Human Target #5 – Review

By Len Wein and Robbie Thompson (Writers), Bruno Redondo (Penciler), Sergio Sandoval (Inker), Chris Sprouse (Penciler) & Karl Story (Inker).

Christopher Chance (AKA the Human Target) is again whisked away to another worldly location, Hong Kong this time, in the hope of finding and procuring more of Morelli’s important ledgers, to help get him safely to Washington D.C. to turn states evidence against his Mafioso family.  To complicate matters, a traitor is finally revealed.

Len Wein and Robbie Thompson have finally given us something else to think about with a traitorous member of Christopher Chance’s group that he is trying to protect and deliver to Washington D.C.  There has been a build for this reveal to happen for the last 1 or 2 issues, through subtle hints dropped in characters conversations to each other, specifically between Chance and Guerrero.  However, with the lack of characters in the book, it’s not enough of a twist, since picking out the traitor is as easy as walking into a pencil factory and finding a pencil.  The rest of the story is pretty status quo for the rest of the books in the series thus far.

The more that I have read, the more I have realized that this is clearly a promotion for the TV series more than anything else.  The book itself reads as a TV episode more than a book, which is just one issue with the writing.  Another problem with the writing is that it’s mostly voice over narration by Christopher Chance.  Now, that alone isn’t necessarily bad and could potentially work, if he was actually thinking about something worthwhile that had to do with the story.  However, his voice over narration is simply explaining what we’re seeing in each panel.  I can see that four goons are behind you.  I don’t need to read you thinking: “Great.  Four goons behind me.”