Main TearJerker Trivia YMMV main index Narrative
|
 It's a Giant Dial! Run!! Question: What series features a boy finding an alien watch-like device that allows him to change into random superpowered forms, and deciding to use it to become a superhero?If you answered Ben 10, well, you'd be right. But decades before that show premiered, the concept was used in a DC Comics series titled Dial H For Hero.The series began as a feature in DC's House of Mystery anthology comic, in 1966. In it, a teenager named Robby Reed finds a disk with a dial like that of a phone on it (back when phones used rotary disks). It had alien letters on it that Robby managed to translate. By dialing words on it, Robby found that he would transform into a superhero. The catch: he became a different hero each time—usually completely original ones, though he once turned into Plastic Man. Robby used the dial to battle crime around his small Colorado hometown. The series did not last long. It appeared in House of Mystery #156-173 (January, 1966-March, 1968). Robby had a guest appearance in Plastic Man vol. 2 #13 (June-July, 1976) but was otherwise forgotten.The concept was however revived in the 1980s in Adventure Comics, another DC anthology series. The premise was now being used to showcase superhero characters that comics fans were sending to DC comics! Written by Marv Wolfman (who was at the same time having great success with another teenage superhero series, Teen Titans) the new version had two teenagers, a boy and a girl (in order to use hero characters of both genders, obviously) named Chris King and Vicky Grant, from a town in New England, who find similar devices in a "haunted house" (Chris's was a wristwatch, Vicky's was a locket) with only four letters in them (H-E-R-O) which allowed them to change into random heroes but only for a limited time period. Supposedly, a "wizard" left them there for them to find. Meanwhile, a mysterious figure known only as "The Master" kept sending super villains (also invented by fans) to try to get the Dials.Eventually, Chris and Vicky find that (at least some) of the heroes they transform into were being invented by a classmate as a hobby! (this may have been a nod to the series' Audience Participation.) Further, they discover that the Master and the Wizard are actually two halves of the same person... ROBBY REED! Turns out that one of Robby's transformations caused him to split into good and evil halves, and the evil one had caused the Hero Dial to vanish. The Wizard created the new dials for Chris and Vicky so they could keep The Master busy while he looked for the original. Having found it, The Wizard used it to merge with The Master back into Robby. The series ended with Robby deciding to retire and giving his Dial to the kid whose ideas were being used in the transformations.During the Dark Age of comics, the "Dial H" characters suffered a lot. Chris and Vicky lost control of their powers and Vicky joined a cult that abused her (which storyline was written by Wolfman himself over in Teen Titans). The original dial was lost to them and passed through many hands, usually ruining the lives of those who used it, in a 00's series titled "H-E-R-O". Eventually Robby himself showed up, having been granted permanent low level powers from long term exposure to the dial, and in the end the Dial was lost in time and space.Robbie and the Dial both turned up in a 2009 issue of The Brave and the Bold comic book, though that story seems set in the past, as Robbie is still an innocent teenager in it.In May 2012 a new version of Dial H For Hero, titled simply Dial H, and written by China Miéville, was introduced as one of the second wave of New 52 titles, rebooting the canon. It introduced a new dial, this one identical to an actual rotary phone dial, and a new wielder, Nelson Jent, who had lost his job, let himself go to seed, and was on the path to self-destruction.This comic series was also the inspiration behind Dial B For Blog , a comic "blogazine" in which Robby is the Author Avatar of Kirk Kimball.Tropes featured in the series:
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
0 reviews alternative title(s): Dial H For Hero
Privacy Policy
35