Comics

Dial H #3, #4 & #5 by China Miéville & Mateus Santolouco

Here's a funny one, then. After the fun of the first two issues, Dial H takes a sharp downward turn into confusing babble here. It builds back up to something that makes sense and a clever climax, but it's not really much fun until quite near the end. There's nothing wrong with making your reader work a bit -- not spoon-feeding them everything -- but this goes too far down the road of oblique mysteriousness for the sake of it, giving us multiple characters who all know what they're babbling about while locking the reader out. And then, like I say, it does get a bit better. Now I'm torn between dropping this and keeping going.


Dial H #0 by China Miéville & Riccardo Burchielli

As for the Zero Issue, it tells a completely unrelated story that manages to illuminate the mythology of the dial, with some interesting revelations about how it works. Again, it trades on confusion until quite near the end, but at least in this instance the answers are actually in the same issue.


Extermination #2 by Simon Spurrier & Jeffrey Edwards

See below.


Revival #2 by Tim Seeley & Mike Norton

It's 6 months since I read Extermination #1, and though a bit foggy I did manage to pick it back up fine.

It's 4 months since I read Revival #1, and though I largely followed it I felt I really ought to re-read the first one to fully appreciate just what was going on.

I don't know what that says about each respective series, but they're both great. Extermination is bold, dark, but funny and entertaining, while Revival is more serious, grown-up and mysterious. And if the latter continues on its current path -- and retains its current levels of praise -- it's a dead cert for a Walking Dead-style cable TV series at some point, because that's exactly what it feels like. And I look forward to that.