Dial H #4

"Into You"
written by China Miéville
art by Mateus Santolouco

The Abyss, Nihil Ambulans, a Nothing Walking has arrived, summoned by Dr. Wald and the Squid through the emptied mind of someone touched by its last visit to Earth.  And it is a fearsome, strange, and above all foreign enemy.  It inspires the simple, profound fear of something unimaginable.  And Dr. Wald, the self-named Ex Nihilo, is a zealot, a nullomancer, trained in the arts of nothingness and emptiness, and furious when her attempts to bind the Abyss fail.  She blames Manteau, whom she kidnaps for information, and Nelson, whom she leaves for dead by the poison of the Squid.

The Squid, though inhuman and somewhat baffled by human behavior and emotion, is not the unequivocal villain he might once have been assumed to be.  When his reunion with the Abyss goes unexpectedly bad and he takes a shot of nothingness to the chest, he spares Jent, attempts to intercede on behalf of Manteau who knows (appropriately) nothing of the Abyss, and ultimately joins with Jent against Wald to rescue Manteau.  The Squid's history with the Abyss—and subsequently his hurt at the insatiable Nothing's betrayal—is very much a surprise, though it makes perfect sense in the context of the story.  He was a wrangler of the darkness between spaces, and he and this Abyss explored the universe together for many years before Dialers banished them both for stealing jewelry, whose glints and glittering the Abyss is so drawn to.  It is an unquenchable appetite for light that drives the now mad Abyss, one that threatens to grow so large as to consume the sun.

Miéville's mythology is, even in a highly erudite and dense series, unusually difficult to follow here, but the heart of the series has never been clearer.  Jent's struggles with self-confidence and self-worth are tested.  Abandoned with a faulty Dial, Nelson must become a hero he cannot dial in order to save Manteau from the increasingly brutal Dr. Wald.  With a little motivation from the Squid, Jent comes through as Rescue Jack, an un-dialed hero of his own imagination.  But perhaps his greater achievement is his recognition and complete acceptance of Manteau's true identity, a slender old woman tied to a chair after being tortured.  Respectful of her privacy and sensitive to her alter-ego, he returns her costume to her.

Superheroes:  Baroness Resin, [unnamed muscled hero], Tap-Out, Rescue Jack (un-dialed), [unnamed Swiss Army knife hero]

[October 2012]