A review by cetian
Dial H: Deluxe Edition by Steve Wands, Kelsy Wroten, Allen Passalaqua, China Miéville, Frazer Irving, Brendan McCarthy, Carla Berrocal, Alberto Ponticelli, Emma Ríos, Zack Smith, Eva de la Cruz, Tanya Horie, Annie Wu, Richard Horie, Michelle Farran, Carmen Carnero, Dan Green, Liam Sharp, David Lapham, Tula Lotay, Jeff Lemire, Emi Lenox, Sloane Leong, Mateus Santolouco, Taylor Esposito, Marley Zarcone, Jock, Riccardo Burchielli, Brian Bolland
4.0
By far, the weirdest thing I read from Miéville. A great job from ilustrators to bring to (visual) life a wild imagination. I do not know the original story, and can only write about this one.
The premise is quite interesting.
The hero part of someone is an identity. Superheroes often lead double lifes. That is the classic way. Bruce Wayne has a secret identity, Batman. And his daytime self feeds on and feeds his mask-and-cape self. It's like a split personality, or a life that is dual. In the case of Superman, Clark Kent is the alternate personality (not the other way around), as other people have pointed out.
But be it a power that comes from birth or a changing event (radioactive spider bite, ect), whatever defines the alternate personality becomes part of who the person is. And in some cases, there is conflict. The gift is taken as a curse. All this is the classic way to build superhero stories. The stuff I usually have no patiente for.
Here, the hero is contingent. It's not an identity. You dial and the hero that shows up and becomes you is random. At one point, we discover different dials, so "hero" and "sidekick" are fixed roles, but they just refer to the relationship between whoever becomes one or the other, temporarily. And it is when one of the main characters starts believing too much he is the heroes that keep being dialed that he starts losing himself. For that, the other main character has a trick, one identity that overshadows all heroes, a constant to all the heroes that become her.
It is a weird, bewildering, fast-pace, halucinatory, deranged, story about superhero identity as something fluid.
The premise is quite interesting.
The hero part of someone is an identity. Superheroes often lead double lifes. That is the classic way. Bruce Wayne has a secret identity, Batman. And his daytime self feeds on and feeds his mask-and-cape self. It's like a split personality, or a life that is dual. In the case of Superman, Clark Kent is the alternate personality (not the other way around), as other people have pointed out.
But be it a power that comes from birth or a changing event (radioactive spider bite, ect), whatever defines the alternate personality becomes part of who the person is. And in some cases, there is conflict. The gift is taken as a curse. All this is the classic way to build superhero stories. The stuff I usually have no patiente for.
Here, the hero is contingent. It's not an identity. You dial and the hero that shows up and becomes you is random. At one point, we discover different dials, so "hero" and "sidekick" are fixed roles, but they just refer to the relationship between whoever becomes one or the other, temporarily. And it is when one of the main characters starts believing too much he is the heroes that keep being dialed that he starts losing himself. For that, the other main character has a trick, one identity that overshadows all heroes, a constant to all the heroes that become her.
It is a weird, bewildering, fast-pace, halucinatory, deranged, story about superhero identity as something fluid.