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.