davybaby's review
3.0
As always with Mieville, enjoyable and strange. I can't help but feel that the story reached its end-game too soon. It felt as though the pace picked up a bit too much for the second volume. I'm not sure if the series was only ever going to be as long as it was, but the climax felt too large for the protagonist and his story.
I may give it another go at some point (being a quick read), but the series was sadly a step down from most of Mieville's prose fiction.
I may give it another go at some point (being a quick read), but the series was sadly a step down from most of Mieville's prose fiction.
otherwyrld's review
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.
crowyhead's review
I tried to finish this, but I was just SO BORED. I made it halfway through. The action was incredibly difficult to follow, the pacing was weird, and I got tired of waiting for the story to be something I could sink my teeth into.
bemerson's review
4.0
Just like everything else I've read by China Miéville, most of the time I had no idea what was going on. But it was very enjoyable!
linnaeusns's review
4.0
Pretty bugnuts and a lot more meta than I prefer, but also smart as hell and a lot of fun. Not sure the dials need an explanation in the end, but the imagination and energy on display make for a fun ride.
linnaeus's review
4.0
Pretty bugnuts and a lot more meta than I prefer, but also smart as hell and a lot of fun. Not sure the dials need an explanation in the end, but the imagination and energy on display make for a fun ride.
hollowspine's review
4.0
Well, it turns out that China Miéville is awesome at super hero comics. If I were an artist, I would love to work with him, the heroes are an uncommon lot, though there are a couple big names thrown around, most characters are completely new creations, and the artists really bring them to life.
Looking past the great character ideas and art, the storyline is also interesting and exciting. Miéville is able to weave a story that is complex and complicated, with a dozen different characters, yet still keep the momentum moving forward. Obviously I don't read a lot of super hero comics, and when I do I'm often blown away by the soap opera-ish web of relationships, vendettas, plots and side-switching, other unoriginal re-hashing of the world's oldest plots.
Dial H takes the best of that and leaves the other bits behind.
Too bad it was cancelled, DC lost a potential new fan base, not to mention a great writer.
Looking past the great character ideas and art, the storyline is also interesting and exciting. Miéville is able to weave a story that is complex and complicated, with a dozen different characters, yet still keep the momentum moving forward. Obviously I don't read a lot of super hero comics, and when I do I'm often blown away by the soap opera-ish web of relationships, vendettas, plots and side-switching, other unoriginal re-hashing of the world's oldest plots.
Dial H takes the best of that and leaves the other bits behind.
Too bad it was cancelled, DC lost a potential new fan base, not to mention a great writer.
philippurserhallard's review
4.0
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 depth, 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?
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 depth, 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?
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