Atomic Robo: The Savage Sword of Dr. Dinosaur #2, by Brian Clevinger (words), Scott Wegener (art), Nick Filardi (colors), Jeff Powell (letters) - Dr. Dinosaur attempts to explain how he wound up as God King of a subterranean civilization. It involves crystals and a giant immortal magma worm. Robo suspects the lava men are instead remnants of an attempt in the '60s to revive the science city. But how does he explain that knocking the crystal off Dr. D's head made the lava men go inert? He doesn't, because he didn't see it, because he and the team were too busy escaping and trying to come up with a plan to recover the nukes from Dinosaur's Time Bomb. I guess we can excuse it. Meanwhile, Majestic-12 is about to assault Tesladyne Island, just as Jenkins and the others realize the point of the smear campaign against Robo.
My assumptions after the first issue that something might be up with Robo himself were obviously way off. Now it's a question of whether Majestic is using Dr. Dinosaur or vice versa. Dr. D seems to have the other missing nukes (minus the one that arrived on Robo's doorstep), which I can't see Majestic simply handing to him. But they were certainly prepared to take advantage of the opportunity that one nuke provided, so I don't know. I could see them having created Dr. Dinosaur as some long-term strategy to distract and torment Robo.
I love the color scheme. Every part has its own background color. The underground section have pink, the climbers a bronzed orange, Tesladyne is a silvery grey, which makes sense with the seemingly fluorescent lighting. You'd think Robo might use more friendly lighting to put employees at ease. I understand relying solely on natural light is out, because some of those experiments can't take place in rooms with windows, but still. Where was I? Right,the colors. Each has a different mood. Tesladyne is stark and grim, very sterile. The pink is soft, not what you might expect, but the oddness of it works with the oddball villain in question, and it has an otherwordly quality to it, also appropriate.
Dial H #15, by China Mieville and Alberto Ponticelli, Dan Green (inker), Tanya & Richard Horie (colorists), Taylor Esposito (letterer) - Nelson stuck sitting in a world of madness. Or, Nelson struggling with all those identities he's dialed that are fighting it out with the Centipede.What remains of the Dial Bunch has reached the Exchange, where they find Centipede and the Fixer waiting and working together. And both of them are working with O himself, as he works to perfect his Doom Dial. Turns out there were two wars in the Exchange. One between those who lived there and devised dials against the realities whose powers they (mostly) borrowed. The other between O and his brethren, who refused to condone his use of an Apocalypse Dial. He wasn't exiled so much as blown across time and space, along with all those dials the Bunch have been using, which are really discarded junk. The Fixer was one sent to remove those dangerous dials, and had no idea his home fell to the outside attackers while he was away. O wasn't working to bring the knowledge of dials to others to spite those who exiled him. he was just using their resources to try and cobble together a J-Dial so he could get home. Now he's there, and ready to finish his revenge on those who destroyed his home.
It's interesting that both of today's books involve a time bomb. As in, a bomb that would destroy time, or erase it. That's what O was going to use as a last ditch when his brothers drove him away from his early D-Dial.
Nelson convinces the Fixer to switch sides again, but O's the real master of the dials, and his abilities combined with Centipede and his new (I"m guessing) E-Dial are quite the challenge. But for all that O scorns the junk dials, working with them has taught Roxie a few things, and she fixes up one for Nelson with crossed dials, so he gets Amalgam-style heroes that O can't shut off. Which isn't enough to stop the Operator on his own, but it keeps him occupied long enough to do something similar to the Exchange, defeating O, and sending the Centipede and his dial somewhere, and leaving what's left of the Dial Bunch to decide what to do next.
Nice touch making the two armies that stormed the Exchange the Material Protection Alterity Army, and the Rapid Interreality Assault Alliance. The MPAA and the RIAA, two groups determined not to have their stuff stolen by a bunch of people tapping into their worlds (without permission) via wires that connect everything. I don't quite understand the real world version of harmless copying versus actual theft, though. I'm also not clear on how Bumper Carla's powers were stolen by the primitive dial if it happened before the war, which the flashback suggests is the case. Unless when O and the junks dials were blown across time and space, they landed in the past, bringing about the thefts that so terrified the donor realities to begin with. Which means the war in essence created itself?
I'm going to move on before I get a time travel headache. You can tell Ponticelli was rushed, but he drew 38 pages for this issue so, I'll cut him slack. Some of the faces are rushed, and sketchy looking, but I like the mash-ups of heroes, and I love how draws the Exchange. This towering, crumbling edifice, with frayed or broken wires sticking out, sparking all manner of things. It just looks neat, the sort of place I'd look to stumble across one day, recognizing I'd have no idea what to do with it when I found it.
I hate that this book is ending, but this is a pretty good one. I can always hope DC will give Mieville a chance to go forward with it later, since I highly doubt that Villains Month issue is going to wrap up everything. It's too bad, he'd built up so much, there were so many more things he didn't have a chance to fully explore. Nelson and Roxie's relationship kind of got shelved the last few months, because there was just too much to cover in too little time.
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