Elongated Man

Elongated Man (Randolph William "Ralph" Dibny) is a

In his 2000 autobiography, The Amazing World of Carmine Infantino, the artist wrote, "I really liked Elongated Man because it was comical and I enjoyed drawing comedy. It was also one of my favorite strips, because it was as close to animation as I could do in a comic book. I liked being able to test the limits of the comic book form and this strip allowed me to do that."[6]

Elongated Man received a solo backup feature in Detective Comics, where he was redefined as a detective who loves odd mysteries and travels the United States in a convertible with his wife, searching for them.^[7] Sometimes they would travel the world or meet other DC superheroes like Batman, Green Lantern, the Atom and Zatanna. This feature became sporadic during the late '60s and throughout the '70s. However, in 1973, he became a member of the Justice League of America, and he is mostly seen in that title from 1973 to 1995.

Fictional character biography

As a teenager, Ralph Dibny was fascinated by contortionists, or people who displayed feats of agility and suppleness. He learned that all of the body-benders he spoke with drank a popular soda called "Gingold". Ralph set to work learning chemistry and developed a super-concentrated extract of the rare "gingo" fruit of the Yucatán, which gave him his elasticity.^[8] In his first appearance, the Flash suspects Elongated Man is behind several crimes, but he helps capture the criminals, who reveal they used a helicopter to frame him.^[9]

Ralph Dibny was one of the earliest Silver Age DC heroes to reveal his secret identity to the public, and also one of the first to marry his love interest. After teaming up with several other superheroes like Batman, Green Lantern, the Atom, Zatanna and the Justice League of America, he became a member of the team. Eventually, his wife Sue Dibny became a member as well. The couple was also notable in having a stable, happy, and relatively trouble-free marriage—an anomaly in the soap operatic annals of superhero comic books.

Identity Crisis

Ralph Dibny played a central role in the events of Identity Crisis, with the main arc of the series revolving around Sue Dibny being murdered. The healthy, stable relationship between Ralph and Sue, and the events that led to and resulted from her death, were used as primary narrative devices throughout the series for examining the respective personal relationships of other JLA and JSA members (and to a lesser extent, members of the supervillain community).

The effect of Sue's death on Ralph (compounded by the fact that Sue was apparently pregnant at the time of her death) would come to shape his character significantly in the events following Identity Crisis, eventually culminating at the end of the weekly series 52.

Ralph and Sue appeared as members of the Justice League offshoot the

52

In the 2006 weekly series 52, a grief-stricken Ralph Dibny is contemplating suicide when he is informed that Sue's gravestone has been vandalized^[10] with an inverted version of Superman's 'S' symbol—the Kryptonian symbol for resurrection. He confronts Cassie Sandsmark,^[11] and she tells Dibny that she is in a cult that believes that Superboy can be resurrected. She steals Ralph's wedding ring after the cult members try to drown Ralph^[12]

During Week 11, after scaring some cult members and chasing them off, he gets a report that someone broke into a storage container in Opal City and stole Sue's clothes.^[13] In Week 12, Ralph finds Wonder Girl and she tells him they stole the clothes and ring to make a Sue dummy. She invites him to the ceremony.^[14]

During Week 13, Ralph goes to the ceremony.

During Week 27, the Spectre promises to resurrect Sue in exchange for Dibny's taking vengeance on Jean Loring, but Dibny is unable to do so.^[17]

During Week 32, Ralph ventures to Nanda Parbat and gets into a fight with the Yeti. The Perfect Accomplished Physician comes to the rescue. Both he and the Yeti are members of the Great Ten, defenders of China. At Nanda Parbat, Rama Kushna tells Dibny, "The end is already written."^[18]

During week 42, Dibny is in Doctor Fate's tower. He begins the spell to resurrect Sue, puts on the helmet of Fate, and shoots it, revealing

At the end of Week 52, it is revealed that Dibny's magical, wish-granting gun (a souvenir from "the Anselmo Case", a reference to The Life Story of the Flash) worked—Ralph's last wish was to be reunited with his wife, even in death—and that Ralph and Sue are now reunited as ghost detectives, investigating a school where a paranormal phenomenon has just occurred.^[1]

One Year Later

In

mentioned that she had been taken in by Ralph and Sue after her mother died.

In the 2007-08 Black Adam miniseries Dark Ages, it is shown that Ralph's remains are still inside Fate's Tower when Teth-Adam asks Faust if his deal to trick Dibny had worked. Ralph's skeleton is used by Faust to create the illusion that Adam's attempt at resurrecting Isis had failed.

In

Deadman

.

Reign in Hell

Ralph and Sue, in their ghostly forms, appear before Doctor Occult with news of the war brewing in Hell. Sent by Giovanni "John" Zatara who, as a member of the Hell Resistance Movement, hopes to take advantage of the war, they ask Doctor Occult to aid him in his plan. They then dissipate and leave him to make his decision.^[21]

Blackest Night

Main article: Blackest Night

In Blackest Night #0, Ralph and Sue Dibny's graves are shown during

Firestorm preparing to kill the Flash and Green Lantern.^[23] He and Sue are both turned to ashes when the Indigo Tribe destroys their rings.^[24] In the final battle, the Flash looks around to see if Ralph and Sue were among those resurrected by the White Entity, only to be told by Green Lantern they were not coming back.^[25]

The New 52

In September 2011, The New 52 rebooted DC's continuity. In this new timeline, Ralph Dibny is apparently a rogue member of the Secret Six, under the alias of Damon Wells a.k.a. Big Shot, reporting to the Riddler who in this incarnation of the team serves as "Mockingbird."^[26] After having reunited with his wife, Dibny makes his return as the costumed Elongated Man in Secret Six (vol. 4) #12.

Powers and abilities

Elongated Man gained his abilities by drinking a refined version of a soft drink named Gingold that contains the extract of a (fictional) fruit, gingo. It was revealed in Invasion #3 that he is a

Stretch, a member of Hero Hotline

who has been using the compound since the 1940s.

As his name suggests, Elongated Man can stretch his limbs and body to superhuman lengths and sizes. These stretching powers grant him heightened agility, enabling flexibility and coordination that is beyond the natural limits of the human body. He can contort his body into various positions and sizes impossible for ordinary humans, such as being entirely flat so that he can slip under a door, or using his fingers to pick conventional locks. He can also use it for disguise by changing the shape of his face, although this is painful and difficult for him. Ralph's physiology has greater physical limitations than Plastic Man; there is a limit to how far he can stretch his finite bodily mass, and he cannot open holes in his body as Plastic Man can.

Elongated Man's powers also greatly augment his durability. He is largely able to withstand corrosives, punctures and concussions without sustaining injury. It has been demonstrated that he is resistant to high velocities that would kill an ordinary person and that he is also more resistant to blasts from energy weapons that would kill ordinary humans. His physiology is more like that of an ordinary human than Plastic Man; he is not nearly invulnerable like Plastic Man.

In addition to his stretching abilities, Elongated Man is a professional

olfactory sense, allowing him to "smell" when something is "not right", or if a clue or mystery is at hand. This results in a rubbery nose twitch

.

Other versions

Kingdom Come

In Kingdom Come, when Superman comes out of retirement and re-establishes the Justice League, Batman recruits Ralph Dibny to become part of his faction. They infiltrate Lex Luthor's Mankind Liberation Front and once they discover that Luthor is brainwashing Captain Marvel, they attack and incarcerate the MLF members.

The Dark Knight Strikes Again

In

male enhancement" drink "Gingold" in a TV infomercial

. He is then recruited to aid Batman in his attack against the American government (taken over by Lex Luthor).

JLA/Avengers

Elongated Man appears in JLA/Avengers #3, replacing Plastic Man after the merging of the DC and Marvel Universes.

Justice League Unlimited

Elongated Man has appeared in the Justice League Unlimited spin-off comic book.

Countdown to Final Crisis

Recently the Ralph Dibny of

Monitor of New Earth, Bob.^[28]

The Flash (2016)

Elongated Maniac, an evil future version of Elongated Man, appears in The Flash #53. He appears in Commander Cold's flashbacks to an encounter where he faces off against Commander Cold after killing hostages.

In other media

Television

Skeets (background) in Justice League Unlimited

.

• Elongated Man appears in Justice League Unlimited, voiced by Jeremy Piven.^[29] This version is a member of the Justice League.
• Elongated Man appears in Batman: The Brave and the Bold, voiced by Sean Donnellan.^[29] This version possesses shapeshifting abilities and a rivalry with Plastic Man.
• Elongated Man appears in Mad, voiced by Ralph Garman.^{[citation needed]}
• Elongated Man appears in the Young Justice episode "Terminus", voiced by David Kaye.^[29] This version is a member of the Justice League.
• Ralph Dibny / Elongated Man appears in media set in the Arrowverse, portrayed by Hartley Sawyer.^[30]
  • Dibny first appears in
    Black Hole
    facility off-screen and was forced to wear a mask to protect himself. Once Dearbon is exonerated following McCulloch's defeat, she and Dibny leave to travel the world and stop other criminal organizations like Black Hole.
  • Dibny appears in the crossover event "Crisis on Infinite Earths".^[35]

Film

• Extruded Man, an evil, alternate reality version of Elongated Man, makes a non-speaking appearance in Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths^{[citation needed]} as a minor member of the Crime Syndicate who originally served under his universe's Martian Manhunter before serving Owlman.
• Elongated Man makes a cameo appearance in Teen Titans Go! To the Movies.^{[citation needed]}

References

1. ^
   OCLC 213309017
2. ISBN 9781578593972
   .
3. ISBN 978-1605490250
   . [Jim Amash]: Was there any discussion about Plastic Man when you did 'The Elongated Man' with Julie? [Carmine Infantino]: No, he never mentioned him.
4. ISBN 978-1893905214
   . Not knowing that DC owned these old Quality characters—and Julie'll deny it, I guess, and say they wanted to do something different—but they came up with the Elongated Man instead of Plastic Man, and they came up with the Atom instead of Doll Man. They could have resurrected either of these two characters ... [b]ut the whole concept of Plastic Man would have escaped them. It's just crazy humor, and it needs someone who really understands that stuff.
5. ^ "Elongated Man". Don Markstein's Toonopedia. Archived from the original on June 17, 2016. Retrieved 2011-04-25. ...editor Julius Schwartz later said that if he'd known DC owned the name 'Plastic Man' (which it had acquired when Quality Comics, Plas's publisher, sold its properties to DC in 1956), he'd never have chosen such an unwieldy name for his own character.
6. ISBN 978-1887591126
   .
7. ISBN 978-1-4654-5357-0
   .
8. ISBN 9780345501066
   .
9. ISBN 978-1-4654-8578-6
   .
10. ^ 52 Week One (May 10, 2006)
11. ^ 52 Week Two (May 17, 2006)
12. ^ 52 Week Four (May 31, 2006)
13. ^ 52 Week Eleven (July 19, 2006)
14. ^ 52 Week Twelve (July 26, 2006)
15. ^ 52 Week Thirteen (August 2, 2006)
16. ^ 52 Week Eighteen (September 6, 2006)
17. ^ 52 Week Twenty-Seven (November 8, 2006)
18. ^ 52 Week Thirty-Two (December 13, 2006)
19. ^ 52 Week Forty-Two (February 21, 2007)
20. ^ 52 Week Fifty-Two (May 2, 2007)
21. ^ Reign in Hell #1 (September 2008)
22. ^ Blackest Night #1 (July 2009)
23. ^ Blackest Night #2 (August 2009)
24. ^ Blackest Night #3 (September 2009)
25. ^ Blackest Night #8 (May 2010)
26. ^ Secret Six (vol. 4) #3 (June 2015)
27. ^ Countdown to Final Crisis #18
28. ^ Countdown to Final Crisis #17
29. ^ ^{a b c} "Elongated Man Voices (DC Universe)". Behind The Voice Actors. Retrieved December 13, 2023. A green check mark indicates that a role has been confirmed using a screenshot (or collage of screenshots) of a title's list of voice actors and their respective characters found in its opening and/or closing credits and/or other reliable sources of information.
30. ^ Ching, Albert (July 31, 2017). "The Flash Casts Its Elongated Man To The Season 4". Comic Book Resources. Retrieved July 31, 2017.
31. ^ Pedersen, Erik (June 15, 2018). "'The Flash': Hartley Sawyer Upped To Series Regular on the CW Superhero Drama". Deadline Hollywood. Archived from the original on June 15, 2018. Retrieved December 14, 2018.
32. ^ Anderson, Jenna (January 30, 2018). "'The Flash' Plans an Unlikely Escape in 'True Colors' Preview". comicbook.com. Retrieved November 28, 2023.
33. ^ Agard, Chancellor (October 31, 2017). "The Flash: About that Ralph Dibny reference in season 1..." Entertainment Weekly. Retrieved March 29, 2018.
34. ^ Petski, Denise (June 8, 2020). "'The Flash': Hartley Sawyer Fired After Racist, Misogynist Tweets Resurface". Deadline Hollywood. Archived from the original on June 8, 2020. Retrieved June 8, 2020.
35. ^ Francisco, Eric (October 10, 2019). "New "Crisis on Infinite Earths" photos blow away 'Avengers: Endgame'". Inverse. Archived from the original on October 11, 2019. Retrieved October 11, 2019.