Have a Merry Christmas, everybody!

Merry Christmas, Jean, Sue, Ralph, Iris, Barry and Ray!

Merry Christmas Julie, Gardner, John, Carmine, Murphy, Joe, Len, Dick, Gerry, Mike, Ty, Keith, John Marc, Bart, Mark and Brad.

Merry Christmas Frank, IndiaInk, Shag, Jay, Michael, Matt, Saranga, Rafael, Aleus, Martin, Busterella, Daniel and the rest of my very appreciated readers.

... and very Elongated holdays!

I tried to find a decent Christmasy picture of the Elongated Man and all I got was a weird Justice League story from the issue #152 of the original run and the one you are seeing, which comes from Earth-51, from Countdown to Final Crisis #19. I guess a better pic of Ralph (or Ralph and Sue) would be in my X-mas wish list, haha. By the way, I'm not sure about Jean, but there's one tiny Jew in that party, so the pic also works for the season holidays in general.

The Pied Piper's Double Doom!

Title: "The Pied Piper's Double Doom!"

Issue: The Flash No. 138
Date: August 1963

Format: 14-page main feature.
Editor: Julius Schwartz
Writer: Gardner Fox
Penciller:Carmine Infantino

Inker: Joe Giella (Murphy Anderson did the cover).

Main characters: The Flash, the Elongated Man (7th appearance, last seen in The Flash #134).
Supporting Characters: Sue Dibny (3rd appearance, last seen in The Flash #124), Iris West, Miss Twist.

Villains: The Pied Piper (3rd appearance, last seen in Justice League of America #14).

Setting: Tower City, Central City.

Stolen Item: The Star of India.

Mystery: What is making Lical, the super computer of the Central City University, give the wrong answers? and later, what is making the Elongated Man act against his will?

Method: Coincidence and association of ideas.

This is the first time:

• We see the Elongated Man's detective method.
• Ralph uses a magnifying glass.
• The Dibnys have a double date with the Allens.

Other notes: The Pied Piper has the ability of making people forget events; just like Zatanna in identity crisis. Barry drinks gingold, this makes him one of the rare people who is not allergic to it.

It's the first time we see Ralph method as a detective and the first time we see him with a magnifying glass and his first mystery story - a howdunnit or howcatchem which would become the trademark of  the Columbo plots. The reason for this might be that it's also the first Flash/Elongated Man story Gardner Fox, who might have taken the idea from Ralph's curiosity in most of the previous stories by John Broome.

This story is also the first to present the friendship between the Dibny and the Allen couples is established (they all know who Ralph is, but nobody knows that Barry is the Flash).
This is the second time that Ralph declares that his hobby is solving mysteries and the last time Ralph teams up with Flash and appears in his title before his Detective Comics run. It's also the last of the four consecutive stories featuring Ralph against a Flash rogue.

Plot: Without any witness, the Pied Piper uses the Elongated Man as his plundering puppet to steal the Royal Jewels of an European Kingdom, located at the colonial tower fortress of Tower City during its tricentennial.

 

When Flash goes to the crime scene to investigate, the Pied Piper subdues his mind to steal from the Tower City Bank. Then, each hero deduces that each other was the author of the crimes, so they resolve to put invisible ink in their shoe soles and Flash drinks gingold.

Right away they deduce that they just committed another crime, and they follow their footprints to the Pied Piper's hideout, who uses a double flute to make each other fight.

Flash defeats him by using the gingold effect to stretch his arm to reach and break the flute.

Review: This story is a lot of fun. They don't make a mystery out of the villain, which makes sense since it's hard to make mysteries with supervillain culprits, but out of the way Ralph and the Flash deduced that they were used by him. And then, the way they set him a trap was quite clever.

Here's a fun fact: this story, published in August 1963, starts with the theft of the Star of India, the "World largest emerald", and The Pink Panther the movie about the theft of the eponymous diamond, also meant to be the World's largest, was released in early 1964. I think it's very unlikely that this story inspired the movie; however, I think both might have been inspired by a common source. By the way, there is an actual real-life "Star of India", only it is a sapphire not an emerald.

The Man Who Mastered Absolute Zero!

Title: "The Man Who Mastered Absolute Zero!"

Issue: The Flash No. 134
Date: February 1963

Format: 15-page main feature.
Editor: Julius Schwartz
Writer: John Broome
Penciller:Carmine Infantino

Inker: Joe Giella (Murphy Anderson did the cover).

Main characters: The Flash, the Elongated Man (6th appearance, last seen in The Flash #130).
Supporting Characters: Iris West, Miss Twist.

Villains: Captain Cold (5th appearance, last seen in The Flash #129).

Setting: Central City.

Stolen Item: Captain Cold and other convicts.

Mystery: What is making Lical, the super computer of the Central City University, give the wrong answers? and later, what is making the Elongated Man act against his will?

Method: Coincidence and association of ideas.

This is the first time:

• The Elongated Man figths Captain Cold.

Let's go over the track first: Flash #134 (cover date February, 1963),  is the third issue to feature the Elongated Man on the cover, his sixth appearance, his fifth team up with Flash and his third confrontation with a Flash Rogue, in this case, Captain Cold, one of the most recurring.

I'm a bit indifferent to the cover (remind me later to do an article about the covers). The last one at least had the amusing giant boomerang and Ralph stretching to catch it; this one is a bit confusing. You can't really tell that easily that Ralph is going against the Flash. Maybe if he was wrapping him or something...

Teaser: That's one weird giant "tiger butterfly".

Ralph is absent from the teaser, I'll get back to that later. Meanwhile lets go over the character developments:
1. Ralph's identity is confirmed as public knowledge. We saw him getting married in superhero costume in Flash #119, and despite that the Flash knew it was supposed to be a secret, he called the Elongated Man by his Christian name in public while wearing his uniform a couple of times before that (#112 and 115) and once more in #124; however, the status was never confirmed. I think there was a lot of a lack of planning to this situation, but we can safely assume that it was Flash's Homer Simpsonesque absentmindedness that made Ralph give up the secret. 

2. Ralph is confirmed as a celebrity.We already knew this from the newspaper headlines talking about his wedding in Flash #119 and the non-Central City crooks recognizing him in #124. But I think it is interesting to see the reaction of Central City University's scientist after seeing the Elongated Man (even though they were in the presence of the fastest man alive).

The premise to get Ralph in the story is fun and interesting, basically it's a 'superhero play date'. Unfortunately, I think the plot was a bit odd. First, Ralph's accompanies Flash to unsuccessfully try to help the people from the Lab of Physics of Central City University figure out what's wrong with their super computer (they search in the hardware, which is odd, since I'd expect the error to be in the software, any ideas?), then the duo moves on to capture about 30 prisoners who have just escaped. Their last fugitive turns out to be Captain Cold (who is secretly the mastermind behind the prison break) and they eventually track him stealing the U. S. Mint, only whenever Ralph attacks him, for some reason he end up going after Flash.

Captain Cold show some interesting characteristics. I had no idea that he was originally a lady stalker. So far I had only seen the hilarious thug version of  Justice League Unlimited and Batman: The Brave and the Bold, the Challenge of the SuperFriends minion, and the cold-hearted code obeying villain of modern comics, but I'd have never imagined him as a stalker a-la Crazy Joe Davola, complete with wallpapered pictures of his target in his prison cell. In this issue, we learn that after his 'crubsession' on Iris he moved on to a dancer known as Miss Twist and he seems to think that he'll somehow impress her by grabbing the headlines with his crimes. That goes nowhere in the story, but it's definitively an interesting characterization.

Captain Cold's wall in his prison cell.

In the story, it is also the second time that Flash requires the Elongated Man's help. However, in this story, Ralph serves mostly as part of the mystery with his odd behavior rather than a supporting hero. I'd have liked to see him being a bit more than a clue action. In his first appearance, the Elongated Man solved crimes before the fastest man alive, now with the 'super hero play date' premise as a pretexts, it'd have been interesting to have them exchanging tricks or competing against each other in this story. Specially when they had to capture the prison escapees.

All in all, I think Broome wasted a lot of interesting possibilities that the plot offered: developing Captain Cold (with his scheme going somewhere), seeing the odd behavior grow oddly in Ralph, having a friendly competition to capture the escapees and Ralph revealing his methods.  However, I do think it fits withing the Elongated Man development and I like that it exists.

The Elongated Man's Secret Weapon!

Title: "The Elongated Man's Secret Weapon!"

Issue: The Flash No. 115
Date: September 1960

Format: 12-page second feature.
Editor: Julius Schwartz
Writer: John Broome
Penciller:Carmine Infantino

Inker: Murphy Anderson

Main characters: The Flash (31st appearance, last seen in The Flash #114), the Elongated Man (2nd appearance last seen in The Flash #112).
Supporting Characters: Iris West.

Villains: Barik, Kunar and he other alien invaders.

Setting: Central City, the Yucatan jungle.

McGuffin: A shrinking ray.

Mystery: All the sentient beings of Yucatan were shrunk.

Method: Mere spying and searching. 

This is the first time:

• The Elongated Man activities as an entertainer are mentioned.
• Ralph is establishes as rich and famous.
• The Elongated man travels to Yucatan.
• The Elongated man fights alien invaders, and the first he does so with Flash.

3 issues after his debut, the Elongated Man returns. Again, some of the most interesting stuff happened off panel, and is presented as nothing. By the end of Flash #112,  it is established that his fame as a superhero is matches that of Flash; however, there was no mention of his line of work. As far as we know he might be a chemist (taking in consideration that he did create a Gingo serum and a suit that stretches and shrinks as much as he does). Now, by the beginning of Flash #115, he's famous as an entertainer and made enough money to retire and travel around the world.

We don't know if the performing began even before the events in Flash #112, we only know that he wasn't famous (even as a hero) to be acknowledged by Barry or Iris before it and that, as a hero, he became the obsession of newspapers during that issue. We also know that, once he became a TV and on stage performer, he must have put one hell of a show, since he made all that money in about a year (or less) and we have to consider that his retirement includes living in hotels and as we'll see in future issues, maintaining an expensive wife and even a kid (which he wanted to have).

In the past adventure he revealed that he got his power by using chemical means to isolate the essence of the tropical fruit in the "Gingold" soft drink, which he noticed was the preferred of India rubber men (he was fascinated by them and "their secret" since childhood). What is great for me about this issue is that it elaborates on that mysterious fruit and it turns out it's called Gingo and it's from Yucatan, my own state.

The odd part about that, is that this is the first time Ralph actually visits Yucatan; he did the serum without need to see the plant or even the fruit. Both issues establish that he got the elixir directly from the drink. We can guess he didn't have the money to do that kind of traveling back then. By the way, he's making he trip as the Elongated Man, not Ralph.

Ralph goes to Yucatan and sees the gingo tree and fruit for the first time.

Infanino's art is flawless as always, but I can't help find his interpretations of Yucatan and Yucatecans a bit funny. Nothing drastically wrong, but it still amuses me. Firstly, we have a very dry kind of jungle with mostly short trees and we don't use wood in any construction; secondly, the great Mr. Infantino seems to have thought that we look like Spaniards in ponchos and charro hats (a.k.a. "sombreros"). There are white Yucatecans, but we're a minority.

Ralph and the charro Spaniards.

Once the Elongated Man finds his Gingo tree, he bumps into his mystery, which turns out to be aliens trying to shrink all animal forms of the world in order to rule it. His secret weapon against them is, of course, the Flash. Well, it's his title after all. And knocking out four giant aliens probably does take 2 superheroes anyway.

I kinda liked the aliens, instead of being interesting-ugly (you know, like Killer Croc or Two-face) they are just fugly.

Barik and Kunar, ugly-ass aliens.

 
This is the first out of what seems to be "the alien fighting phase" of Elongated Man. He'll also fight aliens with Flash in his next two appearances. I think that it was odd that they didn't chose the same alien race for the other two adventures. I could totally see Barik and Kunar trying to run a submarine slave colony.

This issue establishes a couple of things about the Elongated Man's capabilities: that he's strong enough to lift a person several yards and strangle a giant ten times his size; and that his stretching is fast enough to catch a person that is shoot through a cannon. It has never been stated, but the things that he does in his stories require enhanced speed and enhanced strength.

Ralph's capabilities.

Mystery of the Elongated Man!

I'll start this blog talking about the first debut story of the Elongated Man, "Mystery of the Elongated Man", published in Flash #112 (May 12, 1960). The character is introduced as the Flash's new mysterious rival, beating the world's fastest man to stop every crime. The situation reaches its peak when Flash's reporter girlfriend tells him that he's not getting the "Man of the Year Award" -- because the Elongated Man has been nominated in his place.  

Title: "Mystery of the Elongated Man!"

Issue: The Flash No. 112
Date: May 1960

Format: 13-page main feature.
Editor: Julius Schwartz
Writer: John Broome
Penciller:Carmine Infantino

Inker: Joe Giella

Main characters: The Flash (24th appearance, last seen in The Brave and the Bold #28), the Elongated Man (1st appearance).
Supporting Characters: Iris West. Ken Dibny and the Dibnys (unamed, 1st apperance, flashback).

Villains: Perry Veto and his gang.

Setting: Central City, Waymore (unnamed, in a flashback)

Stolen item: XV century Ming Dynasty vases.

Mystery: Who is the Elongated Man and how is he beating the Flash to every crime scene?

Method: Flash sets up the Elongated Man, while he's using detecting. 

This is the first time:

• The Elongated Man appears.
• Flash teams up with the Elongated Man.
• The Elongated man reveals his secret identity (to Flash).
• The Elongated man is associated with the word "mystery".

An interesting aspect of the story is that it shows that the ever altruistic Flash is very capable of feeling jealousy and vanity, to the point that he'd rather believe that the Elongated Man is a criminal than accept that there's a more capable crime fighter.  

Barry Allen, what a jealous b**ch!

Funny thing about silver age stories: they often present big deals as if it was nothing. One would think that Ralph never acted as detective before he got his own feature in Detective Comics, but read between the lines here, his detective talent was so great, he managed to solve crimes before a detective who can move at the speed of light. It's the Flash who has trouble keeping up, not him!

As you can see, the arrival of the Elongated Man was a nightmare for the jealous Flash.

Sadly, this is the only story in which the Elongated Man is the arch-rival of Flash. I think it would have suited both better to keep the relationship like that for a few more stories before moving on to friendship and collaboration. However, the character was a success and became one of the earliest recurring Flash characters. It's worth noticing that Flash #112 is actually just the 12th appearance of the title character (24th if you count issues with two features). Before that, the title used to belong mostly to Jay Garrick, the golden age Flash, and was suspended during most of the 50s.

The issue was written by John Broome and Carmine Infantino, which is why they are normally credited as the creators of Ralph; however, I think he actually was the brainchild of Julius Schwartz. I can't find a source confirming so, save the legendary statement that if he had known that DC owned Plastic Man, he wouldn't have used the name "Elongated Man", which might be a hoax, since Carmine said that Julie never talked about Plastic Man while plotting and, according to Murphy Anderson, he'd have also deny any connection between the characters.

Infantino has mentioned that Elongated Man was never meant to be a famous character (which is why he didn't joined the Justice League during the 60s, even though he was created before Atom and Hawkman), but he got an unexpected popularity and enough fan mail to give the character hi own back up series. Talking about Infantino, the art is just awesome. The guy really catches the modernist spirit of the 60s. He has a great sense of fashion, at design and even architecture. The poses and angles of silver age stories are never that impressive, but modern artist should still take a look at Infantino's stuff and learn a lesson or two.

The story is good, but it has a problem that is very common in Broome stories, he reveals the mysteries way too early (Gardner Fox did it less often). Even Scooby-Doo writers knew that the masks have to come off until the end. I think it could be easily rewritten from a postmodern view, making nod to the golden age of detective fiction. Just narrate it from Barry's perspective. We'd learn about the "mystery of the Elongated Man" from Flash, a jealous detective trying to figure out his deal because he believes he's the culprit of the wave of robberies. The Elongated Man would reveal his history, his identity and the real culprit after Flash mistakenly apprehends him, then they team-up and catch the criminal. See? We have a mystery wrapped in a mystery and the suspect turns out to be the detective. How postmodern is that?!