China Mieville's turn-it-to-11 high weirdness reboot of "Dial H"

...something less Asiascape-esque but still fun.
  
(taken from boingboing.net)

by Cory Doctorow, 23 April 

DC's "New 52" is a reboot of all its major superhero comics and several of its less-regarded ones. In the latter category is a silly Silver Age title called Dial H for Hero about a lad from Littleville, CO who can turn into a variety of randomly selected superheroes by dialing "H-E-R-O" on a weird telephone dial he found in a mystic cave.

cover of China Miéville's comic 'Dial H'

The reboot of "Dial H for Hero" is called simply "Dial H," and is written by none other than New Weird chieftain China Miéville, whose prodigious imagination and wicked sense of humor are on fine display in the first collection of Dial H: Dial H Vol. 1: Into You. Miéville doesn't apologize for the fundamental absurdity of the premise. Instead, he turns it up to 11. And then he turns it up to 12.

In Miéville's "Dial H," the hero is a morbidly obese ex-boxer in a ruined crime-town who discovers his dial attached to the town's last working payphone. By dialing it, he becomes a series of ever-weirder heroes, from Boy Chimney (a Dickensian goblin with a top hat that stretches to infinity who can strangle his opponents on thick, choking smoke) to Control-Alt-Delete (a CRT-headed underwear pervert who can reset reality to default) to Iron Snail (a roided out action hero who drags along an enormous, slime-squirting shell). These various guises are needed to fight the strange and eldritch horror that has put the rot into Littleville, and here Miéville turns the metaphysics up to 13, with worlds within worlds, each haunted by different species of nothingness and such. It's glorious stuff, bathos at its best as the humor of the various super-guises is juxtaposed on all the ponderous, unapologetic Lovecrafting bibble-babble.

image taken from 'Dial H, vol 1'

After the initial rush, the story begins exploring a series of scenarios for the dials and its many dialers through history, seeking answers to the deep, metaphysical questions raised by the existence of a telephone dial that can transform its dialer into a super-hero with a whole back-story. There are great, inspired moments here, and hints that Miéville has actually worked this all out with some seriousness, which may be the scariest thing about the whole book.
Miéville is a very funny and absurd guy, and while spots of that have shone through in his novels, they tend to be more serious. "Dial H" feels like the Miéville freak flag has been unfurled to its full glory, and is flying proudly.

Dial H Vol. 1: Into You