The Elongated Man's Other-World Wife!

 "Everyone in the Silver Age became an alien sometime," said my buddy Duke as he saw the tease I left for this story.

"The Elongated Man's Other-World Wife!" first appeared in Detective Comics #332, which can be purchased on Comixology or read on DC Universe, and has only been reprinted in Showcase Presents The Elongated Man. It was written by Gardner Fox with art by Carmine Infantino, lettering (presumably) by Gaspar Saladino with Julius Schwartz editing.

Making his debut with this story is Sid Greene on inks, and you'll notice a new look to Infantino's art with bold lines and not so much of a "sketchy" look. While Greene adds bold lines, he doesn't exactly skip all of Infantino's detail and the art remains looking quite dynamic and energetic.

The splash page offers a surprise with Ralph trapped and Sue claiming to not be Sue, but an alien impostor. This illustrates a moment later in the story, and it's a good pick as it gets you interested and keeps you reading.

 The story opens with Sue Dibny leaving the motel room she and Ralph are sleeping in, clearly following someone. Ralph is awake and watches, and slipping into his costume watches as Sue and a strange humanoid creature walk toward a cave entrance. Watching them go through, Ralph attempts to follow, but is knocked out by electric beams.

Ralph awakens about noon the next day, back in his motel room, Sue waking him, explaining that she's spent the morning sunning herself to lose her winter pallor. When Ralph asks what she was doing last night, she says she's not responsible for what she does in his dreams.

Sue's coloring in the final panel looks kind of dark, but as the story will reveal, this is intentional. Problem is, because color printing in comics was erratic, you might mistake it for a coloring error. And in Showcase Presents, there's no color at all.

Ralph heads out and spots his footprints, knowing that Sue's mysterious actions from the previous night were not a dream at all. Going back to the cave, he throws some rocks into the entrance, activating an electric trap. Ralph swings through the top of the entry way, missing the trap. Entering, he finds a strange alien landscape.

 Ralph is then spotted by some of the alien men he saw the previous night who intend to fight him. However, he fights back and puts up a good fight, knowing when to withdraw.

Infantino draws an interesting wide open cavern, which reminds me a lot of "The Elongated Man's Undersea Trap!" He remains only a little inconsistent in the placing of everything, the outcropping Ralph kneels on stays consistent, but the shape of the wall it's by shifts quite a bit.

I have noticed that Infantino likes to draw Ralph pressing his back up against the ceiling quite a bit. It does highly demonstrate his powers, but I can't imagine it'd be good for mobility. Might want to reconsider that, Ralph.

Oh yeah, and again, we have Ralph doing his signature move of stretching out of the way of blasts/bullets.

Sue steps out and orders the aliens to capture Ralph, claiming she needs to know why he remembered the previous night's events.

When Ralph asks her what's going on, Sue says she's Elva Van of the planet Sathanus, then she has him trapped in a glass cage. She claims that another alien will be given his form, then explains her race plans to conquer the world by copying and replacing men and women in important government roles and after this has been accomplished, having everyone killed.

She further explains how she duplicated Sue the night before and then sends a gas into the cage "to put you asleep." Guys, that should be "to put you to sleep."

Ralph realizes he can get out of the cage if there's an entrance and elongates his way out of a small opening.

Before he's even completely out of the cage, Ralph begins to fight the aliens, with some truly fanciful art by Infantino, which looks very dynamic. And of course, Ralph makes a few good puns.

After taking out all of the aliens and seizing their weapons, Ralph moves to capture their leader, when she tells him to stop and the show is over and for everyone to sing. The aliens begin to sing "Happy Birthday" to Ralph, and he remembers that it is his birthday.

Sue reveals that this is Ralph's birthday present: a weird mystery for him to solve. The aliens are just stunt men in costumes, put together by her uncle Jim who's a movie producer. This is the crew just taking an extra day. No one was actually hurt. Well, they apparently did use real electric bolts powerful enough to knock Ralph out.

As they get ready to have the cake, Ralph thinks how he knew it was really Sue when he saw her as the alien because she's sun burned from tanning in the morning when the alien duplicated her the previous night.

The only problem with Ralph's logic is that the story doesn't say if Sue returned after being duplicated. It would make more sense for them to keep her captive if the aliens were real, and thus the sunburn would've been on the alien leader.

It's interesting that they used coloring as a hint here, even though the logic behind Ralph's tip that it was really Sue is muddled.

What is important about this story is that it sets something up for Ralph and Sue's relationship: that she creates some surprise for him for his birthday, usually going for a fake mystery for him to solve. We'll see how this develops in the future.

Overall... not such a great story. It's fun, but as pointed out, the logic at the end basically breaks down. So good, but not great.

Next time, Ralph solves the robbery that never happened.