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Elongated Man

This page is devoted to my favorite member of the Justice League: Elongated Man

No, really.

So here's the thing...

They killed off Elongated Man's wife in "Identity Crisis" and then they killed off Ralph in the weekly "52" series. Then a decade later they brought them back when they rebooted the DC Universe and "Identity Crisis" never happened. Aside from showing up whenever they have a gathering of detectives, they are pretty much forgotten characters at DC Comics.

Elongated Man was added to the CW's "Flash" TV show in Season 4. The casting of Hartley Sawyer was perfect, although his characterization was off in that season. In Season 5 they mellowed him out and he was better. They even introduced Sue Dearbon, albeit as a typical CW girl boss with martial arts skills. Still, it was cool that they were becoming a couple. It was actually possible that they might make Ralph and Sue a thing and they could even have a spin-off or something.

Then in 2020 amid all the George Floyd madness with deadly riots and every company in America trying to appease the rioters, a celebrity who was "hunting down racists" resurfaced some historic tweets of Hartley Sawyer's in which he made a lot of dark jokes. They immediately pronounced him a racist and ended his career, kicked him off The Flash so fast that his character had to have a helmet disguising the stand-in as he said good-bye forever. This probably seems absurd. You had to be there. So...weirdly enough, they left Sue Dearbon as a member of the cast, which was mostly women by that point. I'm not saying Flash sucked because Elongated Man wasn't on it, but it's one of a few dozen reasons that the show sucked from then on.

Elongated Man has appeared on "Justice League Unlimited," "Batman: The Brave and the Bold" and "Young Justice," though never portrayed as anything but an oddball. He never gets to be a detective or married or be the only super-hero with a public ID, etc. They just remark about his goofy character name or how he's jealous of Plastic Man, etc. (He does get to save the day, albeit off-screen, on JLU.)

Soooooo...this web site, which I created back when I was attempting to become a writer at DC Comics around the year 2000, is a bit of a sad relic. Many people asked me to finish my "Identity Crisis Annotations" but it quickly became clear that Elongated Man wasn't the main character after issue 1. He doesn't even get to solve the mystery of who killed his wife, nor is the mystery one that a reader can figure out, so...I didn't see any reason to do the rest of the annotations.

Who's Who-style Statistics and Trivia! Reasons I like Ralph Dibny! Ralph's Life Story Frequently Asked Questions Image Gallery Mistakes and Incongruities List of Appearances Identity Crisis Issue 1 Annotations! Disclaimer.