Superhero with a thousand faces

[arbre_rieur]

DC's newest version of their old DIAL 'H' FOR HERO property debuted this week, written by fantasy novelist/former Socialist Alliance candidate for the UK House of Commons/university professor China Mieville.

Here are four pages from issue 1.

When down-on-his-luck schlub Nelson sees his friend being beaten up by thugs, he tries to dial for help in old phone booth. His fingers fumbling and hitting the wrong numbers, he suddenly finds himself transformed into a ghoulish character that calls itself Boy Chimney:



It's not very clear in this page, but the smoke's emanating from his stovepipe hat/chimney.

Later, wanting to keep the mob off his friend's back on a more permanent basis, he returns to the phone booth. He dials the exact same numbers, hoping to become Boy Chimney again, but this time things go somewhat differently...

Comments

[jlroberson]

Typical of them to waste all their publicity on something (BEFORE WATCHMEN) that infuriates people, rather than publicizing something like this. This has "sleeper" written all over it and it should be better known.

But this comic is actually fun to read. Can't have people noticing that.

[mrstatham]

Yes, well, DC are having some really dunderheaded thoughts at the moment - like I swear to God they're only releasing ONE tpb or hc from the New52 each week. I visited the store today, and they only have Animal Man. Next week is Batman. What the hell kind of release scheme is that?

[jlroberson]

Well, at least one that's going with the strongest stuff first, one could say that...

[mrstatham]

Debatable, since Swamp Thing - another Snyder book and whilst not having the recognition of his Batman, is still doing really well - isn't out until September. It's just a really confusing approach though, you know? Surely if they wanted to maintain the same momentum as they did releasing the first single issues, they should release all 52 trades in five-Wednesday month? Even if it was the only time they did it, it'd still impact their sales better.