Showcase Presents: The Elongated Man, vol. 1

Believe it or not, there was no Elongated Man trade until 2006's Showcase Presents: The Elongated Man, vol. 1 (don't wait up for the color version). The good:

• 559 pages of Elongated goodness in 52 stories.
• The lack of coloring Joe Giella, Sid Greene and Carmine Infantino's wonderful ink work.
• You get the full Elongated Man 101.

The bad:

• The lack of color is a bit tiresome. The impact is not the same.
• The Table of contents is a mess.
• No foreword, articles, annotations.
• The cover is ruined with the "Over 500 pages of Comics!" crap.
• It's missing about 30 stories and we have not seen volume 2 after 5 years.

Since I didn't get JLE, I only new Ralph as the stretchy guy in the superhero crowds of the early 90s. After the Super Buddies miniseries, Identity Crisis and 52 I was hooked on Gingold. Europe '92 was mostly a disappointment, and even though there was no color trade I decided to give Ralph a second chance with Showcase Presents and I've never regretted it. I have to admit that it's a decent introduction that doesn't go hard on the pocket. After that I've been collecting the rest of the Elongated Man material issue by issue.

When it comes to Carmine Infantino's art, I always say the same: flawless. By the different art styles, you can tell how much was up to the inkers back then. save for the last 15 stories, all the art was done by Infantino, and yet, some of that look really different. Joe Giella is really neat, Infantino (who did some inking) is very scratchy (but not any less appealing) and Sid Greene is somewhere in between. Carmine's sense of fashion and design is something most artists, including modern ones could only wish to have (Cooke and Sale come close to it, though). When Sid Greene does the pencilling as well, the stories look a bit funnier. Other artists include Murphy Anderson (who also did some of the inking in the Carmine issues), Irv Novick,  Neil Adams, Gil Kane and Mike Sekowsky (recognize any names?).

Same artist, different inker. Note: this images are from the original publications, the Showcase doesn't have color.

The writing and editing in all is done by the guys who revived the super hero genre in the late 50s: John Broome, Gardner Fox and editor Julius Schwartz. Back then stories were mostly for kids. They are very naive, might present huge deal events as if it was nothing and introduce every single aspect (nowadays editors do the opposite, which is a lot worse). It's not the type of trade you read in a couple of hours, but something you calmly enjoy during 10 minutes every day. The great and now late Dwayne McDuffie once told me that, since younger generations are only trained to read post modern comics, we're bound to have some troubles with silver and golden age stuff. If you are not used to silver age story telling, be patient, you'll get there at no time. And it's really worth it, these guys are the source of many mind-blowing stories by Alan Moore and Grant Morrison.