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.