Dial H #6

"Offensive Content"
written by China Miéville
art by David Lapham

"Offensive Content" is Dial H's rainy-day story, a brief respite from the main action as Nelson and Roxie are trapped inside for the day.  Inevitably, some heroes are more useful than others, but sometimes a "hero" is a danger or a catastrophic embarrassment.  Nelson dials up Chief Mighty Arrow, an obstinate flat caricature of an American Indian chief armed with magic arrows and powered by a magic feathered headdress.  He's a confection of pop culture racist fantasy and ethnic reductivism.  In artist David Lapham's fine imagination, Chief Mighty Arrow cuts a handsome figure with elegant lines and strong features, but his ruddy complexion and parodically mangled English make him little more than a crude stereotype.  And so, he doesn't get to leave the house.

Roxie has accumulated a photo-album of such heroes:  her Refusenik Dossier, a catalog of heroes she refuses to employ even under the guise of Manteau.  Some are racially insensitive—Golliwog—some sexually obscene—Captain Priapus, who probably wouldn't fit under Manteau's cloak anyway—and some historically crude—SS Ilsa.  Miéville's vision for Dial H has always been socially interested, and "Offensive Content" is an opportunity to ruminate on the medium's sometimes unsavory history and blunt, unthinking insensitivity.

But as thoughtful and provocative as his perspective might be, it's also a somewhat unsettling portrait of the psychological risks of dialing.  Nelson incrementally and unwillingly starts becoming someone else.  His irritable impatience might be his own, but his sexism in demanding food from Roxie while he watches TV and his racially callous use of phrases like "heap big" surprise even himself.  He is retrospectively ashamed, but even in the short dialing period, Nelson has some minor difficulty keeping himself himself.  It's a danger he's far too quick to dismiss despite Roxie's sager warnings.

Superheroes:  Chief Mighty Arrow (and his winged horse "Wingy"), Doctor Cloaca, SS Ilsa, Captain Priapus, Kid Torture, Golliwog, ElectroCutie, The Prime Mover, Cock-a-Hoop, Tugboat, [unnamed robot superhero]

[January 2013]