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Dial H, Vol. 2: Exchange (2014)

by China Miéville(Favorite Author)

3.63 of 5 Votes: 4

ISBN

1401243835 (ISBN13: 9781401243838)

languge

English

genre

Fantasy

publisher

DC Comics

review 1: I rarely read comics, but certain authors will tempt me. I get Alan Moore's and Neil Gaiman's stuff whenever it's available, and an author I love making the transition to the medium is something I'll want to catch up with sooner or later, which is why I recently read both the trade paperbacks of China Mieville's Dial H. The writing's excellent, with Mieville's usual combination of intellectual rigour and incredibly inventive weirdness. The way he'll create a superhero from an apparently random fragment of pop-culture or linguistic idiom or dream-imagery and write them with total conviction -- and do it over and over again -- is astonishing. That he then brings back a throwaway one-liner like Open-Window Man and gives him complete coherence as as superhero, as well as d... moreepth, humanity and integrity, makes me want to see him write a longer-term superhero series with a more stable lineup of completely bizarre characters (although I don't suppose that's particularly likely now). I love the intelligence with which he deconstructs the staples of the genre -- the costumes, the sidekicks, the ethics -- and especially of its politics (Chief Mighty Arrow, the graffiti-world's Batman-equivalent, the brief appearance of Gay Superman). It's also typical of Mieville's ruthless belief in universal humanity to turn an old woman and an obese man into superheroes, and eventually lovers. The ending is obviously rushed, spinning out from the original concept with dizzying speed, introducing new characters and settings one after another only to kill or destroy them almost immediately -- a great shame, as it's epic in scale and deserve to play out at the appropriate length. (I suppose it could have been worse, though -- at least DC let him actually finish his own story arc.) It's more cosmic in scope than anything Mieville's written in the past, too -- his stories tend to be confined to individual cities or travelling convoys, whereas this widens out to include multiple universes, arbitrary apocalypses and a being aspiring to be God. Whether this is because comics invite that sort of material in a way that novels don't, I don't know, but it's interesting to see this alternative side of him, even while his more personal concerns remain intact. The aspect I really didn't like -- and given the medium, it's obviously a huge one -- was the art. The character designs were fine, but I thought many of the actual panels and pages were murky, incoherent and sometimes thoroughly ugly. There were times when I had real trouble working out what the artist was trying to show me, and why. But then changing the artist halfway through didn't seem to make any difference, either. Is that just what DC comics are like these days?
review 2: It's unfortunate that the superhero-fixated comic book fans didn't try out this title, or if they did, not stick with it. This had more inventiveness and gonzo ideas in one issue than many titles have in a year. The end of the story felt rushed and somewhat erratic with time gaps pushing the story forward to its inevitable conclusion (and one character dying offstage, clearly intended to have more told about them). The ending resolved many of the points that had been set up throughout the run, but was open-ended enough for more about these characters (a sort of epilog by Miéville was published in Justice League #23.3 as part of the Villains' Month crossover event). So I hope that DC will incorporate the Dial universe somewhere else, especially if Miéville writes it, because I would love to continue visiting it. less

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