Dial H #0

"Sundial H for Hero"
written by China Miéville
art by Riccardo Burchielli

DC's "Zero Month" couldn't have come at a more inconvenient time for Dial H, since it interrupts the series just before its last issue in its first story-arc.  That said, "Sundial H for Hero" capitalizes on the mythology-building potential of, if not an "origin" story, an early chapter in its history to introduce some very compelling and substantial twists.

Laodice is a particularly fine protagonist, one that could easily carry her own mini-series.  Under attack by what at first seems to be an invading army but turns out to be a giant Middle Eastern dragon Mušhuššu made famous by the Ishtar Gate of Babylon, she uses the mysterious sundial to call up a hero to battle the beast.  Dialing one of the ten symbols each of four days at noon, despite being derided as crazy by her fellow citizens, she becomes Bumper Carla, a fierce, brassy heroine in jeans, polka dots, and an electrified bumper car, who defeats the devastating dragon.

And that's only half the story.  Years later Stratonice, a girl during the dragon attacks, returns from her travels seeking additional knowledge about the mysterious dial that saved their home.  She returns without success, but she attracted attention with her questions and arrives back home to find a strange prisoner asking about the Dialer.  Unfortunately, in the melee with the dragon, the Dial was inadvertently destroyed.  Thinking the stranger an assassin or a wizard who would be enraged with this knowledge, Laodice keeps her secret and refuses to speak to the prisoner.

The real surprise, however, is the arrival of Bumper Carla herself.  Before this, the Dials presumably had manifested superpowers for their users out of nothing.  Confronted with the very hero she dialed hurling accusations of theft and murder, Laodice—and, by extension, we readers—realizes that dialed powers are borrowed, or perhaps stolen, powers.  The consequences of Laodice saving her own people from the dragon is that many in Carla's world were killed.  To avenge them, Bumper Carla kills Laodice and willingly faces banishment to the "still zone" by Slim, unconvinced that her accusations of spirit theft could possibly be true.  In one deft swoop, Miéville has exponentially enhanced the stakes of his series.

Superheroes:  Bumper Carla, Dead Hood, Arrowmaid, The Needler, Power Squirrel, Nuclear Punch, Slim

[November 2012]