What I Bought 11/12/2013

I put in an order as part of the never ending back issue hunt. It really is maddening, that even as I finish up three series, I can think of three other things I might want to start, not counting the 4 series I'm still working on (Rom and the Ostrander/Mandrake Spectre are coming along well), or the three others I haven't even started yet. Along with all that, I went ahead and picked up the one book from the Villain Month thing I was moderately curious about.

Justice League #23.3: Dial E, by China Mieville (writer), You Don't Actually Expect Me To List All Those Artists Do You? Fine. Mateus Santolouco, Carla Berrocal, Riccardo Burchelli, Liam Sharp, Jock, Tula Lotay, Marley Zarcone, Brendan McCarthy, Emma Rios, Emi Lenox, Jeff Lemire, Frazier Irving, David Lapham, Carmen Carnero, Sloane Leong, Kelsey Wroten, Michelle Farran, Annie Wu, Zak Smith, Albert Ponticelli and Dan Green, Eva De La Cruz (colorist), Taylor Esposito (letterer) - I got the 2-D cover. No way was I shelling out extra cash for some stupid special cover. Oh yeah, Irving, Wu, and Smith did their own coloring, too, if you care. Right now, I'm mostly just pissed DC thought this was a good idea.

So these 4 kids swiped a dial from some wannabe big-shot crook, and once they start using it, they attract lots of attention. First the cops, then the hood himself, and then things get real bad, because the Centipede claws his way back into the universe somehow. The kids haven't got a chance, and soon enough the Centipede gets his dial back. But you know how it goes with villains, they can't resist gloating, and he gets taken down by, I think it's Roxie. Maybe. The hair's the wrong color. Roxie and Nelson couldn't have had a kid, could they? I thought she was a bit old for that, but hell, I don't know how long it's been for them. Who else would know about Nelson briefly calling himself "Rescue Jack"? There's always the possibility that in some universe, there really was a Rescue Jill, or perhaps Nelson creating that identity caused one to come into being, somehow?

In theory, this could be a good issue. We got at least some resolution with the Centipede - it did my heart good to see him finally shut up, he'd been insufferable since he struck out on his own - and at least a hint of the fates of the heroes we last saw at the Exchange. At least one of them made it home safely. Some closure, but some things left open in case Mieville gets a chance to come back to it some day, or if some other writer wants to use the concept. The former seems unlikely, and the latter, I'm not sure who DC has writing for them I'd trust to do a good job with that. It'd be a short list.

Note that I said, in theory. The artist shuffle does not help the book. It's a cute idea, letting each artist draw a different villain on their page, but it doesn't make for a visually coherent book. The 4 kids don't always look terribly similar from one page to the next, to say nothing of the hood, Tibbs, or his lackey. Liam Sharp and Tula Lotay (pages 4 and 6, respectively) draw them at completely different sizes relative to each other, for example, and I think Jock added a third guy to the mix on his page in between them. Some of the artists are good, some of them have styles I hate,  it turns into a mess. I would have much preferred they let Ponticelli draw the whole thing, or failing that, divvy it up between Santolouco, Lapham, and Ponticelli. They were the three guys who did basically the entire series (except for the 0 issue), so that would have been fine. You telling me those guys couldn't find the time to do 6-7 pages each?

Ultimately, not exactly the conclusion I would have wanted, but the conclusion I wanted wouldn't have come for quite some time, when Mieville was ready to end the book. Say 2 or 3 years from now?