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.

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Best of the past week: American Vampire #26 – This issue was a real treat.  For one thing, it introduced me to a wonderful fill-in artist in Roger Cruz.  I’d love to see more of his work after this AV stint is finished.  Seriously….how is Vertigo able to continually find guys of this caliber to fill in when most comic series are only able to get a B-lister (at best)?  The story is also really compelling.  Scott Snyder’s story about a black vampire in 1950’s Alabama has just enough depth and complexity to be interesting if you scratch the surface, but not require you read the comic 10 times and still be confused or have to wait 5 years for the pay-off.  Runner-up: FF #17 (for accomplishing the rare feat of making me laugh at a comic book).