Dial H for Hero #10-12

Dial H for Hero #10 (2020)
by Sam Humphries & Joe Quinones

Time to finish the Dial H series, and the retrospective with it.

Last time Miguel and Summer started their journey through the multiverse, arriving at a weird universe.

It’s basically the Amalgam Universe, but instead of fusing Marvel and DC characters it just fuses DC characters.

Also, the characters it fuses are completely random: who would seriously come up with a fusion between the Anti-Monitor and Harley Quinn?
…
Who am I kidding, the way DC is pushing Harley these days, it’s not out of the question.

This world is mostly a big joke, but it does feel alive enough. What helps is that they’re aware of the regular DC Universe and call it “an Earth of divided heroes”.

Apparently this is where the “Lo Lo Kick You” transformation comes from: this universe has a fusion between Summer and Lobo, of all people!

That’s a pretty weird decision: if they wanted a female teenage version of Lobo, they already had his daughter Crush. She met the Teen Titans in 2018.

Anyway, the reason why Summer keeps transforming into Lo Lo Kick You is apparently that she’s the other half of Lobo Kick You.

I find it more likely that Lobo Kick You is a fusion between Summer and Crush instead of a fusion between Summer and Lobo, since Lobo would never call himself a hero.

Even more bizarrely: Miguel’s counterpart is a sentient street.

    

That’s right, Miguel’s fusion is with unquestionably THE weirdest character in the entire history of DC Comics: Danny The Street, the sentient street from Grant Morrison’s Doom Patrol.

Miguel The Street has been trusted with keeping the Y-Dial, and Miguel The Human recovers it.

Summer wants to bring this back to the Operator, but as usual Miguel has different plans.

This is what Mister Thunderbolt wanted all along: he’s been following the kids.

Only now the kids discover that he’s actually another version of Robby.
Sockamagee!

Yeah I’m with Summer on this one: Miguel’s naivete is starting to get annoying.

He seriously ends up allying himself with Mister Thunderbolt.

So Miguel ends up using the Y-Dial to split himself…

…into four Supermiguels.
Does this remind you of anything?

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Dial H for Hero #11 (2020)
written by Sam Humphries
pencils by Joe Quinones, Colleen Doran, Michael Avon Oeming, Erica Henderson, Stacey Lee
cover by Joe Quinones

No, this doesn’t ring any bell.

We begin with a flashback expanding Summer’s origin story: her father is in prison for selling drugs.

That’s going to come into play later. Meanwhile, the four Supermiguels invade Apokolips to get the mysterious K-Dial.

They didn’t even have to fight too much for it: Granny Goodness just let them get it.

Because apparently the K-Dial is too much even for Darkseid’s minions to handle: it transports you to a place where you can’t escape.

Deep Sockamagee indeed.

See, this is why Summer is more the real protagonist of the series instead of the co-protagonist she’s supposed to be.

If only she would TRANSFORM INTO SOMEONE ELSE rather than Lo Lo Kick You!!!
This is the FOURTH TIME she uses that name!!!

I can count at least four Manga inspirations for this transformation, and she’s visually completely different from the previous Lo Lo Kick You.
The first two times she transformed were similar enough, but now I’m going to count all these as different transformations. I don’t think it would be fair otherwise.

Also, out of nowhere but the “Steel” version of Supermiguel is blatantly based on the Cyborg design from the Teen Titans animated series.

Notice the different coloring styles between the Miguels and Summer.

But it’s still four against one, so she loses the fight.

Now Mister Thunderbolt has all the dials he needs, and the four Supermiguels fuse…

…into two heroes instead of four.

But there’s a catch with the Y-Dial: it can re-unite the user into a single person only if both the new divided heroes agree to do it.
Which makes sense, otherwise Robby would’ve used it already to re-absorb Mister Thunderbolt.

The mysterious effect of the K-Dial turns out to be that it exiles you to the K-Hole.

This is the culmination of Mister Thunderbolt’s plan. Now that he has all the four Cardinal Dials, he can give superpowers to the whole multiverse.
And what number does he need to dial?

Fifty-two.

This works enough to get the attention of the Over-Monitor (from my understanding, the modern equivalent of the Monitor from Crisis), Impulse (why not Flash?), a freaking Angel (possibly Zauriel from the JLA?) and of course Darkseid.

We have turned the ENTIRE MULTIVERSE into a dial. Quite a long road since a kid found a magic dial in a cave, isn’t it?

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Dial H for Hero #12 (2020)
written by Sam Humphries
pencils by Joe Quinones, Colleen Doran, Michael Avon Oeming, Erica Henderson, Stacey Lee
cover by Joe Quinones

This was published at the end of February 2020, meaning it’s less than a month older than this whole site.

Mister Thunderbolt is at the peak of his power, one dial away from rewriting the multiverse.

And both Miguel and Summer are stuck in the K-Hole, which is basically a dimension of despair.

What did I tell you about Summer being the protagonist?

I still think you should knock some sense into him, Summer.

Turns out the K-Hole isn’t as inescapable as we were told.

This is so cheesy they should put a warning for lactose intolerant readers, but I think the series has enough heart to sell it.
And if hope is the way out, it makes sense that two characters who told us you can’t escape the K-Hole wouldn’t consider it. Granny Goodness if from Apokolips where hope doesn’t exist, and Mister Thunderbolt is basically the manifestation of Robby’s hopelessness.

Just when Mister Thunderbolt is about to turn EVERY SINGLE PERSON IN THE MULTIVERSE into a superhero…

…the kids get out of the K-Hole in full swing.

Whatever happened to them in the K-Hole, they are now switching between forms.

This is where the C-Dial transforming you into your “inner hero” comes into play.
Also, are you really surprised he’s taken down by Summer?

Who else could Mister Thunderbolt’s hero be… but Robby Reed himself?

Miguel turns into Almost Copyright Infringement Lad.

And into… I don’t know, something from Elfquest I assume?

But never underestimate Robby’s experience with the H-Dial.

Despite that, he forgot the one lesson all H-Dial users eventually must learn… the dial has a twisted sense of humor.

Miguel reunites with his split form. Not sure what this latest transformation is referencing, though.

Summer Pickens in a nutshell, ladies and gentlemen.

That’s the ultimate power of all the dials combined. Dial C.M.Y.K. for…

…trapping your opponent into a comic book!!!

I’m sure most of you caught it, but just in case: that’s a reference to the CMYK model used for coloring (at least traditionally, don’t know if it still applies to modern coloring).
That’s why we had the K-Dial and the K-Hole instead of the “Black Dial” or the “Black Hole”: CMYK stands for “Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Key”, with “Key” standing for “black”.

Not sure if Linda is a reference to a specific person, though.

There’s still the problem of going home: none of the dials work… except the Multiverse Dial, which is INCREDIBLY dangerous to use.

They can’t dial H.E.R.O., because that would just give everyone powers.
Instead they decide to Dial H for H.O.P.E.

Which, I kid you now, introduces hope into the multiverse!!!

That’s right: freaking Dial H is responsible for the first superhero resurrection, the origin of Robin and of Wonder Woman…

…the ending of the original Superman movie…

…and bringing hope to regular people in general.

Until the kids are brought back by Robby, who plans to continue his role as the Operator.

And so we end the series with the kids finding their dream job at Metropolis, and Miguel getting the number of the boy he likes.

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Historical significance: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Still too recent to tell.

Silver Age-ness: 7/10
Still too much meta to be any higher.

Does it stand the test of time? 10/10
What a rollercoaster! Issue 10 is the weakest of the bunch: the merged Earth doesn’t get explored much, and none of it makes much sense anyway.
I don’t usually like it when comics lean too heavily on the message, and they REALLY hammer the hope concept into your head in this one… but as I’ve mentioned, this is one of the cases where they put enough wordbuilding into the concept to make it work.
Miguel was more than a bit annoying for just how many times he falls for Mister Thunderbolt’s tricks, and I still think Summer is a bit too forgiving with him.But in the comic’s defense, they never try to present this as a real conflict and more as an emotionally wounded kid making mistakes.
Overall I was really, REALLY impressed with this series: it embraced all the narrative possibilities of the H-Dial concept and added a bunch of new ones. Plus it’s an extremely sincere love letter to the very medium of comics, not even limited to superhero comics.

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Dial T for Thunderbolt: 100
Dial V for Vicki transformations: 78
Dial K for King transformations: 77
Dial R for Robby Reed identities: 61
Adding ThunderDoom, even if technically speaking that’s a Mister Thunderbolt transformation.
Dial Z for Hero Cruz identities: 15
Dial J for Jerry identities: 17
Dial N for Nick identities: 4 

Dial M for Miscellaneous identities: 91
I’m re-counting all four incarnations of Lo Lo Kick You as separate transformations. In addition to those, Summer has 5 unnamed rapid fire transformations in issue 12. Adding Chimp Change from #4, overall she has 10 transformations.
Miguel is higher: I’m adding the 4 “Reign of the Supermiguels”, plus Thunder Montez and the five unnamed rapid fire ones. In total he has 19 transformations.

Dial S for SOCKAMAGEE! : 121
Just five additional exclamations.

Dial U for most used identity: Radar-Sonar Man (3)
Dial K for most used name: Lo Lo Kick You (4)

Dial D for dialing options: 14
F.I.F.T.Y.T.W.O. gives superpowers to the entire multiverse.
C.M.Y.K. traps you into a comic book.
H.O.P.E. gives hope to the entire multiverse.
I’m not counting the time Miguel dials M.A.Y.O. to access the K-Dial in Miguel The Street because he’s not dialing an H-Dial, it’s a safe inside the street.

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And that’s technically the end of the Dial H retrospective.

Both Miguel and Summer continue to appear on the pages of Young Justice and Teen Titans Academy, but those are WAY too recent series for me to cover.
Young Justice in particular is a Bendis book, which means the kids basically don’t do anything.

Teen Titans Academy is slightly more interesting; I just skimmed through the book to see stuff about the kids, but it’s a VERY large cast so they don’t get the spotlight often. It seems to be a nice series, trying to mix several X-Men tropes with the Titans and it mostly works.

Miguel ends up being roommate with Billy Batson (Captain Marvel / Shazam’s alter ego).

Also Lobo’s daughter is VERY briefly in the team, so she doesn’t end up discussing Lobo Kick You with Summer.

Much to my delight, the H-Dial reverts to something closer to its classical form.

Surprisingly considering the main series, Miguel seems to be getting more scenes than Summer nowadays. Time will tell if they eventually get a new Dial H series.

And that’s it for the proper retrospective; I will just give a final epilogue to comment on the franchise as a whole.