Dial H #1

It should be fitting that my first review is the issue that finally prompted me to enter a comic book store.  This is not to say that I didn't already have a previous if sporadic history reading graphic novels and second-hand comics runs, but it is my first attempt at reading comics in their native medium—a monthly serial—and as such deserves the inaugural post.

"What's the 411?"
written by China Miéville
art by Mateus Santolouco

Quite simply, exceptional.  Nelson Jent—an unhealthy, recently dumped, out-of-work schlub—is about as common a superhero protagonist as Dial H is a comic book premise: a phone booth that temporarily transforms its user into an unpredictable heroic alter-ego.  But it's an idea that's only as good as the superhero personae it dials up, and it's here that Miéville distances himself from the creative pack.  Already, in one issue, he dreams up two—Boy Chimney and Captain Lachrymose—whose absurdity is tempered by their thematic and narrative efficiency.  They may be weird, but they are appropriately weird, as if conjured up by Nelson's own chain-smoking, lugubrious disposition.

As the series' central character, Nelson's self-pity and depressive malaise make him difficult to like, but his quick wit and his desire to make things right with his friend Darren make it possible to see his potential, a man who in the words of Darren "used to be interested in everything," a character through whom we readers can experience Miéville's world.  And it's a world dense with mysteries already:  the  dial itself, how it works, and where it came from; the identity and plans of the shadowy X.N.; the empty woman; strange comas at the local hospital; the seated and caged masked creature; and another hero, maybe, named Manteau.

However intriguing these mysteries make the future of Dial H, it's the details that are so cunningly refined.  Transformation sequences, while at first quite disorienting, are spectacularly fractured and continually nuanced on subsequent readings.  Nelson remains distinct and yet bleeds into his dialed characters, creating a visual cacophony of voice-bubbles and thought-boxes, masterfully navigated by Miéville and his collaborators.  But it's precisely this puzzle of identities that provides the strange but poetic voice to Dial H.  It's also quietly funny.  If Nelson's observation about Matthew McConaughey's disinclination to wearing shirts didn't elicit a chuckle, the homeless beggar's "Need Money 4 Karate Lessons" sign, the thugs' reaction to his transformation pyrotechnics—"Did that guy just explode?"—or the introduction of Captain Lachrymose as "some hipster" should.  Miéville enjoys words, and it's evident.  "Can't scratch my itch with even so elegantly twirled a cudgel," quips Boy Chimney.  "This is beyond miasmic intercession," he further concludes, looking down at Darren's beaten body.  There's a polish to Dial H's language that elevates it above even quite excellent comic fare, less ponderous and more savory.

For most of issue #1, Santolouco's art quietly grounds Miéville's world in a gritty, unglamorous reality, which he executes very well, tucking away background details that invite and reward close examination.  Like his writer, he seizes Nelson's heroic transformations with fervor.  Boy Chimney, in particular, jumps off the page, a lanky collection of joints and Victorian-era garb imposing himself on the layout, overlapping other frames.

Superheroes:  Boy Chimney, Captain Lachrymose

[July 2012]