Thread:Affectos/@comment-24588058-20161220053559/@comment-1674153-20161220205337

The H-Dial, to answer your question, is an artifact from the DC comic book House of Mystery, in the series Dial H for Hero; a mysterious dial that resembles an old rotary phone dial covered in alien inscriptions (Turns out the inscription is Interlac, that's neither here nor there). Found in a cavern by young boy Robert Reed (no relation to Dr. Reed) the dial's inscriptions correspond to our letters and when "H-E-R-O" is inserted into the dial, will transform the user into a random superhero.

Robert would eventually use the dial to become The Master and The Wizard in order to defeat a villain but ended up splitting his goodness and evilness into these two avatars, and the Master dialed "HIDE YOURSELF" and disappeared with the dial, destroying both's memories of ever being Robert Reed. The Wizard went on and designed more H-Dials with all sorts of limitations (works only for an hour, only the letters H, E, R, and O are present on the dial, only creats superheroes), unconsciously trying to prevent something like that from ever happening again.

Two of these were found by Christopher King and Victoria Grant, and they used them to become superheroes and eventually saved Robert Reed from himself. Robert Reed retired from being a superhero but would eventually track down the original H-Dial when he was trying to prevent it from falling into the wrong hands.

Interestingly enough, in the instances of all three of these H-Dials, they end up rubbing off onto their users and allow them to transform without the dial. During the Silver age this kind of fucked up Victoria, who went crazy, and I think a case could be made for Robert going nuts, too, but that's up to interpretation.