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A review by otherwyrld
Dial H, Vol. 2: Exchange by China Miéville, Alberto Ponticelli, Dan Green
3.0
I feel like I've been Mievilled (that's a word I just made up, because if the author can do it why can't I?) I don't quite know how to define the word, but it has something to do with being hit over the head with the author's own copy of the Oxford English Dictionary, liberally annotated with his own made-up words, and with the pages heavily suffused with any number of hallucinogenic drugs. Feel free to made up your own definition though, it's as loose and fluid as the author's own words.
Basically though in book 1 of this series, Nelson Jent finds a mysterious dial that allows him to become all sorts of weird superheroes. Teaming up with Roxie Hodder, who has her own dial and fights crime as Manteau, he sets put to find out more about the dials and where they came from.
After losing one of their dials, Nelson and Roxie have to take turns to use the dial to track down a second dial and find some answers. They run into a villain called Centipede, and find another dial in Canada where. At one point Nelson dials himself into the Flash, which is possibly the best bit of the story, though it does bring up an earlier point made in the last book - what happens to the heroes when the dial steals their power, especially if they are in the middle of a battle? We saw in the first volume that this can have tragic consequences. . Of course, this is also frustrating as it crosses over to the Flash series, and I haven't seen that so I don't know how it ends.
It is at this point that the story starts to get so weird and convoluted that it loses me, as our heroes run into others with dials, and after a lot of battles finally make it to the origin point of all this, and a long ago war that caused all of this to begin with. With all the different people dialling so many heroes, the story collapses under its own weight. I really feel sorry for the artist trying to illustrate this insanity.
Roxy, Nelson and the others finally win (I think!) but find themselves stuck on the world of the Exchange, but at least they have plenty of materials to make new dials. The end of this volume is the end of the story as the series was cancelled with issue 15, but there is an epilogue of sorts which appeared in Justice League.
This was a bold and inventive story, but China Mieville is certainly not to everyone's taste. I certainly admire his writing, and the inventiveness that appears there, but I'm not sure I actually like his books.
4 stars for the Flash appearance, 2 stars for the rest.
Basically though in book 1 of this series, Nelson Jent finds a mysterious dial that allows him to become all sorts of weird superheroes. Teaming up with Roxie Hodder, who has her own dial and fights crime as Manteau, he sets put to find out more about the dials and where they came from.
After losing one of their dials, Nelson and Roxie have to take turns to use the dial to track down a second dial and find some answers. They run into a villain called Centipede, and find another dial in Canada where
Spoiler
they discover there is more than one kind of dial - the one they have is a Hero dial, but there is also a Sidekick dial, and there are other types as well, as they find out later onSpoiler
it turns out that the dials are only supposed to copy powers, not steal them, but the dials our heroes are using are the faulty ones, blown across all of time and space after the final battle at the ExchangeIt is at this point that the story starts to get so weird and convoluted that it loses me, as our heroes run into others with dials, and after a lot of battles finally make it to the origin point of all this, and a long ago war that caused all of this to begin with. With all the different people dialling so many heroes, the story collapses under its own weight. I really feel sorry for the artist trying to illustrate this insanity.
Roxy, Nelson and the others finally win (I think!) but find themselves stuck on the world of the Exchange, but at least they have plenty of materials to make new dials. The end of this volume is the end of the story as the series was cancelled with issue 15, but there is an epilogue of sorts which appeared in Justice League.
This was a bold and inventive story, but China Mieville is certainly not to everyone's taste. I certainly admire his writing, and the inventiveness that appears there, but I'm not sure I actually like his books.
4 stars for the Flash appearance, 2 stars for the rest.