However, Ralph reappeared in the post-Flashpoint timeline, gaining his powers due to exposure to dark matter from the Speed Force. Using these super powers, he began acting as a meta-human vigilante and the superhero known as Elongated Man. In 2013, Ralph was CCPD's lead detective during the murder investigation of Judy Gimlin, one of Barry's first cases as a Junior CSI wherein Ralph was his superior. She was stabbed to death and her husband Reagan was the prime suspect.
Publication Information
- Flash : Ralph Dibny
- Version : The Flash Series
- Known As : Elongated Man
- Type :
- Private investigator
- Vigilante
- Member of Team Flash
- Former Police detective Of Central City Police Department
- Relative : Unnamed : Grandmother
- Affiliation : Team Flash
- Gender : Male
- Origin : Earth One
- Season : The Flash
- First Appeareance :
- Last Appeareance :
- Number of Appeareance :
- Potrayer :
- Paul McGillion : Earl Cox
- Richard Brooks : Gregory Wolfe
- Neil Sandilands : Clifford DeVoe
Convinced beyond a shadow of a doubt that the husband was the perpetrator, but had intentionally and so cleverly arranged to crime scene so that all suspicions would be diverted away from him, Dibny instead planted evidence - a knife with Reagan's fingerprints - to "frame" the suspect for murder, and as a result, Barry determinedly sought to prove Ralph’s fabrication and ultimately testified against him after inspecting the knife and determining it to be a fake murder weapon, leading to Dibny dishonorably being kicked off from the police force and driving a deep wedge between his once-good and working professional relationship with Barry.
Pre-Flashpoint
After the S.T.A.R. Labs particle accelerator exploded, Ralph was said to have been killed according to Eobard Thawne through unspecified means.
Post-Flashpoint
Ralph's timeline changed following Flashpoint, resulting in his survival from the explosion. Ralph went on to become a private investigator specializing in infidelity cases. Given a lead by a man named Clifford DeVoe, Ralph caught Mayor Anthony Bellows in an affair. Ralph attempted to blackmail the politician in exchange for the photos. On October 10, 2017, Ralph was on the bus that was exposed to dark matter particles resulting from Barry Allen's return from the Speed Force. Ralph did not exhibit his powers immediately after that, but took a few weeks.
He was visited by Barry and Joe West regarding if he had been on the bus that day, but gave them no information since Barry still has Ralph’s ire. Soon after Barry and Joe left, two thugs came to Ralph's office. They hung him by his legs off the top of an establishment to intimidate him, inadvertently causing Ralph's powers of elasticity to manifest and allowing him to descend safely from that height, albeit with his lower limbs now rubbery and exceedingly stretched beyond the limits of their original design. He was later brought into S.T.A.R. Labs where Team Flash there did preliminary tests to his new attributes, all of which greatly disturbed Ralph who just wished to return to normal, but could not as he was still new to his meta-human abilities, preventing him from deliberately returning his outstretched extremities back to their default state.
As Elongated Man
- As Elongated Man
- Upon attaining mastery over his powers, Ralph gradually realizes that with such extraordinary gifts comes with an even greater sense of responsibility, which was something that he simply just brushed off in his five years of working as a private investigator; Ralph soon learned the hard way that saving the lives of others must come before catching the bad guy as his determination to prevent Mina Chaytan's escape almost killed a young girl when a utility pole fell on her while Barry was fighting a caveman statue Mina had brought to life with her powers, showing that Ralph is capable of remorse to his own actions and sympathy towards those he fails to protect due to misusing his own abilities, and now whole-heartedly accepting that he has an entire city to look after with the advantages given to him by chance and had to receive encouragement from Barry to keep Ralph from doubting himself.
- Ralph began to put Barry's advice to use, choosing to save a night guard at a museum from being killed by an animated T-Rex skeleton rather than pursue Mina. He then does the Sioux people a favor by delivering to them the very artifact that Mina was trying to steal, as it was rightfully theirs and later proceeded to entertain the aforementioned little girl in her hospital room using his powers.
- Thanks to Barry's mentoring, Ralph has learned that self-interest isn't the way to go. He learns to be selfless and to help others, including his teammates. After a while, the team begin to trust him to the extent of seeing him as a rightful member of the team. When Barry is framed for Clifford DeVoe's murder, Joe pulls Ralph aside and asks him for assistance in trying to plant evidence on Marlize DeVoe. When their first attempt doesn't work, Joe tries to plant carpet fibres at the DeVoe house to frame Marlize for being in on her husband's "murder" at the West-Allen loft, the night her husband's body was found. Ralph, remembering Barry's teachings, manages to talk Joe out of planting the evidence, showing how far he has come since he joined Team Flash.
Meta-human physiology : After Ralph was struck by the dark matter energy after the Flash's release from the Speed Force, this altered his DNA and cells in a way that Earth Two's Harrison Wells found most intriguing, polymerizing the walls of his cellular structure, causing them to be elasticized to form an unbreakable bond at an atomic level, enabling him to access his new-found powers.
- Elasticity : Ralph can stretch, contort, and compact various parts or his entire body into a myriad of different shapes and sizes. After taking a chemical stabilizer given by Caitlin, he was able to retain a degree of "muscle memory" and revert to his leaner, fit state (or "default form").
- Nigh-Invulnerability : As a side effect of his elasticity, Ralph is also rendered highly durable, mitigating any impact he may receive with little consequence as his body expands and contracts, in and out of his normal human shape, to render said impacts obsolete and even cause projectiles to bounce off from his person, after absorbing the said projectile into or through his body, and immediately rebounding it back to the direction of the source. He took no harm from a bullet to the head, and a punch to the face only inconvenienced him as his body would stretch and cushion the impact to ultimately negate it; though it was implied that certain other forms of assault could still harm him, since a viber meta-human from Earth-19, Breacher, claimed that he can kill Ralph after furiously firing a vibrational blast at him and then followed it with another. It would appear that his insusceptibility to outward and solid physical harm is not limited to blunt assaults, since Ralph took a gargantuan bite to his outstretched torso from the teeth-filled jaws of a mobilized T-Rex skeleton without sustaining much harm to himself, despite something like that would have surely bifurcated a normal person in half. Ralph managed to withstand enough explosives to destroy a city block, though he did comment that it gave him heart burns right after doing so. Later, Ralph exhibited a marginally reasonable resilience against Axel Walker’s Axid, sustaining only moderately superficial damage on his knee that did not impair Ralph in any way
- Shapeshifting: Ralph gained the ability to physically change bodily form of anyone he can clearly picture within his mind. This was discovered when Ralph was describing his old business partner, Earl Cox, to Team Flash, and while doing so, he gradually started changing form from body part he described to body part, including his voice and accent, until he was in the full form of Earl. Ralph further on used this ability to masquerade as Gregory Wolfe and Clifford Devoe, the latter of which he used to successfully testify for Barry Allen's freedom. However, as he was still unused to this new facet of his elastic capabilities, maintaining himself in the likeness of another's form taxes Ralph to the point where, apart from not being able to retain the said alternative likeness for as long as he would have liked, showing signs of gradual reversion until snapping back into his true form eventually, the assumed form also somewhat hampers Ralph's natural mobility - causing him to experience some difficulty in both movement and locomotion.
- Superhuman strength: Ralph has also demonstrated considerable strength, possibly attributed to the now substantial bonding of his cells at the molecular level which also refines his physical parameters and muscle definition. He was able to grab onto and stop a helicopter mid-flight with his extended arm and allow the Flash to run up his extended arm with ease, although he was somewhat strained by the act, and later single-handedly prevented a speeding car from driving away, with only one outstretched arm gripping the car from behind, while anchoring himself to another vehicle with the other arm.
- High-level intellect/Expert detective: As an ex-police detective of the Central City Police Department, Ralph runs his own private investigation business and is very experienced in detective work, and has shown being able to tell an encountered woman's vital statistics with a simple glance (much to the discomfort of females). At one point he was Barry's senior for this field and was seen successful in closing several cases whilst working as a PI.
- Peak of human physical condition : As a result of his now-uniquely malleable physiology, Ralph passively maintains himself in top physical condition for a man of his age and size. This was emphasized after his five years of off-duty from police work left him in an undisciplined, slovenly and physically-unkempt bodily state; but upon the stabilizing of his meta-human abilities, and learning that he could use them to re-shape his body in virtually any manner he chooses, Ralph immediately opts into bringing himself back into his body's former glory - instantly losing the size and weight of the bloated mid-section he gained and trading them for fine-honed abdominals. Presumably, his overall musculature was also pushed to their limits as a side-effect of this elastic shape-shifting, greatly optimizing his remarkable flexibility and elasticity in addition to impressive athletic performance, and Caitlin commented that Ralph's vitals are now "above average".
- Police training : Ralph has received training, as all Central City Police Department members do.
- Statistics reading : Ralph has the ability to immediately determine an individual's complete body-type and measurements from a single glance. However, as he has only been seen doing this with women, it may only be due to his highly perverted nature. While not a dignified trait, it showcases Ralph's powers of observation.
- Keen Sense of Smell : Ralph has a very keen sense of smell capable of detecting and distinguishing scents even behind a concrete wall.
- Extremely corrosive chemicals : As shown by Axel Walker, having invented a powerful new acidic solution called Axid, such advanced corrosive substances can still hurt and very much harm Ralph. When exposed to some of it the first time, it left Ralph with a nasty burn on the skin and him yelling in agony.
- Limited replication : Like Hannibal Bates, Ralph's shapeshifting is purely cosmetic and thus he has no knowledge from the person he is shapeshifting into. This means that his impersonation relies solely on his acting abilities and that anyone who knows the person he's imitating well enough will not be fooled by the change. Also, unlike J'onn J'onzz, Ralph lacks the ability to produce donned items, such as clothing and wearable accessories, on his person in lieu with his own brand of shapeshifting - forcing the latter to improvise by acquiring such items in order to make his ruse believable when impersonating someone.
- Lack of stability : Initially, Ralph's stretching abilities were out of his control, acting instantly if exposed to enough outside force and would then remain stuck in that state, and was basically an afflicted human on his way to becoming a viscous and amorphous pile of flesh. By analyzing the difference in Ralph's DNA from before and after his dark matter exposure, Caitlin Snow was able to produce a stabilizer, enabling him to instinctively return to his normal shape as a default.
- Elongated Man suit : Ralph has a suit to hide his identity. A prototype, meaning that other iterations and artifices are bound to be produced after it in the future, the suit is a blue leotard with a matching mask and black tennis shoes. While the suit may only look like a plain old tarp it actually has an "adaptive nano-weave structure that is malleable on the sub-molecular level" so that, according to Cisco, when Ralph stretches, it stretches and when he squishes, it squishes. Cisco later remade the suit colored black with a hint of burgundy. The new suit also comes with a black domino mask, but otherwise works the same as the first suit.
