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.