Hidden Meanings & Digital File Sharing in China Mieville's Dial H #15

BIG SPOILERS FOR THE DIAL H #15 AND WHOLE SERIES AHEAD!

Dial H was the best comic DC published in 2013; unfortunately, it was canceled and August 7 saw the release of its final issue (...but a V for Villains special issue next month in Justice League?). Thankfully, the series finale makes me want to re-read all 17 issues because it seems the dials are an allegory for media piracy and file sharing on the internet! The story imagines a space where peer-to-peer networks topple privatized production monopolies. And, not only do the downloaders win, but in Dial H, those who uphold data commodification never even stand a chance!

My roommate noticed this cryptic acronym in a exposition panel...

The Material Protection Alterity Army (the MPAA) and the Rapid Interreality Assault Alliance (RIAA)  are the revealed as the insidious institutions covertly controlling Canada's government. But the actual MPAA and the RIAA are the Motion Picture Association of America and the Recording Industry Association of America: the two groups responsible for protecting media copyright in court. Our heroes are up against the same force of evil all internet users fear; the evil force that doesn't want you to download movies or share scans of comic books.

In the first few pages, Nelson, Roxie, and Open-Windowman find the control center of "evil": the Exchange. The Exchange is a monolith of crossed wires and connected metal that houses Dial H's most powerful villian. From the front, it looks like a community of houses all connected with wires (a peer to peer network). The monolith's back has plugs and wires coming out, like the back of a computer.

The issue fully explains what the series has slowly terse out over the past year and a half: the dials were created in an alternate dimension to allow people to summon whatever they want or need. Information, equipment, power--all are possible with the dials. Dials are made out of old trash, the husk of discarded consumer goods (similar to what's downloaded on Pirate Bay, no?). Dials, then, are the key to a post-scarcity social structure; you can get whatever you want just by making a magic phone call. Interestingly, and more evidence to the theory that dials are modeled after file sharing, dials work better if they're broken, faulty, or incomplete. The idiosyncratic nature of each dial effects its power, what it knows to summon. Hodgepodge collections are superior to finely tuned machines--thus proven by The Internet. When members of a community are free to collaborate, share resources and help one another, everybody benefits. Wikipedia is a practical example of this. So is Anonymous. The dials too work by sharing of information. In these three panels, we see a very strange, but quintessentially Dial H, depiction of how file/idea-sharing works

The ultimate enemy of the dial is revealed to be the grand controler of dials, the Operator. The lost Operator is the dial's inventor, who still feels entitiled to ownership of his creation. But in Dial H, no one has ownership over their own creation; creations are merely a result of everything in existence converging upon one particular instance. The only way to defeat the Operator, the producer of power, is to become an operator. And, spoiler reminder, that's exactly what our heroes do.

The Operators represent those in power desperately vying to further consolidate their power. Our dialing heroes become the owners of their own power by use of radical communication technology, the dial. The real world analog is the internet. After winning, the heroes are able to see infinite possibilities in their future. They are the controllers of their own power. And the specific way to defeat an operator is also the way for media-sharers to defeat media monopolies. Remixing!

Remixing two superheroes into one is how Nelson and Roxie beat the Operator. The new, more powerful hero has recognizable traits from its source material. Eventually, our heroes combine the ideas of every hero they previously summoned to make one mega hero who can control all powers at will--thus, the Operator. Dial remixing is a lot like Creative Commons licensing. If every idea is smashed together with every other idea, there is no way to tell who owns what. Modifying a work can strengthen the integrity of the original and the new work. Remixing is what will topple the Exchange!

As our heroes turn into the ultimate hero, they openly acknowledge their perpetually-changing identities. In fact, I thought identity construction was the main thematic thrust of the series until this last issue. However, pro-file sharing ideals are in no way contrary to dynamic identities. If all knowledge is freely accessible, it will be harder to trick individuals into conforming to an ideological platform. Identity will then be defined by individuals, as it's always meant to be.

You are what you download. Downloading new information lets the downloader change what they believe at a button's press. You can be whatever identity you want to be! Just like Nelson and Roxie with their dials. By becoming the operator and controling the means of production, our heroes gain ultimate power; they will never again be forced to submit to the wills of the gatekeepers.

The series' primary villain and it's (perhaps?) primary superhero are direct foils to one another, both in allusion to media piracy. The Centipede is a clean-cut white man in a suit: the traditional icon of authority. He can make thousands of copies of himself, gumming up heroes progress where ever they are. But, as this last issue reveals, Centipede is pretty powerless. He can make clones, but only one can do actions in the physical world at each time. To me, the Centipede represents copyright lawyers. He may have some power--like suing someone for a quarter-million dollars for seeding a Metalica album--but eventually he'll lose because almost no one is on his side.

Open-Windowman is Centipede's foil. His origin is revealed in issue #12 as a messed-up Batman from another dimension. His parents killed by a mugger in crime alley, Open-Windowman promises to adopt a super-(alter)ego to avenge them. But, when he looks out the window for inspiration, he misses seeing a bat and instead just focuses on the window. Thus, Open-Windowman is a character that provides a way of seeing the world, a defamiliarizing of what's right in front of us. The most powerful tool in eroding private ownership is the "idea" of the internet--the free, un-commodified exchange of information. He's a self-conciously cribbed Batman, but he's remixed into something entirely new. He's...Open-Windowman!

So now, let's re-read the series together and see how this interpretation holds up! This interpretation is informed by knowing of Mieville socialist leanings. The whole time reading the comic, I wondered when we'd get to see a property-free utopia. It's kind of a bummer it happened in the last issue, but the finale was one of the best issues yet. I think when people read the series in trade collections, preferably in one sitting, they'll like it better. DC royally screwed up by not putting this book on Vertigo (...and for just killing Vertigo in general, fore shame Jim Lee!) but to their credit, they let it last a good while despite being low selling, not a known property, and, perhaps confusing to readers (I'd call it dense). Hopefully, we get a nice hardcover edition of the series and China Mieville comes back to comics sometime in the future.