DC and Machinima Update Dial H For Hero
 Machinima announced three collaborations with DC today, and this third one seems the most perfectly tailored for YouTube in 2015.
Taking the old DC Comics concept of Dial H For Hero, Machinima will be launching #4Hero.
The original series featured Robby Reed, a boy who was given a telephone dial by an alien. When he dialed the letters "H-E-R-O" he would transform into a superhero. The catch was that it was always a different superhero that nobody had ever heard of, and the powers often seemed a little at odds with heroism. DC Comics added a twist in that readers could create superheroes for Robby to become, a 1960s version of making an interactive comic book.
Robby Reed's adventures didn't survive the 1960s, though he popped up in an issue of Plastic Man having temporarily turned evil.
In the 1970s DC revived the concept with new kids in the lead, and the same idea of letting fans create silly superheroes. (I still love Mighty Moppet and King Kandy the most.)
It got a gritty turn in the late '90s as Hero, and most recently in the New 52 as Dial H, an extremely trippy series best remembered as being written by well-known fantasy author China Mieville.
However, Machinima's version takes a pretty good twist as well. According to the press release, #4Hero "...is a live-action, VFX-heavy action-comedy about a young woman named Nellie Tribble who is quietly desperate to make her mark on the world, but wholly unprepared to do so. Nellie stumbles upon a life-altering smartphone app that allows her to instantly become a Super Hero for a short amount of time. The problem is her super powers are dictated by whatever is trending on social media at that moment, and they are always only semi-useful."
The spirit of the comics is there, but it's nicely updated for the internet. I wonder if they will be developing an app allowing for some interactivity with the series...
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