Chris King

Origin

Chris King is quite literally the hero of a thousand faces. Each time he goes into action, he has a new and completely different identity and powers, conjured up entirely at random in a pattern that never repeats itself.

The origins of Chris’s powers stretch back over ten years, to the day a teenager named Robby Reed accidentally fell into a subterranean cavern. There, Robby discovered a strange device shaped like a old telephone dial and inscribed with an extraterrestrial language. The dial had ten spaces; each labeled with an alien letter. Robby, a child prodigy, deciphered enough of the inscriptions to be able to dial the alien equivalent of the letters H-E-R-O, which instantly transformed him into a superhero called Giantboy. The change wore off when he dialed O-R-E-H, and each time thereafter that Robby used the dial to fight crime, he became a completely different costumed character, each with his own strange and marvelous power.

Robby’s career ended abruptly when he was forced into dialing S-P-L-I-T during a case and became two people, the benevolent Wizard and the evil Master, who hid the H-dial and began creating an army of supervillains with which to rule the world. In order to combat the Master, the Wizard built two new H-dials and lured two teenagers (Chris King and Vicki Grant) into finding them and discovering their wonderful powers. Unlike the heroic identities conjured up by the original H-dial, Chris and Vicki’s transformations lasted only one hour, but each dial still allowed its wearer to enjoy a new and completely random superhero form each time it was used.

Chris and Vicki baffled numerous supervillains in their hometown of Fairfax, many of them created by Robby Reed’s evil alter ego the Master. During their final confrontation with the Master, the Wizard (who had finally found the original H-dial) intervened and reunited with the Master, at last allowing Robby to return to normal. Though Chris and Vicki’s mission to oppose the Master was now complete, Robby allowed them to keep their H-dials and gave his own to their friend, Nick Stevens.

Teen Titans

After their high school graduation, Vicki moved to San Francisco and fell in with a bad crowd. She was eventually recruited and corrupted by the evil Children of the Sun, who taught her how to draw the power of the H-dial into herself. Now motivated towards destruction for destruction’s sake, she decided to use her powers to kill Chris. She would have succeeded had the New Titans not intervened. With their help, Chris escaped Vicki’s wrath; when she fled, he vowed to someday find her and help her reform.

Chris had formed some sort of psychic link with the H-dial himself and no longer relied on it for his transformations. Now once an hour, he automatically can assume a new superhero form, which he maintains until he expends a predetermined amount of physical energy. He is currently being monitored at S.T.A.R. Labs in San Francisco, where scientists are trying to determine the exact method by which these transformations take place. He made several new friends when he helped Hawk and Dove and the members of the ad hoc group Titans West retrieve a team of scientists from another dimension.

After that time, Vicki Grant encountered Hero Cruz, who had acquired her H-dial by accident. She first savagely attacked Hero, but was then reunited with her H-dial. Once she dialed, she was able to change back into normal Vicki Grant. Shaken from her experience, Vicki stayed with the family of Sparx (of the Ravers) to recuperate.

Chris King aided the Titans again during the Technis Imperative conflict, which involved the Justice League as well as all Titans, past and present. Chris has chosen to pursue a career in sports medicine and now attends UCLA. Fellow H-dialer Hero Cruz has sought his help in learning greater control over the H-dial transformations.

New 52

The Squid and Dr. come to Chris King’s older brother’s apartment. The doctor’s two minions that look like celestial based zombies spew black goo into the eyes and mouth of the older brother to become a portal. The Doctor tells the older brother, before becoming a portal, that she did not know where Chris was and she only told him about his brother to gain entry.

Powers & Abilities

Each hour, Chris King involuntarily and automatically transforms into a new superhero. Each persona has its own name and powers, which he somehow knows instinctively the moment he changes. No matter what his powers may be during any given hour, Chris returns to normal after using a specific amount of energy; in other words, the more he uses his powers, the faster they “bum up.” Chris wears a special suit designed by S.T.A.R. technicians, which feeds information about his transformations directly into their computers.

These are Heroes Chris turned into:

• Air Master
• Any-Body
• The Attacker
• Avatar
• Beast-Maniac (DC Comics Presents #44)
• Brimstone
• Centaurus, Master of Vibration
• Coldwave
• Deflecto
• Doomster
• Dragonfly
• Earth Man
• Electrostatic
• Enlarger-Man
• Essence (DC Comics Presents #44)
• Galaxy
• Glassman
• Hasty Pudding
• Jimmy Gymnastic
• Kinetic Kid
• Mr. Opposite
• Mister Thin
• Moth
• Music Master
• Power Punch
• Prism (DC Comics Presents #44)
• Puffball
• Radar Man
• Ragnarok, the Cosmic Viking
• Red Devil
• Rock
• Shadow Master
• Spectro
• Spheror
• Steadfast
• The Sting
• Stuntmaster
• Topsy-Turvy
• Trailblazer
• Trouble Clef
• Volcano
• White
• Worm Man
• Wrangler
• X-Rayder
• Zeep