Sam Humphries doesn’t waste any time with how this story is paced. We get a good escalation of tension over these issues as we learn more about the The Thunderbolt Club and get background on The Operator and the main antagonist, Mr. Thunder. I am very interested in the idea of The Thunderbolt Club, people who have all wielded the H-Dial previously and now desperately want to use it again. Anyone that Miguel encounters could be a Thunderbolt Club member.  

Clearly, Sam Humphries and Joe Quinones are having a lot of fun on this book. Over the course of these three issues, they have been able to plumb DC history, going back to Justice League Detroit headquarters and channeling so many comic book styles [Dragonball, early Vertigo,Sin City, to just name a few] with each hero dialed in through the H-Dial. This series is just a lot of fun to read.

I cannot say enough good things about the work that Joe Quinones and Jordan Gibson are doing here. The versatility that they are bringing is insane. It is hard to believe that you are seeing pages drawn by the same person. The styles are so distinctly different and Joe is damn good at channeling and nailing the forms down. These could not be as good as they are without Gibson’s colors, showing how well he is able to adapt. Great care is taken with the colors to reflect the respective techniques. Seeing the early Vertigo appearance for instance, it felt as if pages from a forgotten Vertigo book were just inserted in. Together, it’s as though they are both summoning the H-Dial in order to make these pages just work naturally. The secret weapon that helps sell this even more is Dave Sharpe’s lettering, which is fantastic. There is an attention to detail here that is a bit rare. His word balloons morph along dialogue when there is something emphatic being said, making what was said land stronger in the reader’s mind. He’s adapting to various comic fortmats as well to make sure his lettering falls along genre guides that we would expect to see in aSin City, a Vertigo book, or even an Allred-styled book. Kudos to whole team for helping deliver a feeling of authenticity through something that is being copied. 

At time of publishing, Dial H for Herowas originally slated as a six-issue series, which is now extended to twelve issues. I will be quite fascinated to see what happens as this is now a maxi-series. Will the current story wrap in the next two issues, or will Humphries stretch out the story across the eight issues? I think the smart play is to wrap it in two and just build out a second arc starting in issue seven.