Dial H #15

Everybody in creation versus The Human Centipede!

I have an issue with Nelson's rotary phone dial. Now I'm not an expert on telephones but I was alive during the transition from rotary phones to push button phones. And, as far as I know, rotary phones never had the asterisk or the pound sign (also known as the number sign or hash sign if you're one of those weirdos that live somewhere other than North America. Weirdos!). Weren't those introduced for use in the push button phones? After push button dialing came about, did people begin to design rotary phones with those symbols on them? Would they even have been any use since a rotary phone would just make more clicking noises?! And even if they were added to a rotary phone, they couldn't take up the "1" and the "2" position since that would change the whole analog system, wouldn't it? Like I said, I'm not Phonologist or anything! But Nelson's dial is stupid.

Perhaps because they're alien, it doesn't fucking matter. Maybe they were set up to make Tweeting via the dial easier. "LOST IN SYSTEM WITH MULTIPLE BLACK HOLES #FUCKED #RACIST #SORRYNOTSORRY". Now I'm wondering why so many dials are so specific. Why doesn't one dial do everything? If all the Dial does is dial SIDE or HERO or GEAR, can't it just be a button you press? You'd think each Dial should be capable of Dialing all of those things! That makes fucking sense. I suppose you can't just hand out Dials that Dial an Apocolypse to just anybody. But there must be Master Dials that can dial a whole bunch of different things. I'd at least think that they'd be like ranks. So the most minimal Dial maybe dials GEAR. Then the next Dial up could dial GEAR and SIDE. Then a HERO Dial could dial HERO and the other two. I wonder if there is a Medic Dial that dials LIFE?

Last issue, The Dial Posse (minus a few members) finally arrived at The Hub where The Switchboard is located. Unless it was called something else. Waiting for them was The Human Centipede. Dwan changes from Eye Spy to Balls Out to get the ball rolling on this final issue of the Dial H canon (I won't accept any more Dial H stories unless they're written by China Mieville!).

Don't think I won't fill this entire commentary full of intended puns! And unintended puns as well! And well tended puns while we're at it!

And so the battle between people who feed off of other people's powers and a person who feeds from the bowels of the person in front of him begins! You know, The Dial Bunch versus The Human Centipede!

In past battles, The Human Centipede has been able to outmaneuver any power used against him by creating duplicates. But this time, he goes up against Water Tower who is able to flood the flood of Centipedes and drown a good portion of them. The Human Centipede also faces Secret Faction who causes dissent and confusion with a person's own mind. This causes The Human Centipede's dopplegangers to gang up on each other. At a loss as to how he'll win the battle, The Human Centipede calls for his girlfriend, The Fixer, to save him.

Whoops! That's the Pre-Crisis on Infinite Earth's version of The Fixer's first form. Let me find the Modern one.

There she is! Note the more modern sound effect!

The Fixer has the ability to transform into a hero with whatever power she needs. After Exhaust blackens the air, The Fixer transforms into Lampoon. That's a naked man with an enormous flashlight where you'd expect it to be who also has a lava lamp head and two table lamps for hands and, probably, campfires for feet.

When Secret Faction tries to invade The Fixer's head, The Fixer turns into Uranus Face which deflects Secret Faction's powers. The Fixer than goes on the offensive, changing into Kitten's Mortal Enemy and finally into Blow Job. Blow Job and The Human Centipede kidnap Nelson and run off with him to The Exchange. Oh! I bet that's what I meant when I said Switchboard earlier! The Dial Bunch head after them and discover The Exchange for themselves.

Who would have expected the Exchange to have changed so much?

The Exchange is so beat up, you've got to believe that The Dials are only channeling from very few worlds out of the infinity of them in the Universe. So if The Exchange could be fixed, The Dials would be even more powerful. But the reason The Exchange was destroyed was probably the result of the Dial Wars. I suspect the worlds being tapped by the Dials weren't at all happy about what was happening and teamed up to destroy The Exchange. Which is probably why "O" is handing out Apocalypses to every world that participated in the war. Because they destroyed his Grand Experiment. But what is The Fixer's role? Is The Fixer actually fixing everything? Or just cleaning up the mess and trying to shut the whole Goddamn thing down?

I guess that settles that! They're a team of super jerks! The Fixer is currently BDSM Doomsday.

The Operator is ending worlds with a Doom Dial. He also mentions a J-Dial which must be a Joke, Jape, or Jest Dial! Must there be a Dial for every letter? Dial "A" for Anal? Dial "B" for Boon? Dial "C" for Card? Because you need a Dial for those long road trips and Dial "G" is already taken by Gear so it can't be Game. Oh wait. The J-Dial is for Journey or Jaunt. What four letter "J" word for travel am I missing? Maybe it's simply Dial "J" for Jump.

A little exposition later, Nelson and I finally understand the relationship of these three antagonists. The Fixer was an Operator himself and had been hunting "O" to shut him down and stop him from destroying worlds. But she was lost until she met The Human Centipede who had the knowledge to lead The Fixer back to The Exchange. The Human Centipede was looking for The Exchange to get a Dial "E" for Evil dial since he couldn't Dial "H" for Hero, what with him being a rotten jerkface and all. I haven't gotten to the part of the explanation where The Fixer explains why she's now working for "O".

And then The Fixer turns into a psychic Narwhal and tells the history of The Exchange. Turns out it's simply an allegory for downloading music and movies on the internet. "We weren't stealing! We were just making copies!" But the MPAA and the RIAA didn't appreciate people making copies of things on which they had an intellectual copyright! So war broke out and one Operator decided to destroy everything rather than deal with the Material Protection Alterity Army and the Rapid Interreality Assault Alliance. He made a Dial that would destroy everything.

Which it didn't actually do. What did happen was that "O" disappeared and with him, blown across universes and galaxies and time, all the broken dials from The Exchange.

And now that The Fixer has found her world lost, she's all for killing everybody! Why the fuck not?

As Nelson learns everything he needs to know about The Fixer during a time when The Fixer was supposed to be learning everything Nelson knows before killing him, The Dial Bunch make there way into The Exchange via an Open Window. Inside, Roxie finds a working "H" Dial. One that doesn't emulate powers randomly but in much the same way The Fixer's works. She'll be able to Dial exactly what she needs. She also finds some instructions and a Compendium of, I'm assuming, personae to choose from! Which is exactly what it is as Bansa tells Roxie the code to turn into a specific hero to take on The Human Centipede. I think it's Laxative Lass or something.

Nelson manages to turn The Fixer back against "O" but it doesn't help much. "O" can turn the Dials on and off while The Human Centipede protects "O" from simply getting his teeth knocked out since Nelson or Roxie could easily take him in a fist fight. The Dial Posse need to retreat and come up with another plan before "O" destroys any more worlds. They'll probably stop him but according to next month's Dial "E" book, they won't stop "O" before he creates a dial for The Human Centipede.

Roxie has one of those super secret plans that she won't let the reader in on so the reader is just as surprised when it works as the antagonist. She's working on a special Dial for Nelson since Roxie and Bansa probably have the most knowledge about the Dials of anybody in the Universe not from The Exchange. Just as she finishes, The Human Centipede appears with his E-Dial. Which means not only can he Dial "E" for Evil--every single one of his copies can Dial "E" as well!

This must be why Dial "E" is taking over Justice League. He's a pretty serious threat now! Not that he was a pushover before.

And then Roxie's idea is revealed as Nelson dials her new Dial: Dial "M" for Mashup. Let's see the Record Industry Lost Operator stop this shit, bitches! And Roxie knocks out The Human Centipede and steals his Dial. She has another plan that she's not talking about. So while Nelson goes through form after form of mashed-up prior personalities, Roxie and Open Window Man head off to end the comic book. Meanwhile, The Lost Operator uses a broken Dial because it doesn't matter what he turns into. Operators have amplifiers. Which explains why The Fixer was so powerful. She could choose whatever form she wanted and increase its power!

Roxie's plan turns out to mash-up the Operator since his power if amplified and it'll send him out of control.

Maybe this is why Dial "E" ends up in Justice League!

"O" disappears in a crack of lightning, along with the E-Dial and The Centipede. Open Window Man, Nelson, Dwan, and Roxie are all stranded in The Exchange. I didn't forget Bansa! He died! Now they'll have to spend their down time researching the Dials. I suppose the down time will be as long as it takes for some editor to decide fans are ready for a Dial "H" mini-series.

Dial H #15 Rating: +2 Ranking. I hope you Goddamned internet pirates have learned a valuable lesson from this! Don't steal music! Except The Exchange were not actually bad guys, they were just misunderstood. So maybe the lesson to be learned is to pirate music and movies all you want because fuck Corporate America! Except the good guys were represented by individuals who sometimes really did have things stolen from them and thus had a real reason to stop The Exchange! So the lesson was to not steal music and comic books from creators because when they make less money from their creations, you'll never get more creations from those creators! Unless the lesson was that a lot more people were reading Dial H than the profit on it would show which is why the book was cancelled even though it should have been making a lot more money than it was so fuck all of you assholes that downloaded and read Dial H illegally because now I don't get to read it any more! Unless the lesson was that there wasn't a lesson and no allegory existed and we should just enjoy the story on the topmost level where the words and the pictures were. Or maybe the lesson was that there was another socio-economic allegory in the story that I completely missed because I was too busy making up stupid names for the characters that were never named, like Lampoon and Blow Job!