Dial H #7

"Strategies of Multitude"
written by China Miéville
art by David Lapham

And thus enter the Dial cults.  There are rumors of a new relic, something Dial-related that has its worshipers piqued.  But, despite traveling around the world—Prague, Nairobi, Tokyo, and Perkingham(?)—and posing as acolytes in various costumes worthy of an Abbott and Costello movie, Nelson quickly discovers that "secret cults are boring" (Dial H #7: 4) and perhaps unsurprisingly unforthcoming about their mysteries.  Not to be stonewalled by clandestine mysticism, Roxie formulates her own plan to impose an epiphany on Paris's spiritual leader of Dial religion.  And, with Nelson off-stage prompting her missed lines of their scripted and rehearsed gospel (in French, no less), Roxie transforms before him into an over-sized, half-mechanized super-woodlouse.  No doubt, it would have been disappointing if it weren't also a miracle.

Meanwhile, a new likely villain arrives in Littleville hunting down information about the event that wrecked Ex Nihilo's warehouse.  He may perhaps have been mistaken for an art photographer by his cabbie, but he's there for more pointed and lethal exploitation.  He wants the Dial...and information on Manteau.

Armed with their own intelligence—gathered with less intimidation though more dishonesty—Roxie and Nelson track the Dial relic to an outpost of Atlantis, a lost temple to the Dials, deep below the ocean surface.  Though I personally would have been more than happy to be entranced by his "poetic reverie" (11), Nelson's Daffodil Host gives way—via "reverse dial" (6-7-3-4), i.e., H-E-R-O backwards—to Roxie's Planktonian, a throng of microscopic, single-minded sea creatures.  The Dial is already gone, and after a fantastically skirmish with a humpback whale, Roxie returns to the boat with nothing but a tattered special forces patch in French and English.  But coupled with the new "meta" in Paris's superhero tabloid, they now know.  The Canadians have a Dial.

Superheroes:  Tree Knight, Asphaltman, Cuttlefist, Cardamom, Shark Mage, [unnamed woodlouse hero], Daffodil Host, The Planktonian, The Centipede

[February 2013]