Follow the author

John Broome

+ Follow

More books from this author

Showcase Presents The Elongated Man Volume One Paperback – January 1, 2006

by Gardner & John Broome Fox (Author), Carmine Infantino;Gil Kane;Neal Adams;Murphy Anderson (Illustrator)

4.8 20 ratings

See all formats and editions

This value-priced collection features over 500 pages of classic comics showcasing the adventures of Ralph Dibny, the Elongated Man- a mystery-solving super-hero with the ability to stretch his body into nearly any shape. Proud of his abilities, he becomes the first hero to reveal his secret identity to the public while solving crimes along with his adoring wife, Sue.Together, they travel the world to ferret out clues, solve crimes and bring down evil-doers of all sorts while crossing paths with Batman and Robin, the Flash, Green Lantern and Zatanna.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B00MH89SEM
Publisher ‏ : ‎ DC Comics (January 1, 2006)
Language ‏ : ‎ English

Customer Reviews:
4.8 20 ratings

Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.

Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

Videos

Help others learn more about this product by uploading a video!

Upload your video

About the author

Follow authors to get new release updates, plus improved recommendations.

John Broome

Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.

Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

Discover more of the author’s books, see similar authors, read author blogs and more

Customer reviews

4.8 out of 5

20 global ratings

3 star

0%

2 star

0%

1 star

0%

How customer reviews and ratings work

Sort reviews by

Top reviews from the United States

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

Gerry Griffiths

FUN RUBBERNECKER ONE-LINERS

Reviewed in the United States on March 30, 2020

Verified Purchase

I have to admit I was not familiar with the DC character The Elongated Man aka Ralph Dibny and thought I would take a chance getting this book. Like all DC Showcase Presents that I have purchased this one was a fun read with interesting crime stories. I like the way Ralph's wife, Sue would react every time Ralph's nose would twitch meaning there was a pending mystery he had to go out and solve. Writer Gardner Fox has a fun time writing these as he pitches out one-liners in every frame. Highly recommend this series. Here are some more DC Showcase Presents that are fun reads: The Losers, The Atom, The Haunted Tank, Batgirl, and The Unknown Soldier.

2 people found this helpful

Helpful

Walter R.

It's stories about the elongated man

Reviewed in the United States on February 23, 2021

Verified Purchase

This is a collection the elongated man. This is collecting from The Flash comics and some other Comics that he was in. It gives the origin of his abilities. The only drawback with this volume is that it is a showcase collection and it is all in black and white. The only color is on the covers and the back of the book covers.

Reviewed in the United States on May 16, 2017

Verified Purchase

Nice collection of elongated man stories. Some people don't like the B&W prints, but they are not too bad. The stories themselves are not as good as I remember from childhood, but that's life.I really like the showcase collections, but some of them are hard to find.

2 people found this helpful

Helpful

Brian J. Lanahan

Love Elongated Man

Reviewed in the United States on October 5, 2009

Verified Purchase

I love Elongated Man he has unique powers and interesting stories. I first came across him reading Justice League Europe comics. This book is great you don't have to spend loads of money to get all the old comics he is in. It is a shame EM is not more well known.

6 people found this helpful

Helpful

Donald D. Ensign

Showcase of Carmine Infantino's artwork

Reviewed in the United States on July 27, 2007

Some respected comic book historians have mentioned three artists as primary innovators in the early Silver Age at DC Comics. These artists were Alex Toth, Joe Kubert and Carmine Infantino. These three were serious about improving their comic book storytelling skills and their work from this period shows just that.

Carmine Infantino became active in comics during the 1940s and his style strongly resembled one of the comic strip giants of the period, Milton Caniff. In the early and mid 1950s Infantino's style began to change. He went back to school and studied under a highly influential art professor. This professor encouraged Infantino to study the French Impressionists like Edgar Degas and others and especially be concerned about the design principles they used. Above all else (even draftsmanship) Infantino became fascinated with design and composition. He used good design to propel his comic book story telling.

This book is a wonderful tour of arguably Infantino's best period as a comic book artist. Starting out with an early Flash story from 1960 that introduced Elongated man we observe Infantino's work and sense of design and composition develop during the course of the 1960s. His last Elongated Man story published in this volume is Detective Comics #367 (September 1967). During this period we see Elongated Man graduate from an occasional guest star in The Flash to receiving his own strip in the back of Detective comics starting with #327 (May 1964). On several different occasions Infantino was allowed to ink runs of his own stories. His delineations were scratchy when compared to the more polished Joe Giella or Murphy Anderson, but we see here what Infantino was truly trying to communicate through his art without the involved of other hands no matter how talented or skilled. When Sid Greene began working on Elongated Man he strove to keep his inking as close to Infantino's original drawing as possible. Later on Greene injected much more of his own personality into the work and some stories appear to be partially penciled by both artists (Greene also did full pencils and inks on several later EM stories). Infantino used elegant vertical and horizontal panels to great effect especially in depicted the grotesque stretching abilities of Elongated Man. Along with his fascination with design he was a frustrated architect. He captured the look of buildings, houses, interior design and the fabulous big finned autos of the period. When he had the chance he also drew some marvelously evocative landscapes. Because of his concentration on design and composition Infantino's work was the height of "cool" in comic book art in the early and mid 1960s.

As a designer myself I can't help but get enveloped into studying the compositions of Infantino's work whether on Elongated man, the Flash, Adam Strange or any of the wonderful science fiction tales he drew during the period. Perhaps this is just my problem, but I get so much into Infantino's design that I tend to forget about the story. I figure that most of the young readers who read these stories when they first appeared (and I was one of them) didn't have that problem. This book contains non-Infantino penciled stories by very capable comic book practitioners such as Greene, Gil Kane, Irv Novick, Murphy Anderson, Neal Adams and Mike Sekowsky and I don't have the same problem with their work. And it is interesting to observe how each artist approached this strip and how they compare with Infantino's work.

In this review I've concentrated on the art of the Elongated Man. The stories are finely crafted, light, humorously good-natured mysteries that editor Julius Schwartz and scripters Gardner Fox and John Broome were capable of producing during this time. However it is the wonderfully innovative artwork that is the star in the book, This volume is truly a showcase for one of the great comic book artists, Carmine Infantino.

11 people found this helpful

Helpful

Dan Betelmann

A First-Rate Second-Banana

Reviewed in the United States on April 7, 2014

Back when Ralph Dibny first appeared and I was in grade school, I found him a most intriguing character. For one thing, he didn't have his own book and he wasn't a back-up feature in another. Instead, he appeared now and then in Flash stories, much as Barry Allen's regular foes did, but he was an ally instead. His origin also struck me as just a bit offbeat: the essence of a soft drink gave him powers to stretch and deform his body to ridiculous lengths? And there was still more: ultimately, he had no secret identity, and he actually got married. Althought I liked the Flash well enough and was in love with Carmine Infantino's artwork, the presence of Dibny always breathed a bit of fresh air into the stories. Eventually, Ralph did get a spot as a back-up, in the pages of Detective Comics, and there his super-power often took its own back seat to some marvelous plots, character development and interplay. Reading these stories today, I find they hold up remarkably well. With stories by John Broome and Gardner Fox, along with the Infantino artwork (supplanted later by that of Sid Greene), this volume is a first-class anthology. There is the usual perceived drawback of having the artwork in only black-and-white, but I can live with that. Recommended -- one of the undoubtedly better Showcase offerings from the Silver Age.

4 people found this helpful

Helpful

Top reviews from other countries

Glenn Cook

Five Star Elongated Entertainment For Your Delight.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 7, 2021

Verified Purchase

This is a fabulous collection of The Elongated Man Stories from good old DC.

Like many readers of a certain age I came across The character via his appearance as a support strip in
Detective Comics issues 327-343 and later in a similar role in the Flash I seem to remember.

I always enjoyed the strip and Ralph Digby was a different take on the Super Hero.
He had no secret identity and he was married. The stories were more the detective rather than the more focused on his serum based super powers. So the 'detective Comic with Batman was a good match.
Now The Elongated Man had that rare quality of a true hero in that he could laugh at himself. He had lots of idiosyncrasies

His nose would twitch when he was on to something.
Being support character the stories were rather short and swift to come to a conclusion rather like the Martian Manhunter and that ilk.
So short but sweet.
But being in a major comic with a major hitter The Elongated Man was exposed to the wider readership and loved for that.
In England in the 1960s and 1970s DC comics and others were sent as extra cargo by ships.
You could pick them up for a shilling (5 new pence) but you could never guarantee that you could get the next issue. So you had gaps. BUT in those days kids swapped comics and bought 2nd hand to read and re read.
Other characters like Jonah Hex were unknown with others like Challengers of the Unknown,Metal Men and The Doom Patrol being rare. Pocket money was tight so you would be less likely to risk buying a 'new to you character, and were much more likely to go for the more familiar Superman, Flash or Green Lantern.

Any how.
DC has printed them in black and White on cheap as chips paper and they won't be printing any more like this for a few years.
This is a fantastic chance to get the full run of the Elongated Man stories.

A satisfying collection from the days when times were gentler and kids read comics.
Recommended.

Bookmole

An ear...in the fireplace!

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 18, 2012

Verified Purchase

Perhaps the best way to describe this charming collection of DC back-up strips from the 60s is to imagine a version of THE THIN MAN starring the young Dick Van Dyke and Mary Tyler Moore. Initially a supporting character from the re-vamped post-War version of the Flash, Ralph Dibny was a man who had discovered a drug which gave him the ability to stretch his body to an extraordinary degree. This wasn't really anything new in comic books, as those who remember Jack Cole's PLASTIC MAN will remember, but the Elongated Man was far more than just a tired rehash of an old hero.

By 1964 he had moved to the back up spot in the new, updated BATMAN comic and he brought his new wife, Sue, with him. Being married wasn't exactly common for superheroes at the time, and this wasn't the only thing that was different about EM; whilst he was as public spirited and philanthropic as the next good-guy, he also had a passion for publicity, and gloried in the applause of the public (he had, of course, revealed his secret identity, feeling that there was no point in hiding your light under a bushel). The strip was also unusual in that, for all of his stretchable skills, EM is basically a sleuth rather than a superhero. More often than not he isn't up against super-villains but clever crooks. At only a few pages length, it must be admitted that these are not the most twisty of crime stories, but they do try to be a little different from the standard superhero romp.

There's a charm and lightness to the stories here, which makes them especially unusual when compared with today's comics. After finishing a few you'll have a smile on your face. Ralph and Sue are immensely likeable characters, and even when the story is not exactly gripping you'll be pleased that you spent time in their company. They feel like a proper, grown up couple in the way that modern comic pairings often don't. This volume goes right back to the first appearance of EM in THE FLASH and reprints 52 stories in all. There are still about 30 of these to go, but no sign of a volume 2, so you'll pretty much have to make do with these. The lack of colour is a shame, but these stories are enormous fun, and I suspect that you'll enjoy them.

By the way, if you wan't to know what the title of this review is about...you'll just have to read 'Ten Miles to Nowhere'!

3 people found this helpful

Eric Stavnitzky

I like a good mystery

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 8, 2014

Verified Purchase

Good for 9 years old and up, if they are good readers. Fantastic art by Infantino really pops in black and white

See more reviews