There’s a Bagel Hole in the Center of Things in Human Target #3

Christopher Chance is a man on a deadline and working to solve a crime that might be unsolvable. Despite his better judgment, he’s falling for his lead suspect, and her violent ex-boyfriend isn’t happy about it. Oh, and that ex? He’s a Green Lantern. Grab a bagel and find out what happens next in Human Target #3, written by Tom King, drawn by Greg Smallwood and lettered by Clayton Cowles for DC Black Label.

Dan Grote: Alright, friend Armaan, the people already know how I feel about this series, but I want to hear from you. What do you think of Human Target so far?

Armaan Babu: So my feelings about Tom King have lately been all over the place. I started to really take note of his work in Grayson, absolutely fell in love with it in The Vision, soured strongly when Heroes in Crisis hit and have had, most recently, a whole mess of feelings in regards to Strange Adventures. 

So it is with trepidation that I began reading this (encouraged in no small part by your newsletter write-up) and found myself enjoying the heck out of it. King’s style of storytelling feels like a perfect fit for this story in particular, and Greg Smallwood? I have no complicated feelings there — Smallwood’s just fantastic.

Guy Gardner: Jerkhole

Dan: Issue #1 of this classic Hollywood detective story gave us our detective, Christopher Chance. Issue #2, our femme fatale, Ice. Issue #3 gives us our jealous, jilted lover, Guy Gardner. Gardner spends the issue stalking Chance, demanding he stay away from “his girl,” despite Ice making clear she no longer wants to be with Guy. This drives the issue’s action through fight scenes, chase scenes, making-your-friend-dress-up-like-Hal-Jordan scenes, etc.

What I wanna know, though, Armaan, is this: Is this Guy too Guy? Like, I know Guy Gardner is the asshole Green Lantern (Well, the other asshole Green Lantern, depending on your feelings about Hal and what comic you’re reading that day), but is he always this much of a jealous, possessive jerk?

Armaan: What this feels like, to me, is Tom King’s Guy. King seems to have a knack for boiling characters down to their most exhausting sides, for a skewed take on realism. Guy’s had a lot of genuinely charming moments over the years, but if you knew a guy like Gardner in real life, he’d be a lot like the person you see in these pages. 

What interests me, and I don’t know how much of an intentional callback this is, is that when we first see Guy this issue, he’s bathed in both green and yellow. We all know where the green comes from, but I was reminded that, for a while, Guy wore Sinestro’s yellow ring and was perhaps at peak asshole there. You could also take the yellow as the Green Lanterns’ impurity, the thing that ultimately corrupted them all from the inside.

Or maybe Smallwood just likes playing with light. Lord knows he’s great at it.

Dan: That’s a great catch. And Gardner certainly has stuff to be afraid of in this comic. Fear of losing “his girl.” Fear of Chance being the better man. Fear of the other Lanterns finding out what he’s been up to and disapproving. Fear of Hal.

Still, I can’t help but wonder: Is Guy putting on a toxic masculinity show for someone else’s benefit, or to hide something? Given this is a whodunnit, we should probably just ask: Did he dun it? I mean, do it? Did he poison Chance?

Armaan: I’ll admit — I haven’t bought into the concept entirely. The JLI might not be paragons of justice, but I’m still finding a hard time thinking any of them did it. That being said, if you look at this from the standpoint of a good ol’ whodunit, then Guy’s the reddest herring you can get. Loud, brash, unlikeable — you want to see him get his comeuppance. He’s also someone carrying a lot of insecurity, and if he’s involved with the crime at all, it’s as a patsy, manipulated by someone who knows just how to work on Guy’s fears and lead him on by his own bravado. What do you think? 

Dan: Oh, if he were any more of a red herring, he’d be the character Red Herring from A Pup Named Scooby-Doo (Kids, ask your parents). That does leave two other suspects this issue, whom we’ll get to.

I’m pretty sure we talked about this when you visited WMQ&A to talk about Kyle Rayner, but you can tell a lot about a Lantern by the constructs he comes up with, or, more accurately, the constructs the artist comes up with for him. Smallwood slaps — that much we’ve established — but what do you think of the constructs he draws for Gardner?

Armaan: There’s a silliness to them, at first; they’re small, they’re just big enough to get the job done — to push Chance around. They seem to be saying, “You’re not worth a bigger construct.” Then we see Guy in a fancy car driving up alongside Chance’s, but finally, when Guy’s serious? Meat hook. All of Guy’s constructs are about one-upmanship. Trying to show he’s a bigger man than Chance, and when that doesn’t work, straight up intimidation. The insecurity is everywhere, which brings me back to the yellow, the fear.

The Guy I’m used to is a jerk partly because he has no idea how to deal with sincerity, and partly because it’s fun. This Guy, here? He’s awash with fear. Every action he does seems to be in the desperate hope to make himself feel less small. Which makes the Hal Jordan appearance later all the more humiliating a scene for Guy.

Booster Is Booster Is Bagels

Dan: The middle third of this comic introduces our comic relief, Booster Gold, and his latest ill-advised name-trading scheme. Before we get too deep into it, though, I need to roll a familiarity check. Armaan, how available are bagels to you?

Armaan: They’re not all that common. You get ’em at upscale cafes that specialize in Western food; a simple overpriced bagel with even more overpriced coffee is usually the best you can hope for. 

Dan: OK, thanks. I’m about to get deep on bagels and wanted to check the temperature of the room first.

So Booster has gone to seemingly stupid but very Booster pains to open a bagel shop in a suburban strip mall. In a Technicolor montage, we see Booster (and his drone sidekick, Skeets) running (and flying) from the hordes as he steals sesame seeds from ancient Babylon, poppy seeds from ancient Sumer and onions from ancient China.

That’s one way to get around the supply crisis, I guess.

But the water — ah, the water — that’s the great secret, the one bit of information he won’t share with Chance.

So, I had to research this. Apparently, conventional wisdom goes that New York City’s water supply is the secret to why the city is so famous for its bagels and pizza crusts. This, of course, has been heavily researched by pedants on the internet, but long story short, the truth is eh, kinda. It’s more likely a combination of what happens to the water as it makes its way from the mountains upstate to the taps on Avenue A and decades of experience shared among the local bagel artisans.

No idea whether this is the case in DC’s New York, or what the quality of a Metropolis bagel is. Either way, Booster Gold ain’t no bagel artisan.

Armaan: Yeah, I don’t know a lot about bagels, but it does seem like the lengths he went through to make them unique wouldn’t actually make that much of a difference. 

What surprises me is how likeable I find this Booster. King wrote Booster before, in a truly horrible Batman arc, and while his silliness is written with equal garishness here … somehow, there’s a charm to it. Maybe it’s the Smallwood charm, giving his smile an earnest “Aw, shucks” appeal to things. The Booster we see here has genuine joy and enthusiasm for life and the thrill of harebrained schemes. 

Maybe it’s just the fact that he could make Ice smile. But I’m getting ahead of myself there. 

Dan: Indeed, we’ll get to her. But again, we must ask the question: Did Booster do it?

Armaan: I know we’re early into the series, and I know I said early on that I don’t buy the idea that any of the JLI’s dunnit, but if I had to put someone on top of the suspect list? It’s Booster. I blame the 52 series for this, for permanently lodging the idea in my head that there’s a lot more to Booster than meets the eye. Once the idea has been floated that his idiocy is just a front for a more serious mind, then any idiocy he commits looks like a clever ruse. And if he’s lying about how much of a dolt he is … what else is he lying about?

Dan: A bagel shop that only uses time-displaced ingredients and doesn’t pre-toast its product is a helluva front to cover up a murder. But again, it’s a very Booster plot.

Ice Is Nice

Dan: Which brings us back around to suspect #3: the femme fatale. Ice. Tora Olafsdotter. The pretty platinum blonde who’s been leading Chance around for two issues, flirting with him, setting up his interviews for him, seeking to clear the names of her cohorts in the JLI, but especially her best friend, Fire. Armaan, I’m not gonna waste time throat-clearing on this one. What do you think Ice’s deal is?

Armaan: So I, at this point, have no clue just how involved Ice is with Chance’s time-delayed muder. What I can say with absolute certainty is that she’s not only going to betray him somewhere down the line — she’s going to break his heart to do so.

But you can’t break a man’s heart unless he’s fallen in love with you first.

There’s an element of fantasy to noir tales like this — you want to be in the protagonist’s shoes. You want to feel like you’re brave, witty and composed in the face of life’s hopelessness. You want your flaws to feel like badassery, like survival mechanisms in a cynical world, and not just simple failings. You want to be punished for dreaming, for hoping, for loving, because the world’s hurt you before and you’d like to be able to handle it with style this time … but you want to dream, hope and love first. 

I don’t know Ice’s role in this mystery, but her role in the story is fascinating to me. The sweetness of her eyes and smile, the twinkle of joy in them, the flirtatious hints she throws around and the breathtaking beauty of her and Chance’s first kiss — she’s someone you want to make happy. To enjoy being happy with. All of Chance’s alarms are going off — he knows how dangerous she is, he knows she’s clouding his judgment — but time and time again, he chooses to lean into that sense of joy she brings him.

Something is growing here, in Chance’s heart. It’s not quite love, but it will break his heart all the same. 

What I can’t quite tell, yet, is whether Ice is planning to hurt him, or if that’s simply going to be an unfortunate side effect of some deeper trouble she’s found herself in. What do you reckon?

Dan: She’s got people she cares about whom she’s going to protect. That comes first. But if she can have a Chance at love along the way … SEE WHAT I  DID THERE … more’s the better.

But yeah, she’s gonna break that poor man’s heart on his way to the grave, no diggity.

Cheap Shots

• “From the #@%@&# Darkseid to the Kite Man” is peak Tom King reminding you he’s Tom King.
• The calendar on the back cover has some blood on it now. Can’t tell whether that’s from Chance coughing or his fight with Guy. Either way, nice detail.
• Nothing bad should ever happen to Luigi. Which means something bad probably will.
• Guy Gardner’s discarded Lantern Ring is a real Chekhov’s gun, and it seems pretty clear it’s going to have a part to play down the line.
• Smallwood’s patches of sunlight drawn across the pages are mesmerizing. This has been true for three issues, but this is our first review, so worth mentioning.
• Next suspect on the list: Blue Beetle.

Armaan Babu

Dan Grote

Dan Grote is the editor-in-chief 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 WMQ&A: 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 Winston Wisdom.