I like Elongated Man too! I never read Flash or JLA in the Silver Age, but Ralph was great in Justice League Europe and most recently in Starman's Grand Guignol storyline where he got to play the detective again instead of a stretching stooge. With the exception of Plastic Man, stretchy powers do seem silly today. Mister Fantastic is one of the most brilliant scientific minds in the world, and it seems too goofy that he also stretches. Same with Ralph Dibny as a detective will deductive skills on par with Batman and Hamilton Drew. I've read Hammett's novel The Thin Man (big fan of hard-boiled detective stories and film noir), and I would love to see Ralph (and Sue) treated more like this, or at least with some level of respect. James Robinson started to come close.
I guess I have a love for "underdog" characters like Ralph Dibny and my personal favorite superhero, Blue Beetle. He is too often dismissed as a redundant mix of Batman and Spider-Man, but good writers like Keith Giffen and J.M. DeMatteis in JLI, and more recently Chuck Dixon in Birds of Prey are doing new and different things with Ted, and he deserves the chances to shine. I don't read the Superman or Batman books, even though I respect those characters' iconic qualities. I'd just rather read about the second-stringers, the everymen, the guys trying really hard who don't get the respect they are due.
However, I gotta admit I'm not a big fan of Lobo. He reeks of the fanboy age of the early '90s, the time of VALIANT and IMAGE and CABLE and STUFF WITH "BLOOD" IN THE TITLE.
