Battle of the Elongated Weapons!

 "Battle of the Elongated Weapons!" appeared in Detective Comics #334, which is available on Comixology and the story has only been reprinted in Showcase Presents the Elongated Man.

The creative team is our now usual lineup: Gardner Fox writing, Carmine Infantino on pencils, Sid Greene on inks, and likely Gaspar Saladino lettering with Julius Schwartz as editor.

The splash page's text teases that someone has figured out how to make inanimate objects stretch. The art shows a dynamic shot of the crook hurling a giant pencil at a seemingly unprepared Ralph, saying a weird line: "You'll have to go some to match your elongated body against my elongated weapons!"

What does "go some" mean? Looking it up, it seems to be generally out of use slang meaning to go very fast. Okay. Well, considering Ralph's track record, I think he can handle this.

 The story opens with Ralph making a special appearance at a circus benefit show. He stretches into the audience to sign an autograph, gives a drink to a performer, and then serves as a safety net for the acrobats.

I like the way Ralph stretches his midsection in the first two panels, but something about the way he flattens part of his body in the last two panels looks weird. (Especially when you consider what's under that costume.) Seems like he should be fully stretched into a net instead of just stretching part of himself to catch the performers.

Anyway, the next page shows us the kid who got Ralph's autograph being approached by a strange man who offers to buy the pencil Ralph used to sign his name with.

Kid, you should've sprung for a pen.

The kid agrees and we follow the strange man, Martin Beene, who has been collecting items that Ralph has touched. He wants to make things stretch and after a lot of tries has finally made a solution that makes items Ralph has touched that have been treated with it stretch. Displayed is a sequence where he makes the gun used in "The Curious Case of the Barn Door Bandit" stretch its barrel and then uses it to steal a wallet.

An interesting item is that Martin theorizes that Ralph may have imparted some of his powers to the items he touches. Since he gets the items to stretch, it would seem that this is indeed the case. This foreshadows a future story in The Flash #252-253 where Ralph is able to change the shape of anything he touches. (I'm going to have so much to say about that story...) So, it seems that these stories confirm that Ralph can actually give items or people a quality that will allow them to stretch like him, but it takes a very unusual circumstance for them to be active.

At an event some time later, Sue (in her only appearance in this story, and it seems she's dyed her hair red) spots Martin stealing the cash from the show they're attending. Slipping into his costume, he goes after Martin, who uses the spray to make the road Ralph is running on stretch so he stays ahead until he leads him into a cavern.

The art on this page is very dynamic and again Infantino uses few panels so he can have large panels showing off the stretching action.

In the cavern, Martin uses an elongating platform to rise out of Ralph's reach. This is when the scene in the splash page occurs, just now viewed over Martin's shoulder. Ralph manages to vault himself over the pencil which becomes huge as it hurls towards him.

Martin's next attack is with a rubber ball that becomes huge as it flies at Ralph. Ralph stretches himself out to swing himself around the ball as if he was a jump rope for it.

The art for this page can't be faulted, but seriously, why is Ralph doing this and not just moving out of the path of the ball? Seems like there'd be plenty of room for him to do it.

On the next page, Martin sprays the walls of the cavern Ralph is touching to stretch them around Ralph and trap him, but Ralph then launches the ball back at Martin, knocking him off his platform, allowing him to be captured.

This penultimate page neatly gets the action across, though it's difficult to think of why Martin needs to stretch the cavern walls.

In the final half page, as Martin is being carried off by the police, Ralph experiments with the solution and wonders why he can't make things stretch.

Martin's thoughts reveal that to use the solution, you have to swallow some of it, and he hopes Ralph doesn't figure it out because once he gets out of prison, he wants a rematch.

Except that this is the only appearance of Martin Beene ever. It's possible that they wanted to set Martin up to be an archenemy for Ralph, but frankly, the story is rather silly with Ralph basically facing someone whose plot seems ripped from a cartoon.

I haven't written about the letters page before, but there's an item in this issue that deserves note: Joe Adams of Hawthorne, California writes in to complain about Ralph's lack of a mask.

Dear Editor: As President of the NSPCMHVO-AHG (National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Masks, Hoods, and Various Other Assorted Head-Gears), I have a complaint.

At the introduction of the Elongated Man series in Detective Comics, the Stretching Sleuth's purple face protector was missing. At first I thought of it as a small mistake, but now, four issues have come and still no mask. There are serious talks going around to the effect of the masks and hoods of America going on strike. Can you imagine the utter chaos among your super-heroes if their identity-concealing masks should go on strike? Batman. Flash, Green Lantern, Atom, Hawkman and countless others would have their careers cut short due to the loss of their masks and hoods.

Unless you immediately return his mask to the Elongated Man our members will go on strike! Please avert this comicdom disaster!

Julius Schwartz replies and confirms that Ralph revealed his secret identity when he married Sue:

Since the Elongated Man's Ralph Dibny identity is known to the world—and underworld (a disclosure that was newspaper-headlined on the day Ralph married Sue)—there is nothing to be gained by having the Elongated Man wear an identity-concealing mask. On the same basis, you might argue that he has no need for his costume either. But we have a convenient answer for that too. The costume is made of a rare material that stretches when he stretches. If he were to indulge in his elongating activities while wearing regular apparel, his wardrobe would soon be in a sorry. tattered state!

Next time, we meet Ralph's biggest fan. Which surprisingly, isn't me.