Two Batmen Too Many!

Well, here's a first. This is a story where Ralph more or less appears in a cameo.

Batman #177 carries a cover date of December 1965. Carmine Infantino did the cover with inks by Murphy Anderson and Ira Schnapp provided the logo. "Two Batmen Too Many!" was written by Bill Finger with pencils by Sheldon Moldoff, inks by Joe Giella, lettering by Gaspar Saladino and Julius Schwartz served as editor. The issue is not currently available on Comixology.

Ralph does but doesn't appear on the cover, which doesn't reflect a scene in the story. It teases three different Batmen: regular Batman, a giant one and a tiny Batman.

The splash page sees all three of the Batmen taking on crooks in three panels. Only the regular sized one is accompanied by Robin, though.

The story begins with Ed "Numbers" Garvey feeling targeted by Batman. He used to run a numbers game, but became obsessed with a jewel heist. He flees to a cave and finds two figures seated on thrones, one very tall, the other very short. His torch reflects light into a crystal and turns the figures into clones of Batman, who say they'll be his slaves.

Ed takes the Batmen to his gang back in Gotham City. When the fellow crooks try to fight them, the Batmen make short work of them. They're about to have the Batmen do a job, when the little one says it needs to be revitalized with star light reflected through a blue-white crystal. The little Batman goes to help them knock off a carnival, but the robbery is stopped by the real Batman and Robin, though the crooks get away.

Back at the hideout, the Big Batman needs revitalized with a ruby. When Big Batman claims to be revitalized, Garvey has them knocked out, revealing he suspected the Batmen were frauds and that the ruby he just used was a fake.

Removing the Batman costumes, they discover that the Batmen were actually Elongated Man and the Atom.

Garvey decides to unmask the Atom to discover his secret identity (chances of him recognizing Ray Palmer at the time is very low, though), but Batman and Robin enter and begin fighting the crooks. Garvey tries to get away via a trap door, but Batman manages to catch him.

Now comes an explanation of the whole plot. Batman did indeed arrange things to make Garvey go to that cave and find Ralph and Ray in costume.

The "revitalizing" with a gem act was to get radioactive powder onto the gems so Batman could find them with a Geiger counter.

When the crooks left to knock over that carnival, Batman and Robin found the diamond in a clock, realizing that each gem was hidden in different locales.

Garvey thinks he's still got the rest of the jewel collection hidden away, but the ruby act worked because he held the fake gem in the same hand as the real one (just in case) and the radioactive powder got onto the real one, which Batman finds in a telephone.

The rest of the gems are found in spots in the hideout related to numbers: in a typewriter, behind the door's number, in a hollow in a desk calendar and in a dummy algebra book.

To be fair, anyone besides a mathematics whiz owning an algebra book outside of a school is already pretty sketchy.

With all of the gems recovered, it's now time to take Garvey to prison.

The story tries to keep it down to earth with a wacky concept, and luckily, Batman was given connections to Ralph and Ray prior to the story. It's just wacky that the crooks went with the concept at first of clay figures being brought to life that look like Batman. Silver Age stories, am I right?

Sheldon Moldoff becomes the first person aside from Carmine Infantino to draw Ralph in the pencils for a story, and he doesn't do a bad job at all. Except that he doesn't really show Ralph stretching. Most of the time, he's not drawing Ralph, but an oversized Batman.

Interesting is that you can see Ralph's face clearly a little deformed as he had to stretch his chin to mimic Batman's face. This marks the first time we saw him take on face molding, something that other writers would make use of much further down the line, and even make its way to The Flash TV series.

So, not a bad story, but not quite a memorable one. And my tease last time wasn't wrong, Ralph did get a new costume: a Batman costume!

So, next time, we're heading back to Detective Comics as Ralph completely fails to catch a criminal.

The Secret War of the Phantom General

 Detective Comics #343 was released with a cover date of September, 1965. It can be found on Comixology and DC Universe. In addition, since this story also features Batman, it has been reprinted in Batman Family (Vol. 1) #4 and Showcase Presents: Batman Vol 2, as well as Showcase Presents Elongated Man.

Over in the letters page, readers were too busy puzzling over how Batman could actually lift a gorilla on the cover of #339 to discuss Ralph's story in that issue. However, Joel Pollack of Silver Spring, Maryland tries to offer advice on how to identify inkers on Carmine Infantino's work throughout the book. "I can sum it up in one word—expression. When Sid Greene inks Carmine Infantino, everyone looks happy, even when they're sad. With Joe Giella, everyone looks befuddled. When Infantino pencils, characters have very human expressions on their faces."

This would be the second team up story for Batman and Ralph, following from "Museum of Mixed-Up Men!" back in #331. The concept was to do a book-length story occasionally pairing up the two heroes instead of two separate stories. Readers weren't crazy about it, though.

"The Secret War of the Phantom General" would see the return of John Broome to writing for Ralph and Joe Giella on ink with Carmine Infantino on pencils and Ira Schnapp lettering. Julius Schwartz was editor.

The cover should be striking, but something about it just feels unappealing to me. Ralph seemingly has Batman and Robin at his mercy, tied up in his arms, at the command of the ghostly face behind them. I'm going to venture that it would look much better against an actual background instead of black, empty space.

Another error is the text on the cover and header trying to suggest that the villain of the story might not actually be alive, but they show him standing right there in the splash panel.

We haven't even started the story, and I'm already disappointed.

So yes, the splash panel shows us the villain General Von Dort with a hypnotic monocle that has put Ralph and Robin out of action with Batman trying very hard not to look to avoid the same fate. It's interesting and very Batman-central and Joe Giella returning to ink Ralph again looks okay.

Ralph doesn't turn up until page 6, so I'll sum up the story until then.

Batman and Robin are going to meet Ralph and Sue at a hotel when they hear about a hold up at the Gotham City Terminal. There are dozens of crooks and when Batman and Robin arrive, they only manage to take out a few before most of them escape. Batman notes military-style efficiency and a reporter decides to run "Is New Mystery Crime King A Military Mastermind?"

Batman and Robin go on to meet Ralph and Sue, the latter of which goes to the Gotham City Music Hall to go offscreen until the final panel of the story. (Sigh.)

Batman tells Ralph about the scene they just arrived from and when he mentions "military mastermind," Ralph freaks out and goes pale. He tries to connect dots as the story cuts away to a flashback introduced by a portrait of John Broome.

The flashback shows some Gotham City criminals being met by General Van Dort, a German general who was believed to be dead "with Hitler in that fatal Berlin bunker!" Van Dort says he's alive and has simply moved from traditional warfare to crime. He wants to take over the crime world in Gotham and claims he can't fail. When one crook asks him how he knows they won't turn him over to the police, he laughs and stares them with his monocle and says they wouldn't dare.

Seriously, I hate that we got this method of introducing the villain. The cover and title teases that the General might be dead and it's his ghost. Here, page 8, Van Dort clearly says that this isn't the case. While our protagonists might not know, we as an audience do, so that bit of suspense is gone. It's also really clumsy to have Ralph freak out and then there's no explanation for what happened for two pages.

Ralph explains that he was in South America and heard rumors about Van Dort. He heard that Van Dort left his base in the Andes for Gotham, which makes his freak out so surprising. Now that Batman and Robin have an idea of who they're dealing with, they all set out to investigate together.

The last panel shows Ralph putting his costume on. I'm going to assume he's finishing putting on after stepping out of the bathroom and he didn't strip down in front of Batman and Robin.

While out, Batman and Robin spot parachuting crooks descending on an auction and go break them up. However, these crooks were just a diversion while Van Dort steals an undisclosed item and heads back to the Andes.

As the heroes meet up again, absent until now Ralph reveals that he has discovered that Van Dort was working on a Death Ray, and was only lacking "a vital radioactive isotope called M-244." They realize that Van Dort has stolen the isotope and headed back to the Andes, so they head to Batplane to pursue.

Arriving, Ralph stretches his neck from the Batplane so he can strike a sniper. Good going, Ralph, it's about time that you got an action moment.

As the three heroes meet and take on Van Dort's men, they are identified as Batman and Robin. Ralph adds "And don't forget the Elongated Man!" Okay, that's a good moment.

Ralph spots Von Dort through a window and stretches in to demand his surrender. Von Dort uses his monocle and compels Ralph to turn on Batman and Robin. Ralph seems to be completely aware of what he's doing, but he can't stop his actions.

Batman and Robin manage to stop Ralph by twisting his arms around himself and squeeze him, making Von Dort's spell on him break.

So... What the heck just happened? Did Batman and Robin break a weird trance by forcing Ralph into a self-induced Heimlich maneuver?

Von Dort himself arrives on the scene and freezes Robin with the radiation from his monocle, and Batman—observing Von Dort's weapon—lowers his head and charges, knocking Von Dort out with a punch.

Why would a military mastermind like Von Dort just arrive on scene with no protection? Like, do it from the window and then go to escape or something. It's like he wasn't even trying.

Before I go to the final panels, this surprisingly wasn't the end of Von Dort. Five years later, Batman would face his son Willi Van Dort (they got the name wrong) along with Wonder Woman in The Brave and the Bold #87.

Batman and Robin get the authorities to pick up Von Dort and his crew and discuss how his monocle worked and how they narrowly stopped his death ray.

Later, Batman and Robin join Ralph and Sue in their hotel room for tea, Batman thinking that nothing ruffles Sue. (Lies.) "Just looking at her makes you realize that everything's all right in the world—and probably always will be!"

Well, that makes Identity Crisis hurt even more.

You know, I think it'd be fun if Sue has figured out that Bruce Wayne is Batman from observing Batman's mannerisms here while he's at ease and putting together what she probably knows about Bruce Wayne.

Well, I'm rather disappointed with this story. The lead in text, cover and title all tease that Von Dort might be dead, but it's quickly shown to not be the case and Batman and Robin take him down with just a bit of help from Ralph, who's definitely just a guest star here. The story idea of an former Nazi general finishing a death ray is not bad, but it's not carried to its full potential here. The wrap up is contrived and just too easy. It's too bad John Broome doesn't seem to care about Ralph very much after he introduced him back in The Flash. The best moment is the bit where Ralph announces himself to Von Dort's men.

Infantino's art is fine with some well-done moments, but nothing really spectacular.

Next time, Ralph goes to Paris.

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.

Who is Joe Giella?

It's almost easy to forget about inking when it comes time to appreciate how comics are made. The main artist of a comic book would do the pencils and generally do the line work, but the printing processes of comics wouldn't allow for lifting the art from the pencils. This is where the inker would come in and create a new version of the art with more definition to the lines that the processes can pick up on. In addition, unused lines created during drafting can be completely eliminated. With modern digital imaging, it is possible to create print-ready art now, but many artists still use pencils as their preferred style of drafting and an inker is still required.

The inker who worked on The Flash when Ralph Dibny debuted was Joe Giella, who happens to be—at the time of writing—the sole surviving known person to work on that debut. He was born on July 27, 1928 and studied at Manhattan's School of Industrial Art, the Art Students League and took commercial art courses at Hunter College.

Joe began work at age 17, later noting his Italian heritage, being the firstborn son and the struggles of his family. His first comics work was art for the six-page Captain Codfish story in Hillman Periodicals' Punch and Judy #11.

In 1946, Giella began working for Fawcett Comics, inking Captain Marvel (now Shazam). Soon, he got on at Timely Comics (now Marvel). He revealed recently that he lost his first big project while commuting home on the bus and after being yelled at by Stan Lee, the artist quickly redid the pencils and he was able to get it done well in good time, getting him a staff position doing whatever odd art jobs were needed.

In a couple years, he'd moved onto a better paying position at National Publications while also serving for the Naval Reserves. He continued his work for what would become well through the dawn of the Silver Age, inking for Adam Strange, Green Lantern, and other titles, including—of course—The Flash.

Giella also worked on comic strips such as The Phantom and Flash Gordon and served as artist on Mary Worth from 1991 to 2016. He also did commercial art for advertising firms and publishing companies.

Joe Giella's work earned him a 1996 Inkpot award. He was also a guest of honor at 2017's Herocon's Inkwell Awards.

Joe currently lives in Eastmeadow on Long Island in New York.