For the uninitiated, the original series debuted in HOUSE OF MYSTERY back in 1966, running for 17 issues. Robby Reed possessed the dial, living in his small town with Gramps and their housekeeper Miss Millie. Robbie finds the dial in an old cave and each time he dials it, he turns into a new superhero. When he reverse dials it, he reverts back to his original self. With a hearty "Sockamagee!", he battled bad guys until the series ended its’ run in 1967. In the Eighties, the series was resurrected with new teens inheriting the dial. Despite carmine Infantino’s art, the series never did anything for me. However the 2003 series H.E.R.O. introduced a whole host of characters possessing the H-Dial and brought Robby reed back into the picture.
DC has revised the concept as part of their Second Wave of the NEW 52 and simply calls it DIAL H. The series is illustrated by Mateus Santolouco and written by award-winning English fantasy fiction author China Tom Miéville. If you think this is going to be the DIAL H I grew up with, you and I are sadly mistaken.
The story begins by introducing us to Nelson Jent and his roommate Darren Hirsch. Neither one of these guys are pictures of health, especially Nelson who, at the almost age of 30, has already had a heart attack, is definitely overweight and a two at a time cigarette chain smoker. Darren goes out and gets beat up. Nelson heads out after him to apologize for his ignorant behavior and encounters the attack. He steps into a nearby phone booth(yes…it’s a rotary telephone) and tries to dial the police.
What he gets is transformed into BOY CHIMNEY who proceeds to enact vengeance like an urban version of Michael Fleisher’s version of the Spectre. It is a heady, trippy, nasty sequence. Just when it looks like he will kill the assailants, Nelson’s psyche breaks through and convinces his alter ego to cease and desist. He deposits Darren with some paramedics and then disappears, transmuting back to his original self.
We learn that the assault is all part of some kind of retaliation put in place by someone named X.N. One of his lackeys begins to put a plan in place while Nelson tries to figure what he did inside the magic phone booth to create the creature and in the process creates CAPTAIN LACHRYMOSE who reaches deep down inside X.N.’s man and pulls sadness from within. But he also encounters an elderly woman who may or may not be real but most certainly has no sadness within her. X.N. sends word out to another one of his team to kill Darren Hirsch.
Nelson, in the final two pages of the story, finally figures out what he dialed…he dialed HERO.
Well, this certainly is a major departure from past DIAL H series. Nelson is an every man for this millennium: a overweight chain smoker who couldn’t be a hero in the sense of a superhero no matter how he could try. But Robby Reed was a spectacle wearing teenager: not truly an every man but also not the prototype superhero. That was the concept of DIAL H-taking atypical heroes and giving them power even if they didn’t always have great responsibility. To that end, Mieville does a great if not quirky job of bringing that home. He is known for writing “weird fiction” and this one delivers. But it would be nothing if it weren’t for the killer detail presented by Mateus Santolouco. The visual is dreary and dirty, especially once Boy Chimney arrives and takes over the urban landscape. Just a beautiful looking book.
This is a superhero book that comes at you from out of left field and never lets go. This is not your average men in tights book and if that is where you are at, you will be greatly disappointed.
BTW: Pandora, the mysterious hooded woman, is here. After our hero turns into Boy Chimney, she is seen as part of a roof.
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