China Miéville gives us a sneak peek of DC Comics’ weirdest new superhero series

This May , DC Comics will uprise Dial H For Hero , an old - schooling comic about a strange dial that can transform its user into an entire phone book ’s worth of superheroes . And who ’s helming this new series ? Why , it ’s none other than Embassytown , Kraken , and The City & the City writer China Miéville .

io9 lately chatted with the Hugo Award - winning writer about his plans for Dial H , his new take on one of the DC Universe ’s most adorably bizarre titles . The generator was charmingly cryptic about his plans , but we did get an exclusive first look at serial publication creative person Mateus Santolouco ’s rad theatrical role designs .

First off , Dial H for Herohas historically had this sort of retro quirkiness to it , but the illustrations by Mateus and cover creative person Brian Bolland look incredibly threatening . What was the impetus to give Dial H for Hero a horror crook ?

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I never really think of it as give it much of a kink , I always conceive of it as bring out the sinister weirdness that was there just under the skin of the kooky in the original runs . Not to say those former rivulet were n’t fun and so on — they absolutely were . But I remember even as a minor , reading the 80s run , then the first 60s House of Mystery run I discovered after that , even as I was delighting in the gauze-like weirdness of the heroes they were dial , I was aware of a kind of edge to it , because of the constant sense of how weird it would be to have this immense magnate , but with almost no control over its specificity .

I should stress also that I ’m scarce the first individual to have feel this likely freakiness of the dial — Will Pfeifer and Kano ’s 2003 run , which I thought super good , was passably raw and scary . flop back to 1988 , in the New Teen Titans , ffs , and sure ‘ sinister ’ import of the dial were touched on . So it ’s not young in that sense . And , you live , the whole Gritty Revisionist Revisiting Of A Previously ( Putatively ) Innocent Comic Title is by now a very familiar methodology , so I judge I ’m just walking in the many footsteps that have go that fashion before . All of which said , I did reckon I could land some specific stuff to the table , or I would n’t have been agitating DC ( for , literally , class ! ) to get my workforce on the title .

I desire to have it both ways — to keep to pay court to the unalloyed childlike ( if you ’re generous ) or childish ( if you ’re sterner ) enchant of take in up crazy superheroes , while playing up the absolutely wild and , amazingly , so - far unexplained mythos that must bear out that ability , and at the same time , playing up the sinisterness that was always right on there . I like being mark , as a small fry , and still do — who would not be scared , even if also excited , to prod an foreign artefact and rick , for example , into an animate giant steel spring ( King Coil , House of Mystery # 163 , 1966 ) ?

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I was wondering if you could give us some hint about the Dial H neuter egos ( Abyss , Manteau , Squid , and that chimney fellow ) pictured in Mateus ’ artwork .

No .

Forgive me , that was annoying . Let me flesh that out .

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i ) I am superstitious as blaze about lecture about work before it comes out — it makes me very anxious , just seems like a hostage to fortune to me .

ii ) As a reader I ’d prefer to know little to nothing before I read something , so I always indulge my projected reading - ego by being a bit demure about such . I will say , though that

iii ) you cry them ‘ Dial H spay egos ’ – I did n’t , nor did I substantiate nor deny their position as such .

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iv ) There are various Easter eggs for hardcore / farseeing - clip fans of Dial H for Hero in the run . ( As one of them , can we fare up with a good noun for such hoi polloi ? Dialers ? Dialups ? )

You were antecedently slated to pena Swamp Thing seriesthat did n’t tear apart out — did any of your ideas from that series make their way into Dial H in some looping or the other ?

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Not immediately — I have that run , those write issues , on ice , in my draftsman , and one twenty-four hours , who knows , they might get used for something one Clarence Shepard Day Jr. . But some of the sensibility , the excited tenor voice , a few little images here and there , come from the same share headsoup — as , I think , most of what I write does — so I ’m sure someone who did read the unexisting Swamp Thing would tell apart some stuff and nonsense .

And there is , in truth , one character in peculiar I am painfully tempted to practice . So one of these 24-hour interval , maybe , sure .

The first issue of Dial H strike computer storage May 2 . FYI , that ’s the cover of the first issue at top ( and the second takings at bottom ) by Brian Bolland .

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