The Human Target is the name of two separate characters created by DC Comics. Both are bodyguards who specialize in assuming the identities and taking the places of their employers when they are targeted by those who would harm them.
The first character to use the "Human Target" title was Fred Venable, created by Edmond Hamilton and Sheldon Moldoff. This character would only make one appearance, in Detective Comics #201 (November 1953), before the concept was dropped.
The concept would later be revived with a new version of the character. This Human Target is Christopher Chance, the most widely known incarnation. Created by Len Wein and Carmine Infantino, he first appeared in Action Comics #419 (December 1972), later appearing in Batman titles such as The Brave and the Bold and Detective Comics.
The character received a one-shot in 1991, followed by a four-issue limited series in 1999. An ongoing series written by Peter Milligan was published under the Vertigo Comics imprint in 2003. In 2021, a 12-issue limited series by Tom King and Greg Smallwood was released under the DC Black Label imprint.
In July 1992, ABC produced a live-action series, with Chance portrayed by Rick Springfield. A second series premiered in January 2010 on Fox, starring Mark Valley, and ran for two seasons. The character later made guest appearances in the Arrowverse television series Arrow, portrayed by Wil Traval.
Human Target appears in:
- Human Target Special #1 (1991)
- Human Target Vol 1 (1999)
- Human Target Vol 2 (2003—2005)
- Human Target Vol 3 (2010—2010)
- The Human Target (2021—2023)
Human Target provides examples of:
- Badass in a Nice Suit: Chance is always wearing a suit.
- Becoming the Mask: Chance doesn't just pretend to be his target, but actually becomes them. He thoroughly researches his target and gets to know them better than they know themselves. So anything he does while playing them, the target would have done too.
- Body Double: If you fear assassination and offer the right money (or at least the right thrill), Christopher Chance will assume your identity and deal with the threat personally. The Vertigo series establishes that Chance has a pathological hatred of himself that motivates him to assume others’ identities.
- Fake Faith Healer: Chance is hired at one point to impersonate a messianic young preacher who reportedly does miracles. Originally this was just to give the real preacher some time to think after his girlfriend was kidnapped, but it becomes quite like one of Chance’s usual jobs very quickly.
- Fights Like a Normal: Regardless of the origin of his impersonation abilities, Chance still fights like any other Badass Normal does and is very good at it.
- Frozen Face: The film fan who stalks and threatens Frank White has a face half paralyzed in a wide-eyed grimace on one side.
- Human Shield: What Chance basically does for a living is disguising as his target and being 'killed' in their place.
- Identity Amnesia: A large part of Human Target.
- Kill and Replace: The final arc of the ongoing series is about Tom attempting to kill Chance and steal his life once and for all, just as Chance is about to retire and get married.
- Latex Perfection: His ability to impersonate others is to superhuman levels. He can perfectly imitate anyone, wearing a mask of his target so that no one can tell the difference. He even appears to be able to change his physical build and his facial hair to match who he's impersonating.
- Loss of Identity: A major theme of the ongoing series. Chance's onetime apprentice Tom McFadden wasn't cut out for this gig because he gradually lost all memory of who he is, leaving a piece of himself behind when he shed a persona after a job. There's a scene where he struggles in vain to name a detail about his history or personality that he can't see from looking in the mirror.
- Magic Plastic Surgery: Christopher Chance, has made a career of impersonating people with dangerous lives. While most of his transformations are achieved through makeup and prosthetics, he did go under the knife at one point to become the exact likeness of movie producer Frank White, intending to settle into the identity after Frank's death due to falling for his wife. This isn't undone until a good while into the ongoing series, and Chance notes the irony that he has to spend a lot of time and effort to look like himself until then.
- Master of Disguise: Chance's main skill.
- Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: While impersonating a faith healer and trying to rouse a young girl from a coma, Chance is attacked by a hitman who sprays the room with an assault rifle. Chance dispatches the assailant with a gun from his bodyguard, with one of the stray bullets ricocheting twice and hitting the girl in the femur, shocking her into consciousness. This becomes a turning point in the job; Chance now believes he can perform miracles up to and including raising the dead.
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Recursive Adaptation: DC Comics used to have a title called Human Target, about Master of Disguise Christopher Chance who would disguise himself as people whose lives were in danger in order to draw out their attacker. This later got an In Name Only TV adaptation, where Chance isn't a Master of Disguise, he's just an undercover bodyguard. DC Comics have released a new Human Target comic based on this. - Redeeming Replacement: This was the intention of Chance retiring into the identity of Frank White, who we come to learn wasn’t the upstanding citizen we’d first thought.
- Sherlock Scan: Chance's attention to detail, necessary to assume the identities of his clients convincingly, allows him to pull one in the Final Cut OGN, spending a short time in a dead man's apartment and deducing his background and recent activities.
- Split Personality: The ongoing starts off with Chance, having taken the identity of late Hollywood movie producer Frank White full-time at the end of the last story, facing threats from an increasingly bold, obsessive stalker. At the climax of the issue, Chance discovers his stalker was... himself. His subconscious desire to shock his original personality out of "hiding" caused him to create an alternate identity to endanger himself and his wife. She doesn't quite believe that he had no control over this and leaves him. He cries when he finds the mask of the stalker's face — as he puts it, he's so good be fools himself.
- 10-Minute Retirement: Chance's retirement at the end of Final Cut is undone at the end of the first issue of the ongoing series, after no more than a year had passed in-story.