It is the Minnesota comic book convention that I will always remember, because I, the world’s biggest Elongated Man fan, got to meet Carmine Infantino.  That prized issue of Flash that I owned, with the first appearance of Elongated Man?  That guy there, in the front of the room taking questions from the audience, was the artist who drew that cover and thus created my favorite superhero!  Wow.

Carmine was promoting his new book, “The Amazing World of Carmine Infantino,” and he regaled us of stories about working in comic books.  He told us about the infamous cover of Batman that sold 1 million copies, and how the aggressive poses of Batgirl and Catwoman as they fought over the prone and helpless Batman was based on an idea by William Moulton Marston.  He reflected on how the “Seduction of the Innocent” book was filled with a lot of baseless charges of sexual suggestion where there wasn’t any… but when it came to Marston’s work, yeah, that was probably pretty much true.

I was so nervous, but I finally saw an opportunity and raised my hand.  I told him how I was the world’s biggest fan of his creation Elongated Man, I babbled on a bit about how I thought he had a lot of unrealized potential, and what did he think about Elongated Man now?

Carmine, looking rather perplexed by my devotion to his creation, narrowed his eyes a bit and asked, “You, uh, you’ve heard of Plastic Man, right?”

I’ll admit it.  I was a little stunned.  I had been defending Ralph Dibny as his own unique character for years.  I explained to other fans time and again how they were different in personality, powers and their place in the DCU.  And yet the guy who created him saw him as little more than a copy of Plastic Man!

Here’s a juicy tidbit for you: Elongated Man almost WAS Plastic Man!   Had Carmine known that DC Comics had recently bought the rights to Plastic Man, then he never would have bothered with the unwieldy monicker of Elongated Man.

Now, does this mean that supervillain Ralph Dibny in his purple costume would have been named “Plastic Man”?  Would he have been introduced as the new Silver Age Plastic Man, to someday encounter the Golden Age Plastic Man of Earth-2?  Would the Eel O’Brien Plastic Man have appeared in the Flash as a villain, or as a hero?  Or does Mr. Infantino mean that he would have scrapped the whole Elongated Man idea because DC owned “the real thing”?  That is unclear.

So, he was almost a member of The Flash’s Rogues Gallery.  And he was almost Plastic Man!   He came within a hair of not even existing at all.

See what I mean about his being all wrong?

More to come, folks!