Tag Archives: Elongated Man

#3694: Elongated Man

Posted by Ethan Wilson in Reviews and tagged with , , , , ,

ELONGATED MAN

IDENTITY CRISIS (DC DIRECT)

“Ralph Dibny was the original stretching sleuth of the JLA. His loss became the focal point of the events that unraveled in Identity Crisis.”

If we’re having a discussion about “worst comic stories ever,” you know I gotta bring up “Identity Crisis.”  Look, I’m a die-hard Elongated Man fanboy.  On the outside, a Justice League event with Ralph at the center is something I should love, right?  Except it’s actually something I loathe, and I legitimately think it broke DC.  I know, bold words.  But they did some really awful stuff there, and it meant that two of my favorite DC characters got broken and sidelined for well over a decade.  As a consolation prize, I suppose it did at least give me another Elongated Man figure.  So, there’s that.

THE FIGURE ITSELF

Elongated Man was released in Series 2 of DC Direct’s Identity Crisis tie-in line, which was released in March of 2006, almost two years after the story was published.  As a central piece of the story, it’s sort of odd that Ralph wasn’t released until Series 2, but of course, he’s not really a heavy hitter, I guess, and he’s ultimately pretty well side-lined within the story proper.  He’d also just recently gotten his first figure from DC Direct’s JLA line not too long before.  The figure stands just shy of 6 1/2 inches tall and he has 17 points of articulation, as well as an extending neck feature.  Elongated Man’s articulation scheme was tricky.  DCD was still really experimenting with things, and there’s a fair number of joints, but range of motion remains rather restricted.  All of the Identity Crisis figures were based on Michael Turner’s cover illustrations for the series (as opposed to Raggs Morales’ interiors).  Turner’s work had a rather distinctive flair, and works well in two dimensions, but it three dimensions…well, it was a real mess.  Just, across the board.  None of the sculpts were fantastic for this line.  There were a lot of really odd proportions and dimensions to everything, and everybody wound up looking kind of misshapen.  That said, Ralph turned out generally alright.  Still weird, but he’s a stretchy guy, so it’s a little more forgivable.  His expression’s rather dour, but I guess that makes a degree of sense given the subject matter.  I do kind of feel he looks a touch young and pretty for Ralph, but Turner’s art treated Ralph that way, so it’s accurate.  Ralph’s paint work is decent enough.  I like that they kept the shiny black for the gloves and boots.  The application on the yellow is a little messy, though.  Ralph was packed with a display stand (not pictured) as well as a pair of alternate stretched arms.  The stretched arms are unique to this guy (technically, the Mattel Ralph had the outstretched hand, but it’s not quite the same sort of thing), but they’re kind of weird.  They’re technically meant to be bendy, but they’re very stiff, so they don’t really bend.  They’re also oddly flat.  Still, it’s a nice option.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

I didn’t like Identity Crisis, and I didn’t like how Turner’s art translated to figures, so I largely avoided this line.  I already had the JLA figure, and we weren’t deep enough on Elongated Man figures for me to even contemplate owning all of them, so I didn’t jump on this one.  I wound up getting him from KB Toys of all places, which was odd since they didn’t tend to carry DCD figures, which were typically a comics shop exclusive thing.  But, I was on a weekend beach trip with my family, and this guy was there at the KB outlet, marked way down, so I bought it.  It was pretty early on in my appreciation of the character, and kind of helped turn the tide in a way.  Honestly, he’s not terrible.  I hate the story, but I don’t hate the figure, even if he does sort of have a weird quality about him.

#3375: Elongated Man

Posted by Ethan Wilson in Reviews and tagged with , , , , ,

ELONGATED MAN

JUSTICE LEAGUE UNLIMITED (MATTEL)

While I’ve up to this point only really mentioned him in passing here on the site, Ralph Dibney, aka the Elongated Man, is one of my favorite comic book characters, and certainly my favorite DC character. Though he’s been rattling around the DC universe since 1960, he spent his first 44 years strangely absent from other mediums, always playing second fiddle to Plastic Man. His lick finally changed in 2004, with first a DC Direct figure, and then a figure to correspond with his first animated appearance in Justice League Unlimited. I’m taking a look at the latter of those today.

THE FIGURE ITSELF

Elongated Man was released in the first assortment of Justice League Unlimited three-packs in 2004.  He was packed in a set which was supposedly based on “The Greatest Story Never Told.”  Given that the episode in question is honestly one of Elongated Man’s largest roles on the show, it made some degree of sense.  Of course, the fact that the set packed him with Batman and Hawkgirl (who, it should be noted, was not only not wearing her Thanagarian costume in JLU, but had also not yet returned after leaving in “Starcrossed”), and did *not* feature Booster Gold, who was, you know, the main character in the episode.  I mean, sure, I’m thrilled about the inclusion of Elongated Man and all, but still.  Elongated Man was also released single-careded, in both the orange and purple card styles, in 2006 and 2007.  The figure stands about 4 1/2 inches tall and he has 5 points of articulation.  He’s built on the skinny male body (which was a tweaked Flash sculpt), which very definitely fits with the character’s depiction on the show.  He got a new head sculpt.  It’s an alright offering; not quite as spot-on as some of the others in the line, but certainly not bad.  The decision to go with the full grin doesn’t work out quite as well as they’d hoped, I feel; he didn’t really show his teeth much on the show, so it throws the likeness off just a little bit.  But, like I said, hardly a bad sculpt at all, and certainly one that made him unique from the other figures in the line.  The figure’s paint work followed the show’s lead, putting Ralph in his ’80s era purple and white costume.  It translates fairly well, and the application’s generally pretty clean.  It hasn’t held up the best on my copy, who has some chipping and wear, but that could just be a me thing.  The original three-pack release of Ralph had no accessories, but the two single releases added a weird grapple thing to clip onto his wrist.  It’s an odd piece.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

The three-pack that Ralph was included in was one of the trickier ones to acquire early in the line’s run, and I don’t recall seeing one at retail during the original run.  I also missed out on his single releases.  Instead, I got my Elongated Man figure loose, in fact as one of my earliest purchases from All Time Toys way back in the day.  I recall being quite excited to find him, especially since it meant I didn’t get saddled with extras of the other two figures in the pack.  He’s not a perfect figure, but he *is* an Elongated Man figure, so that gives him quite a leg up in my book!

#3085: Elongated Man

Posted by Ethan Wilson in Reviews and tagged with , , ,

ELONGATED MAN

JLA (DC DIRECT)

“Using an extract of the plant Gingold, Ralph Dibney transformed his body into a malleable elastic state!”

In preparation for this review, I realized that I’ve only fleetingly discussed Ralph Dibney, aka the Elongated Man, here on the site, twice in reference to Plastic Man not being him, and once in reference to him being one of three characters for whom I own all of the action figures.  That’s it.  Well, as you may have guessed from the whole “I have all of his action figures” thing, I’m a rather big Elongated Man.  I’d go so far as to say he’s my favorite DC character.  The fact that he’s been so mistreated in modern times isn’t so great, but on the flip side, he’s done alright for himself in the realm of action figures in the last two decades.  Let’s start off what should be a lovely journey through Elongated Man figures with the very first one, released way back in 2004.  That’s right, this figure’s almost old enough to vote.

THE FIGURE ITSELF

Elongated Man was released in the second series of DC Direct’s JLA line.  After a debut assortment based on the team’s current (at the time) incarnation, the second series was inspired by the Satellite Era of the team.  As noted above, this marked Elongated Man’s first action figure (also true of his assortment-mate Adam Strange), though, like last week’s Kilowog figure, he would be quite shortly followed by a JLU release courtesy of Mattel.  The figure stands 7 1/2 inches tall with his neck extension in place (6 1/2 inches without it) and he has 12 points of articulation (11 if the extension is removed).  While not super articulated or anything, his movement scheme marks what became the standard for DCD figures around the time, which wasn’t really a bad one.  The only real downside to this particular figure, in relation to the others in the set, is that, due to how the neck extension works, he lacks the ball-jointed neck that the other three in the series got.  Instead, he’s just got a cut joint.  It’s not the end of the world, but does limit him a little bit.  Elongated Man’s sculpt was all-new, and it remained unique to this release.  It’s a pretty strong one, doing a respectable job of capturing that classic Ralph look.  I particularly like the head sculpt, goofy, cheesy grin, and all.  It just feels really appropriate for the character.  Elongated Man’s paint work is pretty decent.  It’s bright and colorful, which is the main effort for the design, so it works.  The application is clean, and I really like the glossy finish on the gloves and boots.  Elongated Man was packed with a JLA-labeled display stand, which was pretty standard for the time.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

This set of figures, as well as a number of other DCD figures, hit around Christmas time in 2004, so I got a handful of them as gifts that year.  I was far more fixated on the Atom figure at the time, so he wound up being the one from this series I got on Christmas morning.  Elongated Man I actually made a point of buying for myself the week after Christmas, using a gift card I’d gotten for Cosmic Comix during the holiday.  I remember being quite excited to get him at the time, and he was a favorite of mine for a while.  I like him enough that I even snagged a spare over the years, just because.  To date, he’s still my favorite, and is probably the best version of the character overall.