The Various Elongated Man costumes

Well, I ran out of time to do another comic breakdown this week, so here's something different.

I Photoshopped Hartley Sawyer—who will be playing Ralph on The Flash TV show—into each of the five unique costumes the Elongated Man has had over the years. Then I did a second picture of color variations on those costumes. With commentary.

#1 - This first simple purple and pale off-blue color first appeared in Ralph's first appearance in The Flash #112. He wore it with a mask (see inset), but by the time of his move to Detective Comics in #327, he had stopped wearing the mask.

#2 - The red, black and gold costume was revealed on the final pages of Detective Comics #350. A little too-inspired by Plastic Man for my liking, but in 3D, it doesn't look bad actually. Some colorists would switch out the red for purple, especially in Detective Comics #359. The red costume would make a major comeback in early 'naughties, and Ralph was seen in it in the tragic Identity Crisis. Some appearances gave Ralph a V-neck that exposed a bit of his chest.

#3 - The half purple and half white costume seems to have first appeared in Justice League of America #252. One of Ralph's better costumes, in my opinion. In Detective Comics #572, he's wearing it with a matching domino mask. I decided not to do that mask.

#4 - This rather unattractive take on the original costume first appeared in Justice League Europe #37. It made Ralph appear too goofy, in my opinion. Also, in the comics, he looked way too tall and slim in it. Like his head had been stretched out.

#5 - The latest costume appeared at the end of Secret Six #12 in 2016. I didn't like it at first, and I still don't like that it's orange and yellow. I've recolored it in shades of purple, and I like that better. The design is good. Colors, not.

1. A more maroon version of the second costume appeared in several issues of Detective Comics. I'm guessing the colorist decided it looked better. Or maybe since Plastic Man did have a series at the time, perhaps they subtly changed it to avoid confusion.

2. This one is mainly personal. When I was a kid, I would photocopy old comics and recolor these black and white copies, mainly so I'd have my own copy. Since Jimmy Olsen's Elastic Lad did a mainly purple costume with green trunks and Plastic Man had red, I suppose I thought Ralph should have his own color, so given the number of color options I had, I picked green.

3. This one is a personal preference twist on the second costume, but some variations of the second costume in Detective Comics looked more regular purple than maroon or red. See point 1.

4. This bizarre twist of the second costume appeared in Detective Comics #357. It also contains an advertisement for the first issue of the then-new Plastic Man series, so perhaps that lends credence to my theory about them moving away from making it primarily red. Or perhaps the colorist on the story heard that Ralph's costume was "red and yellow" and got confused.

5. My initial reaction to the latest costume was negative, but not for the design, but for the bright orange color. Do not put an orange costume on a character whose hair you color orange. It just looked loud and too flashy and while I'm sure you could make the argument that Ralph would do it for attention or to symbolize a new era in his life, I just prefer purple. So here it is, rendered in purple, which I like much better.