Nancy lording her secret power over? Skeets? G’nort? Rocket Red?

Thank you for bringing the mood back up by reminding me about Nancy.

One thing I’ll say about this issue — even after 30 years of reading X-Men comics, this is probably the best explanation of psychic defenses I’ve ever read. Jean and Emma never taught me this … although why would they, I guess.

Now, psychic assaults aren’t real — unless that’s just what they want me to think and that’s actually what Havana syndrome is — but I do feel like the lessons of this issue could be seen as an extrapolation of King’s CIA training. “This is how you keep the Rooskies from getting your secrets,” that sort of thing.

While we’re doing goofs, I should also confess, not realizing the woman on the cover was Saturn Girl, I thought it might be Ice in a wig and red lipstick and she’d get to do some fun undercover thing this issue, and I was disappointed when she didn’t.

Armaan: It’s also such a beautiful framing device. What’s most precious to Chance? What memories would he try to keep locked up, and who taught him how to do so? I love seeing their identities blur … the glimpses of J’onn’s vulnerability here. Chance’s intimacy with Ice and its contrast to the harsher intimacy J’onn had with Fire. The green. 

It’s such a lovely device that I want other writers to steal it. I want to see other people’s takes on it. Two minds each with their own hauntings, connecting only for the stealing of secrets. It got me. Also loved the quick, self-contained story of Emra — I don’t know if she’s Saturn Girl, or just her great great great great greatsomething grandmother, but her story was a great part of the issue.

Cheap Shots

• Working the credits into a Mexican restaurant menu is Very Good Design.
• King’s next book, Danger Street, may be up our alley after this, but not sure whether it’ll fit into my coverage schedule.
• Speaking of Guy, he’s on the cover to the next issue. Uh-oh.
• Guy Gardner: giving a bad name to green flags all over.
• This isn’t the first time J’onn’s been attracted to a fiery lady, but there was a lot more heart in that tale, despite how it ended.
• Aw man. J’onn’s just got so much sadness in his stories, doesn’t he?

Armaan Babu

Armaan is obsessed with the way stories are told. From video games to theater, TTRPGs to comics, he has written for, and about, them all. He will not stop, actually; believe us, we've tried.

Dan Grote

Dan Grote is the editor and publisher of ComicsXF, having won the site by ritual combat. By day, he’s a newspaper editor, and by night, he’s … also an editor. He co-hosts The ComicsXF Interview Podcast with Matt Lazorwitz. He lives in New Jersey with his wife, two kids and two miniature dachshunds, and his third, fictional son, Peter Paul Winston Wisdom.