Human Target Syndrome: Generic TV Pitches For Our Favorite Comics

 

 

Today at ComicsAlliance, I’m reacting to Fox’s Human Target TV show, which took a comic with an extremely distinctive theme and boiled it down to something about as generic as it could possibly be.

To be fair to the show, the episodes I’ve caught have been pretty fun and enjoyably over the top (of the two episodes I’ve seen, one involved Christopher Chance jumping a motorcycle over armed guards as he escaped from the Russian embassy, then getting involved in a high-speed wreck with no ill effects whatsoever), but they’re also stripped of the smart, complex themes of losing one’s identity that made the Peter Milligan series one of my favorite comics ever. Fun as it is, it’s got nothing to do with the source material.

So to that end, I’m pitching other shows that take the “high” out of “high concept!” Where would Batman be without the vengeance? Where would Wolverine be if he was just pretty okay at what he did? Where would the Unknown Soldier be if everyone knew who he was?

Probably sitting on a sweet 10PM time slot. Enjoy!

23 thoughts on “Human Target Syndrome: Generic TV Pitches For Our Favorite Comics

  1. It’s a shame that Human Target is probably going to end up as a one-season wonder, because Chi McBride and Jackie Earle Haley in the same cast is more than enough of a selling point for me.

    Plus it’s understandable that they wouldn’t want to try the master-of-disguise theme off a TV budget. That could end really, really badly.

  2. Plus it’s understandable that they wouldn’t want to try the master-of-disguise theme off a TV budget. That could end really, really badly.

    Well, except that it has worked before, both in a “Human Target” series back in the ’90s (which I, at least, remember as being at least half-decent, regardless of what Wikipedia says), and even before that in two separate “Mission: Impossible” series.

    Sure, trying to use TV-budget effects to directly replicate Chris Chance’s skills by making up the star to look like the target would probably look bad, but earlier series have shown that you just need enough effects to show him getting made up, and then the target’s actor plays “Chance in disguise.”

    Which, I suspect, is actually why they didn’t go with disguises: They didn’t want to shell out for Mark “Dead Traitor Coma Boyfriend Agent from Fringe” Valley, only to have him sit out half the episode while a guest star plays his role. Still, as you say David, McBridge and Haley constitute value enough for me to watch the show despite my disappointment at their having ditched the main character’s canonical schtick.

  3. You have a point, but after the cratering failure that was Dollhouse, I think Fox might be justifiably wary of a show where the main character is somebody else every week.

  4. “Well, except that it has worked before, both in a “Human Target” series back in the ’90s (which I, at least, remember as being at least half-decent, regardless of what Wikipedia says), and even before that in two separate “Mission: Impossible” series.”

    You forgot The A-Team and Hannibal Smith. That’s 8 points off.

  5. Funny article. And it is true that it has almost nothing to do with the comic book but I do think you have to forgive a show where the first episode has a pretty badass fight on a train and the second one has a passenger airplane that is turned upside down and then gets stuck that way.

  6. Did they maybe base the series on the pre-Milligan Human Target, since the IP has been around since 1972? This is an actual question, not snarkiness, because I have neither seen the show nor read the original comics.

  7. MaxtotheMax- I despise you. Not for anything you wrote (especially since I missed whatever happened yesterday). But only for the regret that I did not thing of “Godzilla slam-dunk” first.
    I guess I’ll have to settle for good old Dirtbike Frankenstein Sketch.

    And before anyone goes nuts, the day job I was referring to above IS Comics Alliance, not the comic shop. It’s a compliment.

    Could this be officially the “age of explaining punch-lines”???

  8. Did they maybe base the series on the pre-Milligan Human Target, since the IP has been around since 1972? This is an actual question, not snarkiness, because I have neither seen the show nor read the original comics.

    The Milligan series is the one that brought the property back into the public eye, though. Well, in as much as good reviews in Entertainment Weekly and some Eisner nominations can be considered the “public eye.”

    Even so, the taking-the-place-of-the-target element is a part of the original Human Target as well.

  9. “”The Legion of Super-Heroes, except that they’re not in the future and they don’t have super-powers. Instead, they’re a gang of friendly neighborhood kids with relatable hobbies (Chameleon Boy’s an amateur herpetologist, Saturn Girl has an interest in mid-size sedans of the late ’90s) that learn life lessons at RJ Brande Junior High.”

    Hey, I loved that tribute issue to Curt Swan in the LOSH books!

  10. That Superman crack was hilarious.

    Being unfamiliar with the original comic (like most viewers, I suspect), I don’t really feel anything from the loss of Chance’s schtick. I don’t think the show really fits the name or the premise, since in only one episode has he taken the place of the target (when he stepped in for his dead friend), but it’s an entertaining hour of TV each week and it won me over in the pilot with Jackie Earle Haley’s matter of fact discussion with the two goons about how he was going to kill them in their sleep.

  11. I’d watch that version of Preacher, but only if they made every single situation as inappropriate as humanly possible.

  12. Yeah, it seems weird that they would do a remake of something that’s never been a huge hit (as a tv show OR comic), but I’m liking the new series, which is pleasantly old-fashioned with it’s mix of action, light comedy, and “done-in-one” stories.

  13. The Question, only he’s a cop instead of a vigilante ex-newsman, he went to prison on trumped up charges rather than almost dying, and he doesn’t wear a cool faceless mask with a fedora and trenchcoat!

    Wait. They did that, and called it “Life”. And it was pretty good. Huh.

    (Seriously, I’d bet money that Life was, for its two year run, in large part inspired by the Denny O’Neil Question)

  14. I was at the Human Target panel at Comicon (well la-de-da!) and the producer and writer discussed the disguise aspect – it was basically that they wanted to keep it as contemporary and realistic as possible (relative term, I know), and there was no convincing way that a person could have the technology to make those perfect human masks – remember in the old Human Target show it was a big machine that compressed around Springfield’s head and built the mask around him? So they opted to go the Pretender-type route.

    I think it works.

  15. Eh. It may not be quite the same as the comic- which I’m not sure would make for a better or worse show- but the Human Target TV series has been pretty awesome so far. It’s like a weekly hour-long Bond movie, only with more ridiculous premises. And if it gets people into the comics (smart move by DC launching a miniseries based on the TV series and a new trade of the Milligan run at the same time), all the better.

  16. Also, I get the feelings that the themes of loss of identity (or by only being defined by what you do, not who you really are) are coming. They’ve certainly be foreshadowed, and I think it’s a fair decision that the exploding super train takes priority.