The Elongated Man's Change-of-Face!

July 1965's Detective Comics #341 brought us a new adventure for Ralph. And for the first time in awhile, you can get this issue on Comixology, and it is also available on DC Universe.

In the letters page, only one of the three letters presented comments on one of Ralph's stories at all. Dick Ruprecht of Pittsburgh writes that "Case of the 20-Grand Pay-Off!" was "even better" than the accompanying Batman story. He calls it the best written and illustrated EM story that he's read. (Despite how horrible I thought Ralph treated Sue in that story.) He says the title explained the story as well as the story itself did, and the story had three positive factors: "terrific artwork, baffling mystery, hilarious action."

Get used to Batman getting most of the glory.

"The Elongated Man's Change-of-Face!" features our familiar crew of Gardner Fox as writer, Carmine Infantino as artist, Sid Greene on inks and Julius Schwartz as editor.

The splash page teases the story with a panel suggesting that someone else might be posing as the Elongated Man. But do they actually have elastic powers?

The opening panel tells us that Ralph and Sue are still staying with Amos Hurd, the "Millionaire Cowboy" from the last story. Ralph decides to visit the nearby town of Powderkeg where he has mining interests. It's a little late in the day for that, so he decides to stroke his ego by going to the newspaper office to see how they've covered his exploits.

While there was a real Midwest City that could fit the bill of the setting of the last story, I can't seem to find a town called Powderkeg. But this is the DC Universe, so who knows how many different places there would be?

In the reading room, Ralph does discover the papers, but finds a strange twist: the papers credit the Elongated Man as being Abner Trotter, a man native to Powderkeg. As Ralph wonders, he overhears the editor of the paper, who is in fact Abner Trotter's father, being coerced into running an extra paper to tell everyone to be at the square at midnight to see them make an example of Abner, who they have captured.

After the kidnappers have left, Ralph confronts the editor who reveals that he knew Ralph had an interest in the nearby mine, so he'd be sure to visit, so he started misreporting Ralph's exploits to get his attention and to keep Ralph off the radar of the Mortons, criminal brothers who've planted bombs secretly across town that will explode unless they reset the timer every ten hours. Since they hold the town hostage, they can do whatever they want without fear of repercussion.

Ralph quickly devises a plan and using a makeup kit that he says Batman gave him, he makes himself up to look like Abner Trotter. He finds the real Abner tied up in the Morton's home and quickly changes places with him, giving him his plan.

When the Mortons arrive, Ralph feigns that he's had to wait for his powers to renew, and one of Infantino's visually appealing fight scenes begins.

Ralph uses his elongating powers to break out of his bonds, punch the Mortons, dive underneath them, then arch his back, knocking the men against the ceiling. Then he uses his legs to force two chairs to take the two others.

Infantino has a shorter and simpler action sequence to do this time, but he handles it with his usual aplomb. The way he draws Ralph's stretching keeps him with normal human proportions that are just long, but do allow him to move in ways normal people couldn't.

Ralph pretends to busy himself so one of the brothers slips away. He brings the other three out, which upsets the townsfolk, but Ralph assures them everything will be fine.

As Ralph suspected, the remaining Morton brother goes to their base with the control for the explosives. He plans to set the explosives off, but he's jumped by Abner, who quickly knocks him out and returning to town, assures them he deactivated the device and found a map where the other bombs are located so they can get rid of them.

The townsfolk notice that there are two Abners now, and when they ask, Abner's father assures them that they can read about it in the paper.

A few panels show Abner's father congratulating Ralph and Abner on working together to take out the Mortons' threat. The final panel shows Sue asking Ralph to tell her about the case, but he tells her to read about it in the paper.

Overall, this isn't a bad story. It's fairly solid, sets up the concept and executes it serviceably. It's just that there's not much else to it. No actual mystery, just Ralph going off of knowledge of behavior of people like the Mortons.

Next time should be more intriguing as Ralph Dibny meets Ralph Dibny, Ralph Dibny, Ralph Dibny, Ralph Dibny, Ralph Dibny, and Ralph Dibny. Also, Sue helps crack a case.