Dial H for Heights

...just not the heights of storytelling. The Dial H back-up, in addition to getting very little real estate on the comic's cover, spends an inordinate amount of pages on reiterating stuff we already know (Chris' recent "grounding", Nick drawing the very heroes our Dialers become), and on the Silhouette's nasty tricks (here making a man climb up on a bridge, then off it (we're still not ready to include this villain in our discussions though, they're playing the long game). Which leave barely more than 3 pages for a superhero adventure, and it comes off as disjointed as a result. So that's your Dial H update, now on to your creations...

Case 46: New Adventures of Superboy #38
Dial Holders: Chris and Vicki
Dial Type: Watch and Pendant Dials
Dialing: Nick once again draws the heroes the Dialers become, just before they become them. He says he's been feeling particularly creative recently, which hints that he may be receiving information from the Dials, rather than sending ideas TO them.

Name: The Trail Blazer (does not match the character's Japanese motif, but isn't a bad moniker; I'd drop the "the" though)
Created by: Cheno Steeter, of Lakewood, NJ
Costume: The red and yellow colors scheme and the rising sun imagery make this costume a variation on, well, the Global Guardians' Rising Sun, and such heroes as Sunfire (at Marvel) and Sunburst (who will premiere in New Adventures of Superboy within the year). The innovations seem to be the bare legs and the winged slippers. Looks pretty good, at least from the torso up, but derivative.
Powers: Though he leaves a fiery trail of flame behind him as he flies, Trail Blazer doesn't have any actual "fire" or heat powers. The flames are harmless except as deterrent. His main power is tracking; he seems to see the trail left behind his target as a separate heat plume. The former represents an interesting wrinkle (well used in the story), but the latter is a pretty limited power outside of mega-teams like the Legion of Super-Heroes (i.e. Dawnstar).
Sighted: In Fairfax, tracking the burglar Windrider and getting trounced by him until rescued by Psi-Clone.
Possibilities: While I'm glad to see any ethnic hero not based on national stereotypes, which Trail Blazer's name and powers don't, the costume definitely does, so it's a bit of an odd match. Perhaps we can use his similarity to Rising Sun to make them brothers, and when something happens to his bro, Trail Blazer acts as pinch hitter for the Guardians. If only the G.G. had been used more, we would know what Rising Sun is like and how Trail Blazer is then different, but there isn't much of a bibliography there.
Integration Quotient: 50% (of a piece with others, but the theme seems unfocused)

Name: Psi-Clone (clever pun, or awkward collection of ideas?)
Created by: Jim Jordan, of Long Beach, Missouri
Costume: Quite ordinary. The boring white shirt making Psi-Clone top heavy as all the blue contrast is in the lower body. The gold tiara suggests her mental powers, and the shape is reprized in the belt, with gold bracers added. Another generic-looking "Amazon" type.
Powers: While her main power is to create an unlimited number of duplicates of living beings, including herself, which apparently have the original's powers in the case of superhumans, an ability that's overpowered in the extreme, she also has a battery of mental powers including mental tracking (which essentially works like Trail Blazer's ability rather than as an omni-directional sensor), flight (which she calls levitation), the telepathic ability to sense "evil emanations", telekinesis, and force field creation.
Sighted: In Fairfax, saving Trail Blazer's bacon from Windrider.
Possibilities: Her powers beg many questions that aren't easy to answer, but if we try, we might come up with a Tomorrow Woman-type story (from Morrison's JLA) in which this powerful hero joins a team, then realizes she's a psi-clone and not the original, leading to a crisis that makes her commit suicide by supervillain. Introduce her and whisk her off quickly before she unbalances the team and the DCU.
Integration Quotient: 15% (at once too generic and to powerful to sit comfortably in the DCU)

Bonus Supervillain

Name: Windrider (wasn't that Storm's name in Kitty Pryde's Fairy Tale?)
Created by: Kevin Lindenmuth, of Farmington Hills, Michigan
Costume: Windrider strikes a ghostly figure in his blues and whites, with an interesting vaguely Amerind mask and long white hair. We don't get a very good look at his two-toned shirt, but it looks kind of cool and asymmetrical. The pale blue shorts matching the legs makes for a massive drop in interest from the waist down.
Powers: A weather controller, Windrider has the ability to create semi-solid clouds that can take him or others into the air. These clouds can also discharge lightning powerful enough to stun a superhero, if not kill one.
Sighted: In Fairfax, the author of a rash of daring burglaries on the top floors of buildings. He is captured by Trail Blazer and Psi-Clone, and delivered to the police station by an army of their clones.
Possibilities: A B-list villain to be sure, but one that would have fit the Flash's Rogues Gallery, give or take the Incan mummy look. Might works as a Native American villain with shamanistic powers over the weather, a middling threat to a duo like Hawk & Dove, or a minor one to Firestorm.
Integration Quotient: 40% (a strong enough look and suite of powers to show up a couple times as a utility villain)

Next: Barrelling towards the Silhouette's endgame? Probably more like inching.