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.