Meet Robby Reed, a boy genius who discovered a mysterious dial. Upon dialing the word "BLOG" into it, Robby found himself transformed into a blog. From then on, whenever he redials, a new post appears on the blog. Thus began the saga of Dial B For Blog!
In reality, the blog was created by Kirk Kimball, a graphic artist who grew up a comic book fan ever since reading the Action Comics story, Luthor's First Victory Over Superman! He was especially captivated by the in-house advertisement for The Strange Death of Batman! from Detective Comics. He has since been impressed by Spider-Man saving himself with no one and nothing to help him, and personally witnessed Neal Adams doing sketches with nothing but raw talent the first time he attended a comics convention. It wasn't until 2005 when Kirk visited a blog called The Absorbascon, which was supporting Thanagar during the Infinite Crisis miniseries The Rann/Thanager War. Inspired, Kirk created his own blog using the comic book Dial H for Hero as a basis, and did his own support for Rann.
The "blogazine", as the blog calls itself, mainly focuses on Silver Age DC Comics, though occasionally looks at other subjects, from Marvel Comics, to Archie Comics, to even Frankenstein. Dial B for Blog has an upcoming "volume" that will be launched on March 14, 2016, to coincide with Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice.
This "blogazine" has examples of:
- Baseball Episode: Super Speed Baseball Game, in which a group of characters play baseball, culminating in two speedsters playing for each team and dragging it out for too long.
- Catchphrase: "I, Robby Reed, creator of this web site and author of this article..."
- Continuity Snarl: Hawkman's case of this was featured in the "Continuity Bomb" issue.
- Crowded-Cast Shot: Issue 100 is a whole issue of it!
- Early-Installment Weirdness: The early issues were styled like a sensationalist magazine.
- Evil Versus Evil: Evil Robby vs. Captain Action's Dr. Evil.
-
Missing Episode: Issue 358, which featured an episode of Courageous Cat and Minute Mouse (a cartoon created by Bob Kane) called "The Case of the Gun Mixup" (chosen specifically because the Cat Gun was Robby's favorite part of the cartoon). Also, the original Issue 590, "Zero Hour for Robby Reed", which was designed as a Book End for Volume 3 (which began with The Mystery of Robby Reed). - Mascot: Volume 3 has Johnny DB (based on Johnny DC), debuting in Issue 510.
- Overly Narrow Superlative: "It's Dial B For Blog... THE WORLD'S GREATEST COMIC BLOGAZINE!"
- Punctuated! For! Emphasis!: From Issue 364:Yes, Dr. Evil is without all doubt... THE! MOST! EVIL! BEING! EVER! EVER EVER EVER! Without exception!
- Running Gag:
- In his "DC Explodes on TV" miniseries, whenever the featured comic cover appeared in a DC superhero show, Robby is quick to point out that its characters could easily read it and find out the secret identity of the show's hero. The payoff comes in the finale, in which the featured comic is a Real-World Episode of The Flash where the eponymous hero ends up on Earth Prime and reads his own comic book.
- Each fake cover for his "Coming Super Attractions" series contains a box saying, "Extra! SUPERBOY becomes as BALD as LUTHOR in... 'The BALD BOY of STEEL!'"
- Uninstallment: Robby has deliberately skipped Issue 701 at the end of Volume Six. The reason for this is unknown at this time.
