Justice League #23.3: Dial E – Review

By: Too many to list—check out the review.

The Story: I’m holding out for a villain—wait…

The Review: I was both surprised and heartened by the inclusion of the Dial H property to the Villains Month campaign.  It wasn’t just that the series was short-lived; it was also largely disconnected from the DCU despite being ostensibly placed in it.  There just hasn’t been time or opportunity for any part of the series’ mythos to stick with the general DC readership.  Yet here it is, alongside icons like Lex Luthor and Joker and other major icons.

Surely that speaks to the respect deservingly accorded to China Miéville’s work on Dial H while it lasted.  In many ways, this one-shot feels like an admiring tribute to Miéville’s boldness and seemingly endless inventiveness as a writer, with page after page of brand-new characters and superpowers, each more outrageous than the last.  Some require no more than their punny name to sum up their entire being (e.g. SufferKate and Goad), while others take a little more effort to fully appreciate.  Decalcomaniac, for example, looks ridiculously useless at first glance, up until the point he begins smearing the “paint” of his victims, rendering them painfully disfigured.

Dial H #15 – Review

By: China Miéville (story), Alberto Ponticelli (pencils), Dan Green (inks), Richard & Tanya Horie (colors)

I’m feeling the pinch of every penny these days, so when the cashier at my comic book shop scanned this issue, I immediately noticed the extra two bucks that rang up.  Fortunately, I did not make a scene in the middle of the shop (much to the cashier’s relief, I’m sure) as I quickly saw that I was paying the extra money for the extra pages of a supersized finale issue.  Miéville’s Dial H is certainly as worthy of the honor as Geoff Johns’ Green Lantern.

An honor, but also a necessity.  Even though this is Miéville’s last hurrah, he can’t just have fun with it; there’s a lot of information he has to get through first.  Had the series lasted longer, he no doubt would have unloaded all the necessary exposition little by little, so that by the time we arrived at the big climax, the only work left would be to tie everything up with one final revelation and a heartfelt resolution.  We do get all those things here as well, but they feel truncated and abridged, obviously edited to fit altogether in the span of one issue.

Dial H #14 – Review

By: China Miéville (story), Alberto Ponticelli (pencils), Dan Green (inks), Richard & Tanya Horie (colors)

The Story: If you can dial an apocalypse, can someone dial an eleventh-hour save?

The Review: As we get ever close to this title’s demise, I should say that for anyone hoping for a last-minute stay, a sudden surge of loyalty from the fans—well, this isn’t Chuck, so don’t expect it.  Turning to some relatively hard numbers, although Dial H gained a rank last month, it also simultaneously lost about 400 buyers, bringing the grand total of June readers to somewhere around 11,900—solid figures for Vertigo or Image, but hardly for a Big Two book.

All we can really do now is cherish however many issues we have left.  I admit I’m not quite as wholeheartedly attached to this series the way I was with, say, Xombi or even Saucer Country, but I am deeply disappointed to see it go just as it’s starting to reach its prime.  The introduction of the dimensional wanderers, the Dial Bunch, opened the floodgates of story possibilities, adding half a dozen different dialers and an infinite supply of settings for Miéville to play in.  All of it will have to go to waste now, unless Vertigo decides to pick up the series itself.*

Dial H #13 – Review

By: China Miéville (story), Alberto Ponticelli (pencils), Dan Green (inks), Richard & Tanya Horie (colors)

The Story: Parents really need to stop taking their kids on shortcuts through dark alleys.

The Review: Well, you can’t say DC didn’t give this series a fair shake.  While I do find it interesting that Dial H is getting canned even though it seems to perform just as well or better than, say, Batwing,* I can’t deny that for a distinctly oddball little title, it’s lasted quite a lot longer from a mainstream publisher than anyone would expect.  It’s just a shame that Dial H must end just as it’s finally reached its full potential.

Obviously, though, the title had to navigate several humps before it got to this point, and it probably couldn’t afford that kind of growing pains.  You had Nelson, a brand-new protagonist who didn’t exactly fall into the usual standard of superhero.  Dial H also seemed determined to chug along on the power of its own concept, without much help from bigger-selling guests.  And then there was Miéville’s idiosyncratic writing style, which was (at least at first) too unusual and indirect for a mainstream audience to appreciate right away.

Dial H #12 – Review

By: China Miéville (story), Alberto Ponticelli (pencils), Dan Green (inks), Richard & Tanya Horie, Allen Passalaqua (colors)

The Story: Don’t be fooled by the curtain he’s wearing for a cape—this guy means business.

The Review: Although the potential of this series has been there from the start, only in the last few issues has it really developed into something special.  Miéville has slowly tightened up his freewheeling writing style; Roxie and Nelson have grown quite admirably into their roles as dual protagonists; and the story of the dial itself has become more focused and comprehensible, revealing what untapped riches continue to reside within the concept.

For a while, this series ran almost entirely on the power of the dial’s mystery, but now that we’ve got a clearer picture of where it comes from and how it works, all that’s left is to put it to some interesting uses.  Roxie and Nelson had their fun playing hero, but Earth’s pretty well taken care of already by an ever-growing crowd of folks with dependably consistent power sets.  The strength of the dial is its endless variety, and it needs more creative challenges than the bread-and-butter criminals and villains of this planet can provide.

Dial H #11 – Review

By: China Miéville (story), Alberto Ponticelli (pencils), Dan Green (inks), Richard & Tanya Horie (colors)

The Story: Not even the fastest man alive can escape a woman’s “We need to talk.”

The Review: Although quite a few other momentous events occurred last issue, the one that probably lingered on our minds after reading was Roxie and Nelson, in their dialed personas, engaging in some tonsil wrestling.  When this kind of thing happens in fiction, it usually goes one of two ways: the couple breaks out of their lip-lock and then part ways, stammering awkward excuses as they do, or they wind up doing the nasty and fight over it afterwards.

And it looks like for Roxie and Nelson, they will have to go through the post-coital conflict, because contrary to Nelson’s insistent denials, Roxie assures us, “We did.”  It’s a pretty funny scene with no hard jokes, the humor coming from Nelson’s increasing agitation in perfect contrast to Roxie’s businesslike demeanor.  It’s easy to see where their differing reactions come from.  Roxie, a child of the free-loving sixties, finds their liaison unusual, but otherwise natural; Nelson can’t get over the fact that he did it with a “wrinkled old…”

“Go on,” Roxie says with ominous calm.

Dial H #10 – Review

By: China Miéville (story), Alberto Ponticelli (pencils), Dan Green (inks), Richard & Tanya Horie (colors)

The Story: If you’re in trouble and you’ve already dialed a hero, who’s next on contact list?

The Review: In the last few months, I’ve given DC a hard time about the way it carries on some of its titles, and it’s only fair that I give praise where it’s due as well.  So kudos for allowing a totally oddball, quirky series like Dial H to go on for nearly a year (and still no cancellation announcement!) when so many others have gotten axed.  Although it may not seem so, this title may be one of the most important works DC is producing right now.

Now, that’s a pretty grand sort of statement which needs some clarification.  Dial H represents a fairly major evolutionary step in what a mainstream comic can be.  It’s a title about superheroes, and yet at the same time, it’s not.  It challenges your typical superhero conventions and in doing so, it makes you re-examine the nature of superheroes as both fictional archetypes and a genre.  To have all this going on in a comic that sits side-by-side with Batman is quite a big deal.

Dial H #9 – Review

By: China Miéville (story), Alberto Ponticelli (pencils), Dan Green (inks), Tanya & Richard Horie (colors)

The Story: America may have Superman, but Canada has…er…never mind.

The Review: With all these cancellations in the DC line going on, it’s made me naturally nervous for all the oddball titles out there, the ones that aren’t exactly top fifty, but which provide DC with some real diversity.  And it doesn’t get any odder or more diverse than Dial H, which continues to feel as fresh and ambitious as when it first launched.  While its fate is by no means secure, at least the publishing powers saw fit to keep it alive for a while longer.

Good thing for any of us who hope that Dial H signals an open door to more unconventional titles in the mainstream press later down the line.  Good thing, too, for Miéville, who clearly has a long-term plan in place for the series.  We’re nearly a year into the title’s life, and the focal point of the story, the Dial itself, still remains an enigma.  This issue doesn’t even offer a hint of new information as to the device’s origins, but it does indicate we’ll find out more soon.

Dial H #8 – Review

By: China Miéville (story), Alberto Ponticelli (pencils), Dan Green (inks), Tanya & Richard Horie (colors)

The Story: If you want to survive this, whatever you do, don’t call them “Hosers.”

The Review: Tom Bondurant of Grumpy Old Fan made an interesting observation about DC’s current line of comics, but on Dial H in particular.  Lamenting the lack of any real deviation from the superhero genre in the new 52, he admits that Miéville’s pet title is different, but still involves superheroes.  This is true, but also misses the point to some extent.  Miéville has used superheroes as a device to tell his story, but they aren’t necessarily the focal point of the series.

After all, Nelson and Roxie don’t really spend their time fighting villains and saving lives—not anymore, anyway, or at least not that we can see.  The heart of the title lies elsewhere, in the mysteries of the H-Dial and what it means for humankind.  Because Dial H goes through a an ever-shifting menagerie of superhero personalities, our attention latches on to the only constants in the story: Nelson and Roxie, whom you’d hesitate before describing as superheroes—right?

Dial H #7 – Review

By: China Miéville (story), David Lapham (art), Tanya & Richard Horie (colors)

The Story: Nothing like stepping off a plane, seeing the sights, and confronting a secret religion.

The Review: It’s still way too early to make a prediction about Dial H’s legacy, but I think one day, comics connoisseurs will flip through the holographic bins in their 3D shop and amidst all the virtual back-issues, through the slog of nearly all of DC’s relaunched titles (and by then, DC will be in the early throes of its fifth relaunch and known simply as Batman Comics), Dial H will pop out as one of the more courageous, distinctive, and ambitious titles of the time.

Simply put, Miéville does things in this series that even the other ostensibly avant-garde titles (Swamp Thing and Animal Man and its ilk) in the DC stable haven’t tried.  Nowhere is that more apparent than in the choice of leads.  In what other comic can an elderly lady and a middle-aged man, out of shape and unemployed, ever be the heroes again?  How many writers can even make that dynamic work?

Dial H #6 – Review

By: China Miéville (story), David Lapham (art), Tanya & Richard Horie (colors)

The Story: Sometimes the only thing left to do on a slow news day is to take a dump.

The Review: There are plenty of legitimate criticisms of superhero as a genre, one of which is how often it tends to fixate on the perfectly proportioned and the beautiful as heroes.  If the average Plain Jane makes an appearance, it’s usually through a supporting character, while full-on uggos get relegated to villains (even Deadpool and Jonah Hex were studs once).  You don’t need to look much further than that to support a theory of superficiality in comics.

Though I don’t see a break in that trend anytime soon, this title goes comfortingly against the grain by at once starring an out-of-shape loser of a man and an elderly spinster.  The dynamic between the two, as you can imagine, is like nothing you’ve seen in comics before, at least, not in recent memory and certainly not in any mainstream book.  Strange as the pairing may seem, Miéville establishes Nelson and Roxie as viable leads and heroes, doing right by us commoners.

Dial H #5 – Review

By: China Miéville (story), Mateus Santolouco (art), Tanya & Richard Horie (colors)

The Story: Cheating an old woman out of heads or tails?  That’s the hero you get without a dial.

The Review: It really is unfortunate that Zero Month interfered with the timing of this arc, as Miéville had just started developing momentum on what had up to #4 been a pretty obtuse story.  Not that #0 was bad or had no value—au contraire.  We learned a fairly valuable point about the nature of the Dial and how its powers work, and undoubtedly that will tie into Miéville’s bigger plans for the series.  Still, it interrupted an arc at its climax, and that is never a good thing.

Anyway, I guess it’s more graceful for me to say that I’m happy we’ve come back to the story at hand.  Even though I still haven’t read a lick of Miéville’s literary output to this day (much to Alex’s chagrin, I’m sure), I’ve always recognized his talent.  Up until #4, though, I thought his ambitions had run a bit far afield of what a mainstream comic could really achieve.  Yet against all odds, he’s managed to deliver a fully-formed mystery that you can actually follow.

Dial H #0 – Review

By: China Miéville (story), Riccardo Burchielli (art), Tanya & Richard Horie (colors)

The Story: How do you dial up a hero when there’s no dial?  Talk about call waiting…

The Review: Like all of the “Second Wave” titles, Dial H could really use an origin issue.  Not so much for our hero, but for his means of heroism.  While the H-Dial has always been a pretty fantastic storytelling device, a shortcut for writers to indulge their boyhood imaginings, how it operates and where it comes from has never been clearly understood.  Miéville’s abstract and surreal contributions to the series haven’t helped any, either.

But plenty of commenters have assured me Miéville would get around to answers sooner than later, and this issue proves them right.  By its end, you can’t deny he’s dropped quite a few revelations on your lap regarding the nature of the H-Dial.  That said, the truth, as in any good mystery, only invites more questions and vagaries, meaning Miéville still has some ground to cover before we can claim to know what’s going on.

Dial H #4 – Review

By: China Miéville (story), Mateus Santolouco (art), Tanya & Richard Horie (colors)

The Story: Apparently, it doesn’t take a hero or a dial to dial a hero.

The Review: Last month, I expressed some concern that for all the ambitious, high-concept, clearly ubiquitous material Miéville has been writing, it might come to lead to a whole lot of big ideas with little payoff.  Miéville fans quickly assured me that things will eventually fall into place, that this author knows what he’s doing, even when the story seems haphazard and somewhat obscure.

And indeed, things have fallen into place, so I’m mightily chagrined at having doubted that they never would.  All the loose, disparate elements of the arc finally reveal some clear connections to each other in a way I didn’t think possible.  Of course, it takes quite a bit of creative, out-of-this-world explanation to link a ghetto-talking reptile alien, a doctor/occultist, and a fat dude with a magic telephone dial together, but Miéville manages to do it, which is worth praise in itself.

Dial H #3 – Review

By: China Miéville (story), Mateus Santolouco (art), Tanya & Richard Horie (colors)

The Story: More proof that the telephone is a conspiracy to bring down civilization.

The Review: No matter where you go or what you do, you’ll always run into elitists.  These folks can’t help separating the high-brow from the low-brow, and making you feel like a Philistine if you don’t make those same distinctions.  In the world of comics, these people tend to refer to anything involving superheroes as “mainstream” (said in a condescending tone).  They’ll see the entertainment value, but it won’t live up to their lofty ideals of what comics should be.

And you know, they’re not entirely wrong.  No one can deny that the primary appeal of the superhero genre is all about escapism.  We gravitate towards particular titles sometimes because of the depth of their stories, but mostly because we resonate with those characters and want to embody them in some way.  Dial H taps into that escapist quality, allowing its protagonist to fulfill our secret dreams to be better than ourselves.

Dial H #2 – Review

By: China Miéville (story), Mateus Santolouco (art), Tanya & Richard Horie (colors)

The Story: The Iron Snail may not be Spider-Man, but he has bigger guns.

The Review: Much as I enjoy this series, I always have this niggling worry in the back of my mind reading it.  Dial H just isn’t your typical mainstream comic book, by which I mean it doesn’t have any of the words, “Bat,” “Green Lantern,” “Avengers,” “X,” or “Wolverine” in it.  Maybe I’ve been traumatized by the sad fates of T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents and Xombi, but it always feels like the most interesting and novel titles end up first in line for the axe.

Then I remember that this is a new DCU we’re working with, one where Swamp Thing, Animal Man, and Wonder Woman are solid hits, and I relax a little.  Granted, Miéville only has a couple issues under his belt now, and it’ll take quite a few more than that to determine if Dial H will hit the same ambitious bar as its peers, but the chances look pretty good.  With its quirky style and clever concepts, it definitely is quite unlike anything else on the market right now.

Dial H #1 – Review

By: China Miéville (story), Mateus Santolouco (art), Tanya & Richard Horie (colors)

The Story: When there’s something strange in the neighborhood—who ya gonna call?

The Review: Novelists who take on comic book writing can be very polarizing figures.  You have to remember these people come from a background where they have complete creative control, where they have the luxury of time and several hundred pages to explore any minute detail they please, where they can confidently employ any prose style they think is appropriate.  Most of these advantages are sorely lacking in the mainstream comics world.

Author Miéville seems well aware of the hurdles he has to deal with in this medium.  He knows the right balance of dialogue and narrative to keep the story moving, and he knows how to use both to convey information and character efficiently.  At times, his stream-of consciousness ramblings can’t get a tad disjointed and confusing, but when you have a narrator who is in fact incredibly disoriented and confused by what’s happening to him, this is no sin.