Adam Graham's Blog: Christians and Superheroes - Posts Tagged "elongated-man"

Showcase Presents: The Elongated Man by John Broome

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


This book collects the silver age adventures of Ralph Dibny's Elongated Man, a superhero with stretching powers. He's the lesser known of the three stretching superheroes (Plastic Man and Marvel's Mister Fantastic being the others.) There are many people who dump on large Black and White collections like Showcase Presents and Marvel Essential for not being color but this book is an example of why those collections are a good idea for many characters. No one is going to give the Elongated Man a full color reprinting, but this book is economical enough to allow readers a chance experience a forgotten treasure. That, plus the Line Work is pretty good particularly in the final portion of the book.

Dibny first appeared in the Flash Comics in Flash #112 in 1960 with Barry becoming suspicious of Elongated Man because Dibny caught criminals before the Flash did. Was Dibny actually behind the crimes? No, he was just a much better detective. From that beginning, Elongated Man made a number of guest appearances in the Flash over the next three years, fighting supervillains like Captain Cold, Pied Piper, and Captain Boomerang. During that time, he made a fortune in entertainment, got married, and became one of the few superheroes to forgo a secret identity.

In 1964, he got his own back-up feature in Detective Comics with Flash and Kid Flash waving and bidding him a fond farewell from a cover of the Flash Comics on the first page. This collection covers appearances from Detective Comics #327-371. The back up features started as 10-page stories though later ones were 8 or 9. The only exception to this is that two issues saw Elongated Man and Batman teaming up for a longer book-length story of 20+ pages. The Atom, the Green Lantern, and Zatana also stop by guest appearances.

However, the majority of the stories are just Ralph and his wife Sue travelling the world solving mysteries and that's really the book's greatest charm. While the big team ups are fun, the light romance element of Ralph and Sue relating to one another are just fun to read. Others have compared it to Nick and Nora Charles and I can't say that's a bad comparison. The cases have as much cleverness as you can pack into 8-10 page comic book story, although a few would have benefited from additional length.

While you can find a story or two that doesn't work, this book is actually an enjoyable tale. Ralph an d Sue are not your typical Silver Age characters and that's part of their charm. So if you're looking for a lighthearted comic with a touch of romance and mystery, this is a great read.



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