Showcase Presents: Dial H for Hero, Vol. 1

Showcase Presents #85

by Dave Wood, Jim Mooney (Illustrator), Frank Springer (Illustrator)

Teenaged Robby Reed discovered what looked like a lost telephone dial in a cave. However, on dialing the letters H-E-R-O, Robby is transformed into a super-hero - a different super-hero for every battle!

This fondly remembered, quirkly super-hero series is collected here for the first time.

Genres: Comics, Graphic Novels, Dc Comics, Superheroes, Fiction

288 pages, Paperback

First published April 27, 2010

Reviews

[Fizzgig76 · Rating 3 out of 5]

Reprints House of Mystery (1) #156-173 (January 1966-March 1968). Sockamagee! Robby Reed discovers a dial in a cave from unknown origins. When he discovers dialing the word H-E-R-O into the dial leads him to transform into the hero Giantboy, Robby realizes he can be a superhero like every kid dreams about. However, what Robby is about to find out is that the dial has a mind of its own and one day he could be the Human Bullet, the next day the Yankee Doodle Kid, and the day after that the Mighty Moppet. Dialing H-E-R-O has never been so much fun and criminals better watch out!

Written by Dave Wood and illustrated primarily by Jim Mooney with help from Frank Springer and Sal Trapani, Showcase Presents: Dial H for Hero reprints the first adventures of Robby Reed from the first volume of House of Mystery which generally paired with other features. Like all Showcase Presents volumes, the series is presented in black-and-white but is currently out-of-print.

Showcase Presents: Dial H for Hero is a rather short entry in the DC Showcase Presents entries. This is probably beneficial since despite the changing powers, the comic is almost a one trick pony. The very formatted stories have a criminal arise, Robby change powers a couple of times, and the criminal is caught. It has its merits, but I’m glad this is a short collection.

The only fun of the comic is seeing what bizarre power Robby get each issue (which DC used as a means to reintroduce Plastic Man in House of Mystery (1) #160). I do like that some of the powers are completely ridiculous and so specific to one event. I do like that the story occasionally played with the format by having Dial V for V-I-L-L-I-A-N and Dial H for H-E-R-O-I-N-E with Robbie’s girlfriend Suzy, but for the most part the series played it straight and level.

The funny thing about Dial H for Hero is that a lot of kids might not even get it today. Even when I was young rotary phones were starting to disappear and the idea of a “dial” might be more alien to them than the language on the dial (which was revealed to Interlac). Despite the limited appeal of the character, an ’80s version of Dial H for Hero did run in Adventure Comics followed by a ’90s version simply called H-E-R-O running twenty-two issues. A New 52 relaunch Dial H ran sixteen issues before being cancelled.

The great thing about these Showcase Presents volumes are things like Dial H which might not be the greatest comic ever, but you probably would have never read the complete run without paying out big bucks. The idea of reprinting (or even paying a dollar-an-issue online) seems absurd, but here go get the fun of a goofy ’60s comics that has kind of become irrelevant and whether you scream Sockamagee or groan, it is a good thing.

[Eamonn Murphy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sockamagee! I have a vague memory of fondness for ‘Dial H For Hero’ when I was very young, so I bought this ‘Showcase’ volume to see what it’s like. The fun started in House Of Mystery # 156 (Jan 1966) when boy genius Robby Reed accidentally falls into a cavern and finds a strange dial. He takes it home to the timber-frame house with the white picket fence where he lives with his grandpa and grandma. Being a genius, Robby has a lab hut in the rear of the house and there he deciphers the strange writing on the dial and follows the instructions to dial H-E-R-O (in translation). Instantly, he is transformed into Giant Boy. He can fly and goes to rescue a plane in trouble. Later, he dials H and becomes the Cometeer and the Mole to help save a chemical works from destruction. The evil Mister Thunder has been hired to sabotage it by a rival factory owner. In the following issue, the Thunderbolt gang run afoul of The Human Bullet, Super-Charge and the Radar-Sonar Man. It ends with Mister Thunder shaking his fist as the sky and promising revenge on meddling super-heroes as he goes off to prison.

In House Of Mystery # 158, there is a new villain. When Daffy Dagan and his Siren Gang raid the main street in Granite City, Robby hears about it on the radio and rushes home to get his dial. This time he becomes Quake-Master with earthquake-style vibrating powers that enable him to fly powered by vibrating feet, so he can quickly chase the wrong-doers. However, he vibrates too much at the escaping Daffy and fails to duck when a tree falls on him. In a trice, the villain grabs the dial from his belt and ‘by a billion to one coincidence’ dials V-I-L-L-A-I-N and becomes a super-villain. Taking the inspiring name of Daffy the Great, he goes off to wreak havoc. You couldn’t make it up, but Dave Wood did. Surely the duck was around even then and calling a super-villain Daffy was not a good way to have him taken stheriousthly? I mean seriously. Happily, comics were not so solemn in those bygone days.

In issue # 159, the Clay-Creep Clan are using their stretching powers to commit robbery, until they are stopped by Hypno-Man, the Human Starfish and Mighty Moppet, a baby-sized super-hero who squirts from his bottles milk that shrinks his opponents to his own size. It’s a wonder that Mighty Moppet didn’t get his own series. The stretching powers of the Clay-Creeps may have reminded Dave Wood of Plastic Man, ‘that famous crime-fighting hero of years ago’, because young Robby turns into him in the next issue. Giant-Boy recurs and King Kandy makes up the traditional three for that month. House Of Mystery # 160 also introduces a brief romantic interest, one Suzy, who Robbie meets when he goes to visit his cousin. Inevitably, she enthralled by super-heroes but not by Robbie in his civilian identity. King Kandy gets a kiss so it’s not all bad.

The scripts are mostly by Dave Wood and the art is mostly by Jim Mooney. Only the last three issues of the eighteen featured here vary from that, with art by Frank Springer and Sal Trapini. Dave Wood wrote ‘Challengers Of The Unknown’ with Jack Kirby. His scripts are very much of that era in DC comics but he is a fount of ideas. It’s not easy to come up with three new heroes every issue, which is why he repeats a few of them, I guess. The art by Jim Mooney is very good. Mooney was known more as an inker in his later career at Marvel or rather for finishing other artists’ layouts, but he had a long career at DC comics before that. Here he has the classic DC style: clean and tidy, clear storytelling, unspectacular but competent and pleasing to the eye of the beholder.

Like many of the more quirky DC ‘Showcase’ volumes, this now costs more second-hand than it did new, on at least on one major book retailing website. It’s a fun collection from a more innocent age but not worth paying silly money for. Children who have just learned to cut up their own meat and read will love it. Older people who are forgetting how to read and can no longer cut up their own meat may like it as well. I’ll be at that stage myself in a few more years, so I’m saving my ‘DC Showcase’ collection to take to the retirement home. I hope they give me a big room.

Eamonn Murphy
This review first appeared at https://www.sfcrowsnest.info/

[tony dillard jr · Rating 4 out of 5]

My dad had a pretty impressive comic book collection that I remember fondly digging into frequently as a kid. It was mostly DC books. One of the B-list (heck, more like C-list) segments that I remember happening upon was Dial H For HERO. At the time, it just wasn't my thing. I was more enthralled by the glamorous superheroes like Superman, Deadman and the Flash. As much as finding a device that would turn them into a superhero is any kid's dream, I just didn't connect with the adventures of young Robbie Reed.

The premise of Dial H For HERO is that preteen genius Robbie Reed finds a mysterious object that looks like the dial of an old rotary phone. Only instead of being in English, the tool has these strange glyphs. Brilliant Robbie is able to decipher the letters and decides on a whim to use it to spell out the word H-E-R-O. When Robbie dials the word, he turns into a superhero. Only, he doesn't know which protagonist he will become nor what his powers will be.

Over the course of his early career, as seen in the pre-horror pages of the House of Mystery, Robbie will become champions based on ancient myth, crazy gimmicks as well as bizarre freaks. Sometimes, Robbie will revisit the form of one of his previous incarnations and on one occasion, he becomes the established classic superhero, Plastic Man!

Dave Wood was the writer for all of these original series stories. Towards the end of the run, the characters got way more goofy and DC fell into the trap of thinking that the generation gap was what late 1960s kids wanted to read about. The series ended because of the Comics Code. Not because of violations, but instead because horror comics were once again in favor due to challenges over the Code which brought about some revisions.

Dial H For HERO would return in the 1980s without Robbie Reed. Instead different boy as well as a young girl would find 2 different dials, changing into both a hero and a heroine. During this time readers were encouraged to create the characters that the kids turned into through a write-in contest.

It's those adventures in various issues of New Adventures of Superboy and Adventure Comics that I've come across as an adult that peaked my interest when I found this book a couple months ago. In this volume, there's a story where Robbie allows a gal pal of his to try the dial, becoming Gem Girl. I had originally assumed reading that tale that this was how we got 2 heroes in the later books. While that's not the case, that adventure is probably the inspiration for having a duo in the reboot series.

Looking around, those later stories don't seem to have been collected ever. I'd be very happy to own such a title should DC decide to release it in the future. While I am trimming my massive collection down a bit, this Showcase Presents collection is one that made the cut. While it's not a perfect series, Dial H For HERO is fun and nostalgic and to me that's worth overlooking the faults.

[Jason Luna · Rating 3 out of 5]

This comic series has a lot of things stacked against it. Written during DC's outdated writing output period (a range I've seen in bad writing from the 1950s-the mid 70s), the book is almost formulaic in its cheesiness.

A lot of thought bubbles and dialogues that state things directly, and repeat as such from issue to issue "a bank robbery...time to go into action!". The villains stable is basically non-existent, as Robby Reed foils robbers and stuff, guys in suits, occasionally a scientist. Sometimes they repeat, but they're not memorable.

There's superhero action, but stakes are avoided, issues are resolved in a single issue, attachment to the character is minimal.

The gimmick is both a plus and a minus. As relayed in the reliable if forgettable "House of Mystery #156", Robby Reed finds an alien rotary phone dial, and when he dials the letters H-E-R-O, he becomes a superhero. And it's a new superhero each time (there's repeats, but they're spread out).

A cool idea, as you wonder " what can happen next?". But regardless of whether he's an ice guy, an alien with powers, a big rock guy, etc., he flies over and does some power thing, and beats the bad guy. So the novelty of something new is bunk. It's a fill in the blank premise, not a clever or open minded one.

But it's a moderately diverting gimmick, I guess, different than other mags.

Most positive thrills of this book are mild. For example, very solid artwork by Jim Mooney, an expert on drawing likable comic book characters (like Supergirl and Ghost Rider, amongst many). And later on, for only two issues, amazing work by Frank Springer. But this isn't a comic you show to your friends and say, "check out this amazing panel". It's good to solid, not great.

Robby Reed is a likable character, if only because he's drawn like he's 8-10 years old, and you worry for him a little. But his youth, while also a slight novelty, I think dumbs down his adventures, as he's not in real risk and even hides his being a hero from his grandpa constantly.

There were blips of cool ideas that just went away. Not really a premise per se, but in "House of Mystery #160" he becomes Plastic Man. But any tie ins to real DC Heroes, or even a crossover with the rest of DC, never happened.

In "House of Mystery #173", Robby starts having criminal thoughts in his hero transformations. But a convoluted explanation is given, and we're all back to normal.

In conclusion, this book stinks but on a conceptual and art level, it's ok/interesting. It's a quick read, and its banal pleasures crushes "Superman" and "Justice League" stories of the mid-60s, and is competitive with "Batman". Not much of an accomplishment, but for this book, take it.

A very kind, era balanced, 3/5

[John Yingling · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fun book. All the DC Comics books from the 1950s and 60s are so enjoyable; fast-paced adventures with interesting characters. Lighthearted reads, for the most part, that are nice to read at the end of a day. And enough can't be said by the artwork; distinct characters and scenes that in and of themselves are fun to see. In this volume a teenager finds a device that enables him to change to different varieties of superheroes to battle evil.

[Anatole Wilson · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think I rate this higher than many, as I like old-fashioned hero stories that don’t involve saving the world every month. But still, the villains are mediocre and the heroes were just kind of meh. (Better names would help a lot.)

So I can give this better than a bleh but only slightly better than a meh. This is what villains in the 60s were like. Enjoy it for what it is.

[Wetdryvac · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting idea, but not a story set I found particularly enthralling.

[Benjamin]

Robby Reed is a fantasy teenager, though it's unclear whose fantasy he is. He's a brilliant, clean-cut kid, with a bunch of friends and no real problems, who lives with his grandfather and their live-in housekeeper, in the small town of Littleville. Robby's favorite exclamation is "sockamagee," which has never actually been uttered by any living teen. He's so brilliant that when he finds a mysterious dial, he can decipher the alien/mystical writing on it; which leads to him learning that if he spells "HERO," he'll turn into a superhero.

And just in time, too, since Littleville is a surprising center of crime and close enough to many other big cities that are all interchangeable and also crime-ridden. But all the crimes are strangely boring and pointless. Oh no, the Moon Man is stealing lunar equipment from the moon landing exhibit and if he gets them... well, I don't know.

In other words: welcome to the 1960s Silver Age. Today we think of the Silver Age as a little goofy--though there's some uncertainty about how self-aware the creators and consumers were about that goofiness; but the flip side to that goofiness is how silly and light and unimportant these stories are. Someone tries to steal something, Robby turns into a superhero and stops them, and Robby gets home in time for dinner.

Even with that formula, Dave Wood and the artists go through some fun (and necessary) variations, either with weird villains (the descendent of an Egyptian sorcerer who finds the magic masks that give him the power of Egyptian gods, the thieves whose bodies are clay-ey, the guy who controls insects that can change size, etc.); weird transformations (the time Robby turned into Castor AND Pollux, the time he turned into freaky heroes, etc.); or the too-few times when the H-Dial got "misused" (in "Dial V for Villain" and "Dial H for Heroine"). There's some fun to these stories, but not a lot of mystery or suspense: Robby always catches the bad guy and gets home in time. It's the 1960s sitcom version of superhero comics.

What's really interesting about these stories is how crazy they are and how certain issues are just taken as a given. Robby lives with grandpa and Millie--so where are his parents? Robby can't tell anyone that he's a superhero--but why? And when Robby turns into a superhero Native American or a go-go dancer superhero or (especially oy vey) when a girl uses the H-Dial!--we see how very different the 1960s are and how all that goofiness is founded on some really strange presuppositions.

[Steven Heywood · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sockamagee! I loved these stories as a kid and you have to bear in mind they were written when comics were primarily aimed at kids. Having said that, some of them made no sense to a seven-year-old and make even less sense now. The rushed jobs are pretty bad but the best of them are undemanding fun with a bit of naïve charm about them.

[Anthony · Rating 4 out of 5]

When it comes to trade paperback collections of the comics I loved as a kid, I have a hard time being objective. I can reread a novel I loved as a kid and view it with the critical eye of an adult author/reader and rate accordingly, but for whatever reason I have a hard time doing that with comics. Either that, or I still love whatever it is that made me love those comics.

I love the original Dial H For Hero. It's corny. It's definitely "of its time" and perhaps even an idealized representation of that. In any novel set in the 1960s, if a teen character shouted "Sockamagee!" every time something happened, the author would be laughed out of publication. (I mean, how do you even pronounce that??) But in these stories, it works. This black and white reprint doesn't capture the truly outlandish/garish look of most of the superheroes Robby turns into, but you can still get a sense of how over-the-top they are. And of course, occasionally someone else gets the dial as well -- Robby's girl-crush (who, like that era's Lois Lane, knows Robby has a secret, but when she learns it she gets amnesia and forgets), bad-guys. There's even a point where Robby turns into Plastic Man, "that superhero from years ago!"

There have been a number of different iterations of the Dial H concept. One of the most recent has been collected (the dark Will Pfieffer-scripted run of a few years back). I'd love to see DC collect the rest of Robby's original appearances, as well as the 1980s Dial H run in Adventure Comics.

[Rich Meyer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dial H for Hero was one of the most original comic series out there, but never really hit its stride until the most recent incarnation, as Dial H, a Morrison-esque title in DC Comics' "New 52" failure. I've had a soft spot in my head for it every since I picked up House of Mystery #161 at a yard sale back in '75 ... my first official back-issue purchase!

These stories in this volume, the entire original run of the series in House of Mystery in the sixties, are nothing to write home about, but are simple fun, good-natured, comic book stories. There's a modicum of high school angst with Robby Reed every few tales, usually three new heroes an issue, a lot of goofy villains, and the beautiful artwork of Jim Mooney and Frank Springer. I would've loved (and would've bought) a color edition of this book, but luckily the artists are professional enough that their work doesn't suffer for a lack of color like quite a few. I do wish this volume was larger, and had included the Adventure Comics run of the series as well.

At least this is one series that you don't need to know anything else about to read and enjoy.

[Christopher · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm a child of the eighties. Comics for me were more serious and more dire. Everything had greater significance than just a story. So when I read this I was burdened with that mindset. I quickly abandoned it, when I realized that this was a fun book whose only purpose was to have fun. The stories are imaginative, if not a little corny by a modern standing. The premise is wonderful. Not knowing what kind of character you would get made reading it that much more fun. The heroes are full of silver age goodness. Some of the names would make modern comic fans turn their noses up, or worse dismiss them out of hand, but this would be a mistake. Today you wouldn't see heroes with the clunky name as Radar-Sonar Man, Mighty Moppet, or Gillman, but for Silver age characters they aren't bad. This collection does a good job at presenting the fun of the stories, without putting a modern and critical eye on it. My only problem is that they only limited to one volume. I would have like to see the Chris King-Vicki Grant back-up stories for Adventure Comics. It would have been nice.

[Steven · Rating 3 out of 5]

Docked to three stars because the stories are cheesily formulaic. The saving grace for the compilation is that the majority of stories are illustrated by Jim Mooney in a breezy, easy on the eyes manner. The premise for the book is simple -- teen nerd Robby Reed has found a telephone dial of alien origin that allows him to dial himself into the forms of random superheroes. The formula that follows: something calamitous happens in the bucolic town of Littleville, and Robby leaps into action, turning himself into three random superheroes in each story (once in a while he revisits a superhero, such as the rather embarrassing Chief Mighty Arrow) -- and, in one notable instance, old hero Plastic Man -- in which the entertainment is seeing just how ludicrous the characters can get. About as lightweight as they come, but amusing -- just don't try reading the whole thing at once as the formula will melt your brain.

[Tom · Rating 4 out of 5]

The fun of Silver Age DC Comics weren't deep characterizations, common sense-type plots, or anything that approached real science while claiming to be scientific. No, the fun always came from the whacked-out imagination the writers and artists employed to tell their tales, and the better ones do this well. "Dial H For Hero", though slim, is by defintion imaginative since the main character, bland teenager Robby Reed, can change into a random superhero by dialing the word "hero" into some sort of rotary phone dial artifact. And whle the stories tend to be short, and Chief Mighty Arrow is probably racist, you can't knock these stories for inventiveness. Of course, Robby throws in some weird made-up word every time he's surprised, which is often. Sockamagee indeed.

[arjuna · Rating 3 out of 5]

Utterly, completely daft, with that charmingly naive two-dimensional boys-own innocence (albeit American style, with socko rather than elan winning the day) that makes things like the Eagle such wonderful, addictive fun. The basic premise - unexplained alien artefact turns Ordinary Boy Genius into random do-gooder - is great, and the writers clearly took full advantage of the opportunity it offers for blue-sky, bugger-the-science boffo storytelling. Hugely enjoyable, albeit a little repetitive in collection form; my one complaint is that Robby Reed is a rather dull priggy whitebread sort of chap, and a bit more of a mischievous Boy aspect would have been nice. But still. Good fun.

[Tone · Rating 4 out of 5]

Filled with goofy, silver age superheroes like the Candy King that never would of had their own book.
Three stars is grading on a Silver Aged curve.
I hope they do a Showcase for the second series, the one where the hero forms were submitted by kids.

[Raymond · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked these stories when I was a kid, but they get kind of repetitive when you read them in one sitting.

[Joshlynn]

So do the creators of Ben 10 admit to stealing this concept?

[Chris Turek · Rating 2 out of 5]

I will always maintain my love for Silver Age books, though this was a bit clunky when read in a continuous sitting. It seems like the Bronze Age stuff is translating best to this format.