The Elongated Man (aka Ralph Dibny)

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Created by John Broome (writer) & Carmine Infantino (artist)

RALPH DIBNY was an actual private eye in the DC universe.

Well, sorta. And briefly. And only eventually.

He was better known for by his super-hero monicker “ELONGATED MAN.“

And he was pretty much, at least at first, an intentional rip-off of Plastic Man, another very stretchy superhero.

Back in the late fifties, his creators, John Broome and Carmine Infantino, were told by DC Comics editor Julius Schwarz to write a Plastic Man-like character, apparently unaware that DC had already owned the rights to that character—and had since 1956, when DC bought out Quality Comics.

So, yes, Plastic Man and Elongated Man are similar, but DC’s lawyers assure us that they are legally distinct.

And there are distinctions, of course. The lawyers say so.

Ralph’s condition isn’t permanent—he gets his powers by regularly consuming a special potion that he developed as a young man. Plastic Man’s are permanent.

And sure, Ralph can stretch and contort his limbs and body to superhuman lengths, positions and sizes, able to slip under doors and squeeze into the tiniest spaces, use his fingers to pick locks or alter the shape of his face, but he lacks the seemingly infinite abilities and invulnerability of Plastic Man—there’s a limit to how far The Elongated Man can elongate.

They’re both light-hearted jokesters, prone to wisecracks and silliness, though Plastic Man is definitely more goofy and flippant, displaying a manic, almost cartoonish energy, than the far more serious-minded and squeaky clean Ralph. And while steadfast Ralph is happily married to Sue; Plastic Man’s relationship with various girlfriends and his eventual marriage are generally troubled, as is his subsequent relationship with his son.

The uneducated and reformed criminal Plas always seems to be winging it, while goody two-shoes Ralph has a broad base of knowledge to draw on, having been schooled  in forensics, criminology, psychology, chemistry and history, and can speak several languages. Plus a convenient nose twitch that signifies when something is “not quite right.”

Ralph made his first appearance in The Flash (May 1960; #112), already sporting a purple and white superhero onesie, befriending The Flash and appearing occasionally, proving to be popular enough to score  his own regular backup feature in Detective Comics throughout most of the 1960s.

In those, Ralph and his wife Sue are doing their best Nick and Nora, a happily married couple of carefree amateur sleuths traveling the country in their snazzy convertible; spending their long-running honeymoon solving oddball crimes. The series kicked off with “Ten Miles from Nowhere,” in Detective Comics #327, with Ralph and Sue going through U.S. Customs, returning from a trip to Montreal, where a jewel robbery has just taken place, on their way to a motel on Lake Champlain, setting a pattern They come, they see, they solver…

And so it goes…

Occasionally the couple hooked up with other DC superheroes along the way, fighting crimes alongside Batman and Robin, Green Lantern, the Atom and  Zatanna, with Ralph (with Sue in tow) eventually joining the Justice League of America in 1973. Only very rarely did his membership in the JLA overlap with that of Plastic Man…

Awkward!

And from there, much like Plas, Ralph became a sporadic visitor to the DC Universe, never really gone but rarely front and centre either.

All that changed, though, when his wife, Sue, was murdered in Identity Crisis (2004-05),  a still-controversial (see “Under Oath”) seven-issue mini-series by writer Brad Meltzer and the artistic team of Rags Morales and Michael Bair.

At the conclusion, Ralph dies himself, reuniting with Sue to become “ghost detectives.”

Uh-huh.

Anyway, like Plastic Man, after years as of bouncing around as a superhero, a reincarnated Ralph eventually does become an actual private eye, at least briefly. It happens in The New 52, DC’s ambitious year-long 2011 revamp and relaunch of almost their entire superhero roster.

Lord knows what he is now…

Anyway, also like Plas, Ralph may have achieved his largest popularity on television, played by various actors in various cameos on various animated shows on the Cartoon Network, and as a recurring supporting character in the CW’s live-action shows.

But anyone looking for super-powered private eye action with either of these infinitely malleable Magoos might be disappointed. Plastic Man’s adventures are generally more fun, while The Elongated Man’s occasionally involve actual mysteries, and are more serious in tone.

But just slightly.

UNDER OATH

  • “Identity Crisis (is) a story so fraught with character misuse it actually hurts me to think about.  It’s frustrating, because Ralph and Sue Dibny are such wonderful characters, and their only offense was that they weren’t edgy enough.  They were punished because the story of a married couple traveling the country together and solving mysteries was somehow not perceived as an entertaining enough story, and instead we had to watch some absolutely horrific character assassination play out, and go on to define these amazing characters.”
    — The DC Continuity Project

COMICS

  • THE FLASH
    (1959-85, DC Comics)
    246 issues

    • “Mystery of the Elongated Man” (April/May 1960; #112)
    • “The Elongated Man’s Secret Weapon” (September 1960; #112)
    • “The Elongated Man’s Undersea Trap” (March 1961; #119)
    • “Space-Boomerang Trap” (November 1961; #124)
    • “Kid Flash Meets the Elongated Man” (August 1962; #130)
    • “The Man Who Mastered Absolute Zero” (February 1963; #134)
    • “The Pied Piper’s Double Doom” (August 1963; #138)
  • DETECTIVE COMICS
    (1937-present, DC Comics)

    • “Ten Miles to Nowhere” (May 1964; #327)
    • “The Curious Case of the Barn Door Bandit” (June 1964; #328)
    • Puzzle of the Purple Pony” (July 1964; #329)
    • “Desert Double-Cross”” (August 1964; #330)
    • “Museum of Mixed-Up Men” (September 1964; #331)
    • “The Elongated Man’s Other-World Wife” (October 1964; #332)
    • “The Robbery That Never Happened” (November 1964; #333)
    • “Battle of the Elongated Weapons” (December 1964; #334)
    • “Break Up the Bottle-Neck Gang” (January 1965; #335)
    • “The House of ‘Flashy’ Traps” (February 1965; #336)
    • “Case of the 20 Grand Pay-Off” (March 1965; #337)
    • “Case of the Curious Compass” (April 1965; #338)
    • “The Counterfeit Crime-Buster” (May 1965: #339)
    • “Mystery of the Millionaire Cowboy” (June 1965; #340)
    • “The Elongated Man’s Change-of-Face” (July 1965; #341)
    • “The Bandits and the Baroness” (August 1965; #342)
    • “The Secret War of the Phantom General” (September 1965; #343)
    • “Peril in Paris” (October 1965; #344)
    • “Robberies in Reverse”(November 1965; #345)
    • “Two Batmen Too Many”, “Peephole to the Future” (December 1965; #346)
    • “The Man Who Hated Money” (January 1966; #347)
    • “My Wife, the Witch” (February 1966; #348)
    • “The 13 O’Clock Robbery” (March 1966; #349)
    • “Green Lantern’s Breakout” ((April 1966; #350)
    • “The Case of the Costumed-Made Crook” (May 1966; #351)
    • “The Counter of Monte Carlo” (June 1966; #352)
    • “The Puzzling Prophecies of the Tea Leaves” (July 1966; #353)
    • “The Double-Dealing Jewel Thieves” (August 1966; #354)
    • “The Tantalizing Troubles of the Tripod Thieves” (September 1966; #355)
    • “Truth Behind the False Faces” (October 1966; #356)
    •  “Tragedy of the Too-Lucky Thief” (November 1966; #357)
    • “The Faker-Takers of the Baker’s Dozen” (December 1966; #358)
    • “Riddle of the Sleepytime Taxi” (January 1967; #359)
    • “London Caper of the Rockers and Mods” (February 1967; #360)
      Detective Comics #361/2 : “The Curious Case of the Circus Crook” (March 1967; #361)
      Detective Comics #362/2 : “The Horse That Hunted Hoods” (April 1967; #362)
    • “Way-Out Day in Wishbone City” (May 1967; #363)
    • “The Ship That Sank Twice” (June 1967; #364)
    •  “The Crooks Who Captured Themselves” (July 1967; $365)
    • “Robber Round-Up in Kiddy City” (August 1967: #366)
    • “Enigma of the Elongated Evildoer” (September 1967; #367)
    • “The Treacherous Time-Trap” (October 1967; #368)
    • “Legend of the Lovers’ Lantern” (November 1967; #369)
    • “Case of the Colorless Cash” (December 1967; #370)
    • “The Bellringer and the Baffling Bongs” (January 1968; #371)
    • “Elongated Man Throws His Weight Around” (February 1968; #372)
    • “The Riddler on the Roof” (March 1968; #373)
    • “The Amazing Crook-Catcher” (April 1968; #374)
    • “The Face That Stopped Clocks” (May 1968; #375)
    • “The Demon-Doll Doom” (June 1968; #376)
    • “The Case of the Clumsy Crook” (July 1968; #377)
    • “Menace of the Man-Killing Shooting Gallery” (August 1968; #378)
    • “The Elongated Man’s Magic Moment” (September 1968; #379)
    • “Fortune in a Flower Pot” (October 1968; #380)
    • “The Come-and-Go Mansion Mystery” (November 1968; #381)
    • “The Wishing Well Wonder” (December 1968; #382)
    • “Pursuit of the Bugged Bandits” (January 1969; #383)
  • THE ELONGATED MAN
    (1992, DC Comics)
    Four issues
    Written by Gerard Jones
    Art by Mike Parobeck

    • “Europe ’92: Part 1: Concorde to Discord!”“Eurpoe ’92: Part 2: The Sounds of Silence”
    • “Europe ’92: Part 3: From Bad to Wurst!”
    • “Europe ’92: Part 4: Soundly Beaten!”
  • IDENTITY CRISIS
    (2004-05, DC Comics)
    7 issues
    Writtern by Brad Meltzer
    Art by Rags Morales,  Michael Bair

TELEVISION

  • JUSTICE LEAGUE UNLIMITED
    (2004-06, Cartoon Network)
    Starring the voices of Kevin Conroy, George Newbern, Susan Eisenberg, Phil LaMarr, Michael Rosenbaum, Carl Lumbly, Maria Canals and
    Jeremy Piven as THE ELONGATED MAN.
  • BATMAN: THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD
    (2008-11, Cartoon Network)
    Sean Donnellan as THE ELONGATED MAN

    • “Journey to the Center of the Bat!” (January 30, 2009)
      Plastic Man also pops up, and the (plastic) sparks fly.
  • MAD
    (2010-2013, Cartoon Network)
    A SNL-like sketch comedy show, filled with short spoofs of TV shows, movies, video games, comic books, celebrities, and other media, using various types of animation (CGI, claymation, stop motion, photoshopped imagery, etc.). The Elongated Man appeared at least once, voiced by Ralph Garman.
  • YOUNG JUSTICE
    (2010-2013, Cartoon Network)
    (2019, DC Universe)
    (2021-22, HBO Max)
    The Elongated Man appear sporadically in this show, as a member of tthe Justice League. He was oiced by David Kaye.
  • THE FLASH
    (2014-23, The CW)
    Ralph appeared several times in the live-action series (set in The CW’s “Arrowverse,” which spanned several series), brought back to life in the third season of The Flash following the destruction of the “Flashpoint” timeline in the third season, and made his first appearance in the fourth season episode “Elongated Journey Into Night”(October 31, 2017) — as a sketchy but stretchy ex-cop turned private eye, specializing in infidelity cases. He was played for most of his run by Hartley Sawyer, until several racist and misogynist tweets by him popped up in 2020, and he was fired from the show, and the character written out.

FURTHER INVESTIGATION

Respectfully submitted by Kevin Burton Smith.

 

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2 thoughts on “The Elongated Man (aka Ralph Dibny)”

  1. Even as a kid, I always wondered why The Elongated Man was the only superhero with a wife. Sue must have been very satisfied in her marriage. Just sayin’…

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