So what can Ralph do?

"Before you read this, remind me to tell you the difference between Plastic Man and Elongated Man." — Seth Cohen, The O.C.

 The question of Ralph Dibny's powers pops up occasionally. What can he do, what are his limits, and what differentiates him from other superheroes with similar powers like Marvel's Mister Fantastic, DC's Jimmy Olsen as Elastic Lad, and Plastic Man, the first elastic superhero that DC acquired from  Quality Comics?

If I'd been writing this about ten years ago, the answer would be quite simple, but now there's been at least two new incarnations of Ralph: the one that showed up in DC's New 52 continuity in 2014 to 2016 during Gail Simone's Secret Six run, and the new one on The Flash TV show. These new versions are different from the original one that first debuted in The Flash #112 in what they can do.

Please note that this may include spoilers, particularly for that run of Secret Six and Season 4 of The Flash TV series.

The original Ralph initially got his powers from drinking a fruit extract that allowed him to stretch. Eventually, it was revealed that this reacted with a metagene he had the entire time, but the gingo extract triggered his powers. This would let him stretch his body for about 100 yards (as mentioned in Detective Comics #340). Ralph can alter his body to an extent: he cannot change colors and he generally has to keep a humanoid form. He can flatten his form, but he can't go so thin that his blood can't flow properly or else he'll pass out. Eventually, Ralph attempts to disguise himself by molding his face. (Some attempts do show him with a different hair color.) It's important to note that as various writers and artists handled the character, they played a little loosely with what he could and couldn't do.

Original Ralph is quite comparable to Mr. Fantastic in his power set, with one interesting exception: Ralph cannot be made to stretch or change shape by external force. There are instances of him being knocked out and he always dodges bullets. (If he's bulletproof, he's not testing it.) Mr. Fantastic can be overpowered and made to change his shape (seen in Fantastic Four Annual #1).

The Ralph we meet in Secret Six is a little more of a conundrum in that it appears his powers are permanent, but we don't know how he acquired them. He's seen drinking from a flask in the first issue, which might be a callback to Ralph drinking gingold from one in 52, but whatever is in the flask is not specified, and as Ralph mentions "hair of the dog," it's presumably alcoholic.

Ralph spends most of the run of Secret Six disguised as a man named Damon Wells with the codename Big Shot. Big Shot is heavyset, which varies. Sometimes he's just a man with an imposing frame and black hair, other times he has a huge gut, and in issue #5, he transforms into a near mountain of muscle. Yet it's also #5 that shows us Ralph before the series, and he appears similar to the original Ralph with a slim frame and red hair. When Ralph resumes being the Elongated Man at the end of #12, he returns to his slim frame and red hair. So seemingly, this incarnation can change color to some extent.

Personally, I believe this incarnation is more in line with the Ralph we see in the CW's The Flash television series. First seen in the season four episode "Elongated Journey Into Night," it's revealed that Ralph was riding a bus that was inundated with dark matter when Barry was broken out of the Speed Force. He and the other passengers were transformed into metahumans with superpowers that they eventually discovered. This version of Ralph is able to be stretched by external force and has been demonstrated to be invulnerable to bullets and is able to contain explosions by ingesting the explosives.

The CW's Ralph doesn't use gingold to activate his powers, but Iris does find a bottle of gingo extract in his office, and later Ralph orders "gingold on the rocks" at a bar. The use of gingold is given a brief tribute as Ralph is able to stretch when he's first seen, but not able to resume his normal form until Caitlin Snow creates a serum that stabilizes his powers.

The CW's Ralph is seen molding his hand into the shape of a balloon animal and in a bonus scene, transforms his body into the shape of a snowman. In the most recent episode, he exhibits more or less the same power seen in Secret Six as he discovers he can shapeshift and disguise himself as different people, changing hair, eye and skin color.

For this (and the CW's Barry Allen suggesting the name as an Easter egg), a number of people have presumed that the CW's Ralph is operating with Plastic Man's power set, some still presuming that Ralph is Plastic Man.

Plastic Man's power set has been depicted as being far more extensive than Ralph's, often turning into shapes that would otherwise be inanimate, he can also compress into tiny shapes and has been shown doing this while Ralph hasn't. The short version of the difference between Plastic Man and Ralph used to be "silly putty vs. a rubber band." However, the CW's Ralph has been described on the show as being like silly putty, having his cells "polymerized" by the dark matter. But this Ralph by being able to change color is actually a bit more like Plastic Man's son Offspring than Plastic Man in that regard.

The CW superheroes have always played loosely with comic book lore, and likely for their Ralph, rather than work with the comic's limitations, they just opened it wide as it's not likely they'll adapt Plastic Man or Offspring.

I did mention Jimmy Olsen taking the identity of Elastic Lad, which happened in a number of issues of Superman's Pal, Jimmy Olsen. This identity first occurred after exposure to liquid kryptonite, then reoccurred thanks to a serum developed by professor Potter. (An issue of DC Comics Presents claims gingold is part of this serum.) Jimmy's powers often just had him stretch nearly infinitely. (One issue had him stretch his fingers into a confusing maze that stumped a villain trying to escape.) When surprised by a runaway steamroller, Jimmy was flattened but was able to resume his normal form with no ill effects. Probably most impressive was a story opening with Jimmy as Elastic Lad not only being a human cannonball, but also being the cannon and safety net. Thus it's fair to say Jimmy's powers while using the serum were very comparable to Plastic Man's.

So, that's how Ralph stacks up to the other main elastic heroes of comics. The original version of Ralph had a variety of limitations that seem to have become less in his new incarnations in Secret Six and The Flash TV series.

But of course what really set Ralph apart was his penchant for solving mysteries and his detective skills. His ability to spot things that were off and deductive reasoning gave him something besides just his physical superpowers to make him a standout superhero.

And yes, we're sticking with the explanation in Identity Crisis that sniffing out a mystery was just a developed twitch for show.

Behold, the Silver Age!

Probably my all time favorite era of comic books is the Silver Age. And frankly, what's not to love?

Comics have simply been an evolution of storytelling through print. Illustration had finally merged with text to tell stories through a visual medium. Crime and war comic books eventually gave rise to the superhero comic book, in which a costumed character would—with or without superpowers—take it upon themselves to thwart evil forces at work in the world. Captain America, Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, The Flash and Green Lantern were just a handful of characters created in the Golden Age of comics, which is held to have ended in the mid-1950s.

The Golden Age saw many innovations from various comics creators. Virtually any type of character was on the table. Horror comics existed and went in many gruesome and bizarre directions. Subject matter was fairly open, for example, an early Superman story saw him defend a woman against her physically abusive husband by beating him.

People point to many things as starting the Silver Age, but really, I think we have to give a mind to a book titled Seduction of the Innocent, which blamed comic books for youth delinquency and often misinterpreted things in comics as negative. This gave rise to the Comics Code Authority, which was used as a seal on the covers of comics for decades to come to say as to whether or not a comic book met certain guidelines of acceptability. This was not a requirement, of course, but if your comic book didn't have it, good luck getting retailers to sell it, and advertisers might pull their ads.

Comics would be produced by people who cared about them, then read by people, and some of those people might be young kids who decide they wanted to make comics as well and worked to do it. So as comic books continued, they evolved along with the audience. About six years ago, the major comics companies abandoned the Comics Code Authority and it became defunct.

However, back to the Silver Age. Instead of pushing the envelope for the limits of violence and such they could show, in came monsters, aliens and other fantastic events.

In short, they went for stories that could be viewed as fucking crazy.

National Publications (now DC Comics) would be the big one to reintroduce superheroes. New versions of the Flash and the Green Lantern were introduced, and in fact became the standard incarnations of the characters despite being the second heroes with those names. In 1960, they introduced the Justice League of America, in which their biggest heroes would team up. The Flash would eventually introduce the multiverse concept, which allowed for a lot of amazing stories to eventually be written.

Over at Atlas Comics, writer Stanley Leiber (better known as Stan Lee) would be tasked to come up with a team of superheroes, and he and Jack Kirby created The Fantastic Four, debuting in late 1961. Of course, Atlas was soon rebranded to Marvel Comics. This would lead to the creation and reintroduction of many classic Marvel characters, and the introduction of The Avengers. This led to the interconnected Marvel universe, in which many of the superheroes depicted in their line of comics would live in the same version of New York and interact with each other.

So, basically, not only was the Silver Age extremely fun, it basically set the standard for the modern range of superheroes. What's not to love?

So, as you may have noticed, this blog is dedicated to the Elongated Man. He was introduced in 1961, in The Flash (volume 1) #112. He was a character with the power of elasticity, able to stretch his body to superhuman lengths.

The Elongated Man wasn't the first character to have this power. Superman's Pal Jimmy Olsen #58 had the titular character exposed to a liquid kryptonite that allowed him to stretch. But previously, Jack Cole had introduced Plastic Man in Quality Comics' Police Comics in 1941. Plastic Man could stretch and generally reshape his body into any imaginable form, including compressing into small shapes. Quality didn't survive the decline of sales thanks to Seduction of the Innocent and sold many of their characters to National, making Plastic Man one of National's characters.

But was Elongated Man a copycat Plastic Man? According to Brian Cronin of Comic Book Resources, maybe, but unlike the common belief, it's not likely that they would have just used Plastic Man if they'd thought of him.

There is a famous story that Julius Schwartz said that he only came up with the idea for Elongated Man because he didn’t know that DC had the rights to Plastic Man. If he had known, he would have just used Plastic Man (DC had purchased most of Quality Comics characters, including Plastic Man, when Quality went out of business in 1956).

However, I think that Schwartz’s story has been misconstrued a bit over the years.

Schwartz’s recollection of it came years later, when he noted that he didn’t know (or that he had forgotten) that DC had the rights to Plastic Man when he came up with Elongated Man. He did note that perhaps he would have named Elongated Man Plastic Man, but that is just an after-the-fact commentary.

So it really comes down to us determining whether we think that actually would have happened. So this is truly just a case of me having to make a judgment call.

As it was, Elongated Man was a one-off character who was never meant to recur. He turned out to be surprisingly popular with the fans, so they brought him back (and he then proved so popular that they eventually gave him his own feature in Detective Comics). It seems highly unlikely to me that Schwartz would have chosen this particular story to revive Plastic Man.

Carmine Infantino recalled to Jim Amash that Schwartz never actually mentioned Plastic Man at all at the time.

So I believe that even had Schwartz known that DC owned the rights, I don’t think it would have affected the story much. After all, Mort Weisigner had already introduced ANOTHER elastic hero recently at the time (Jimmy Olsen’s Elastic Lad), so it wasn’t like it was out of the ordinary to have an elastic hero other than Plastic Man.

Add in the factor that the Elongated Man's debut story features a plot point of him being suspected to be a criminal and the reappearance of a hero character would spoil the reveal.

Anyway, that's the setting that the Elongated Man was introduced in.

Next time, we're going to look at his first story.