Elongated Man is part of Identity Crisis, Series 2, which warrants another look at the package. The front presentation hasn’t changed, but the back of the card is new to show the figures from the second series and offer some little blurbs about the characters. The figure is carded with his two interchangeable arms flanking him on both sides and the large figure stand partially concealed behind his legs. It’s a great looking presentation, and I’d happily hang it on my wall if I weren’t about to rip it open.

The boys at DC Direct really nailed this figure. The head sculpt is great, particularly the prominent jaw line and sunken cheeks, which is very evocative of the character art. The hair sculpt is equally impressive, and the paintwork on the face is precise and clean. The body is a pretty simple, muscled buck, but the superb coloring really makes it stand out. The bulk of his costume is a dulled gloss red with bright yellow bands for his belt, and the edges of his gloves and boots. The torso stripe is matte black and the gloves and boots are both high gloss black. No doubt, this is what the coloring on a comic book figure is supposed to look like. Bravo!

Elongated Man shares most of the points of articulation as the other figures in this series. The arms feature ball jointed shoulders, hinged elbows, and swivels in the wrists. The legs feature cuts in the hips and hinged knees. The head is not ball jointed, but rather only turns, and we’ll see why in a minute. The figure does, however, have two extra points in the biceps, thanks to his removable arms, hurray for bicep swivels! Elongated Man is definitely the best articulated figure in this series.

Action features on a DC Direct figure? Well sort of. As we saw from the in-package shot, Dibny comes with two stretchy arms that can be swapped out for his normal arms. It’s a nice way to feature his powers in action figure form, although they are real space-killers when you try to display him. I prefer to compromise by displaying him with one stretchy arm and one normal. The figure also has an extending neck feature, which is very well done. Kudos to you, DC Direct, for these cool little extras. Oh yeah, he also comes with the ginormous Identity Crisis figure stand.

Much like Dr. Light, Elongated Man, is a great stand-in for my DCUC display. I really adore this figure, and even if you aren’t collecting this line and don’t want to mess with Club Infinite Earths, you should do yourself a favor and pick him up. No DC figure collection should be complete without a Ralph Dibny, and this is just a great version of the character. I’m really interested to see if the Signature Collection version will be good enough to replace this one in my display, but either way, having an Elongated Man on my shelf will make the wait a lot easier.

Tomorrow, we’ll wrap up the Identity Crisis with Black Canary. And in this case, I did not save the best for last.