Museum of Mixed-Up Men!

Detective Comics #331 would bring us the first of what the staff thought would make an interesting feature: having an annual issue where the heroes featured in the comic book would team up for a case that would fill the entire book, in this case, Batman and Elongated Man. Unfortunately, the concept was met with disapproval by readers and was discontinued, except for some much later special issues.

A digital copy is available through Comixology and DC Universe, and, due to the story featuring Batman and Robin, it's been reprinted in not just Showcase Presents the Elongated Man, but also Showcase Presents Batman Vol. 1 and The Dynamic Duo Archives Vol. 1.

The cover returns a familiar artist to handling Ralph: Joe Giella. While Infantino had been inking the solo Elongated Man stories, Giella had been inking the Batman stories in Detective Comics. So this is the first time Giella inked Ralph since he'd last appeared in The Flash.

The cover depicts a moment from late in the story, in which Batman, Robin and Ralph find themselves at the mercy of some invisible force in a museum. As covers go, this one looks interesting enough to pick it up from a newsstand. While the floor is basically the bottom of the cover, Batman's position helps to make the picture quite dynamic.

Batman denies the existence of ghosts. To be fair, the Spectre hadn't yet been revived and Deadman hadn't been introduced, but that statement would age like milk in the DC universe.

"Museum of Mixed-Up Men!" was written by Gardner Fox with art by Carmine Infantino, inks by Joe Giella, lettering by Gaspar Saladino and Julius Schwartz as editor.

The splash page shows us another scene from later in the story. Well, if you picked this up looking for a ghost story, you're going to be disappointed.

However, you can't go wrong with eye popping with Batman punching someone. It's very clear as to who the most popular characters are in order of how close they are to the foreground. But why does Ralph look bald?

Just a warning, this page tells you exactly what it is: it's a Batman story with Ralph as a guest star, not a story where they feature the characters evenly. So as this is an Elongated Man blog, I'm mainly going to focus on the pages where Ralph appears.

The story opens with Bruce Wayne touring the new Americana Wax Museum in Gotham City, and he decides to get a souvenir photo from an exhibit celebrating historic photographer Mathew Brady (they spell Mathew with two Ts, though, which refers to a very different historic figure, check out Wikipedia). When Bruce's photograph is taken, it causes his face to transform into an unrecognizable other person. In addition, this process gives him amnesia. The transformed amnesiac Bruce can't find any identification on himself.

In the meantime, someone who looks and sounds like Bruce Wayne with his identification takes out half a million dollars from his bank account.

Over at stately Wayne Manor, Dick Grayson is wondering where Bruce is. When his Aunt Harriet gets a strange phone call, Dick recognizes it as a hotline call from Commissioner Gordon. Calling him back in the guise of Robin, he hears about some jewel thieves. He heads out alone to take care of them, packing Batman's costume with him just in case. The amnesiac Bruce happens to notice the Batmobile and decides to follow it.

As Robin is nearly overwhelmed by the jewel thieves, Batman reappears, Bruce having regained his face and memory and gotten the Batman costume. After taking out the thieves, he explains that he was out for twelve hours. Dick informs him that he had contacted Bruce's clerk at the bank who told him that Bruce had taken out half a million dollars. Bruce is curious as to if he did this or not.

On the bottom half of page 11, we finally find Ralph and Sue who happen to be visiting Gotham City. They happened to visit the same museum the previous day and Sue happened to take Polaroid photos of their visit. Looking them over, Ralph finds something suspicious.

Good point on them having a Polaroid camera: these cameras would dispense a fully developed photo, removing the need to wait for them to wait to have their photos developed. Good touch for a couple who lives on the road.

Ralph notices that Sue took two photos of a man who wears the exact same clothes and hat. Sue claims she took the photos five minutes apart from each other, leading Ralph to believe that they must somehow be the same man, so he decides to go investigate at the museum.

Looking over this page has actually made me miss when Giella inked Ralph on the regular. He had a good method of putting bold, solid lines on Infantino's work. They simply made some good-looking comics together.

That said, I can see the criticism of Sue's hairstyle that popped up in the letters page. For some reason, what worked for Shirley MacLaine isn't working in artwork.

Bruce approaches his banker and looking over the records of the withdrawal the previous day, sees that it was a forgery. Another businessman reveals he's missing a million, but the bankers tell him he withdrew the money in person. (The businessman is the same one Sue photographed.) When he reveals the last thing he remembered was attending the museum, Bruce decides Batman and Robin need to check out the museum. Ralph has entered via the back door's keyhole.

Robin notices Ralph, wondering if the wax statues have come to life as he sees only Ralph's elongated arms. When Robin slips on some wax on the floor (how did THAT get there?), Ralph helps him and Batman recognizes him. The two detectives quickly compare notes.

Suddenly, the motion of the heroes is impeded by invisible forces, leading to the panel the cover is based on. The more cropped nature of the panel emphasizes the action, making me like it more than the cover. This ends up with Ralph stretching to the ceiling, knocking himself out, and Batman Robin fall against displays.

Batman recovers first and heads to the Mathew Brady exhibit and finds the camera activated, trapping him in a paralyizing beam, meaning the camera is about to swap out his face.

The story cuts over to the operators of the camera, who use their "electrofaciograph" to swap people's faces, and it was also used to mess with the heroes. (Because it can.) The camera's effects last twelve hours. They now plan to get Batman's secret identity by swapping out his face, sell it to the highest bidder and then clear out of town.

Ralph now becomes a hero by stretching his neck out in front of Batman's face, making the camera take his face instead. This is probably one of the more ingenious and heroic uses of Ralph not having a secret identity: he can use it to prevent other heroes from losing theirs.

Ralph's new face is from a blond man with a receding hairline, not the bald guy seen on the splash page.

Batman finds the hidden base where the operators are hiding and in the scuffle that leads them to flee the museum, they destroy the electrofaciograph.

Robin helps the amnesiac Ralph take on a few men themselves. Batman follows the fleeing men outside, and takes out more of them.

 Ralph helps round up the last few before they turn the crooks over to the police.

I decided to do a count of how many of the operators there are. There are twelve. If they'd managed to escape, that would've been 1.5 million dollars among twelve people. This is how you know this story is in the early 60s.

Sue sees Ralph and is surprised to see his face swapped. Batman explains, and in twelve hours, Sue has her husband back and it's her turn to explain the closing of the case to Ralph.

Meanwhile, Bruce has invited the Dibnys to dinner, and he reveals to Dick that he told Ralph his secret identity, but since Ralph had had his face swapped, he wouldn't remember it later.

Some gratitude, Bruce.

Overall, it's a wacky Silver Age story, one that I'd thought Detective Comics had largely been moving away from, but there's plenty of action, well-rendered by Infantino and Giella. Aside from the moment where Ralph saves Batman's secret identity, he doesn't have a lot to do here. You can tell that this was mandated to have a book length story that had Ralph team up with Batman and Robin rather than the usual have a Batman story then a backup Elongated Man story.

So, not bad, just not highly remarkable, and luckily, Batman, Robin or Ralph were not "nerfed" in playing out the events of the story. And if you were nostalgic for Ralph's first appearances in The Flash, Giella gives you that look, just now with Batman instead of Barry Allen.

Next time, Sue is an alien.