What a strange issue of Dial H. Considering how strange this series has been already, opening a review on the strangeness of this issue must be saying something. But I had no idea what to expect with this issue and I honestly can’t say whether I enjoyed it or not.

In this issue you get this origin of the Dial….Kinda. What we actually get is some sort of revelations with the dial involving a woman during ancient times. Before we get to the end, where the reveal occurs, the issue was pretty standard. We get another crazy superhero invention and an ho-hum story involving this woman. But once we get towards the end and we see just how the dial works (in the most esoteric way possible) this issue needed another re-read. The ending here brings up a lot of possibilities for future issues of this series and for once it looks like China Mieville has some big plan in store for the series. Wish we got more of the ending then a generic, ancient Greek story in here.

The art was also very interesting with having a completely different artist involved. Fans of DMZ will notice a similar name with Riccardo Burchielli doing the pencils. His style takes a little bit of work to get used to and to be honest I was not a big fan of his on that series. But here, I did enjoy what I saw with him having a Frank Miller esque style to the early pages involving a Greek army. Once we get into the story with the woman and the dial, his pencils really stood out with the complicated backgrounds and vibrant panels. It seems like no matter who draws the issue, as long as they have an imagination with the new superheroes it’ll always look good. Again I wish we got more of the dial history in the end in this story because what Burchielli brings to the issue really looked great.

This was a pretty good issue even though Mieville is making me wish he spent more time on the tail end of the issue instead of this story of the woman shown on the cover. But because it involves a revelation about the Dial it definitely makes me excited for future issues. But what’s here is fun and the art by Burchielli is definitely a highlight of the issue. With this zero issue it looks like Mieville is finally getting the hang of writing an ongoing comic book. Let’s hope this is good news for future issues of this series.