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?!