Dial E #1

Least threatening cover of Villains Month.

The issue begins with some young kids that act as couriers for some gang members stealing a Dial from them. One of them dials 0,8,3,3 to transform into Suffer Kate. Get it? She suffocates things and her name is Kate and people suffer when they suffocate! But I don't know what 0,8,3,3 is supposed to spell! ZUDE? OPERATOR TED? OBEE?

After Suffer Kate, the kid turns into a racist Russian Folk Legend.

The youths are just using the Dial to commit petty burglaries and to cause a bunch of chaos. The original thugs give chase and more forms are taken as they all battle for the Dial. It looks like a different artist on every page. Is it Dial E for Everybody? Maybe every page has a different writer as well although I'm fairly certain it's just China Mieville.

I think it's Dial E for Exquisite Corpse. Exquisite Corpses are when one person begins a drawing and then hides all but the scantest of an edge. The next person takes over the drawing basing their drawing on the lines and colors that they can see from the previous artist. It's possible this version in Dial E just had Mieville send out one page of the script (each one with a new Dial Character) to a whole bunch of different artists with some character designs for the main kids running through the issue so the reader wouldn't be thoroughly confused. But I'm not so certain that the story is going to be all that important to the overall New 52. It's just a little artsty fartsy fun being had.

After a bunch of nonsense, a familiar face shows up to retrieve the Dial.

Aha! The guy the Dial Evil Dial was created for!

The Human Centipede eventually gets the Dial away from the kids when the last one is unable to use it because she isn't bad enough. Turns out the Dial is Dial Q for Qued because is a Middle English word for Evil. Which is why this issue is called Dial Q. Oh wait. Whatever. He's stopped on the last page because The Human Centipede with a Dial is just way too fucking powerful now, isn't he?

It's Rescue Jack's teammate! But is it really her? Or is it a Dial Version? It is a mystery to discover in Dial H, Volume 2!

Dial E #1 Ranking: Um. Yeah. Let China have his fun since he did a terrific job on the regular series. But this didn't really have much of anything to add except a couple of pages of bridging story for whenever Dial H returns. If ever.