PAGE ONE: Fade in on a writer's garrett in London at night; a single Englishman is tapping the keys of a word processor. We dolly in for the top tier of three small panels above the splash. By the time we are at the third panel, we have dollied in to see some of the words on his monitor screen. He is writing about his first encounter with a super-hero. He is writing about his meeting with the ELONGATED MAN.

THE ELONGATED MAN in "SHAPING EXPERIENCE"

In the splash, we see the Elongated Man on a London street, his wife Sue near his lower body -- because his upper body is down the street, passing by folks on the sidewalk, including the writer, and finally encircling a youth about 17 years old who has snatched Sue's pocketbook.

PAGE TWO: The writer beholds Elongated Man returning his wife's purse to her (she's still halfway down the block) with one hand, tying the purse-snatcher up with one of his legs, and stretching his head and another hand across the screet to call the police from a call box. In the caption, the writer tells us he has wondered since his youth what it would be like to be close enough to a super-hero to touch him. Or her. Or even it. Would it be dangerous? Would he (or she, or it) be engaged in a classic battle against a world-ravaging villain?

The writer approaches Elongated Man, reaches out a hand, and then thinks better of it.

(In the caption, the writer wonders: He stretches. Do his brains stretch within his head? His lungs within his chest? Good lord almighty, does he have STRETCHING INTESTINES?)

Sue Dibny approaches the writer. She asks if everything's okay, and if he has some business with her husband.

He fumfuhs for a second or two. How does one address the wife of a super-hero? As "Madame Elongated Man"? As "Elongated Madame"? As...

"Uh, nothing, ma'am. Nothing at all." He pulls his coat collar up and slinks away.

PAGE THREE: The writer is at home, smoking a cigarette, with an open (and barely touched) newspaper pack of fish-and-chips on the table before him, beside his word processor. The screen of the word processor is blank, as he sits and wonders. I have seen a superhero, he thinks. And...how MUNDANE it all was.

He visualizes Superman, Captain Marvel, Green Lantern, Wonder Woman, Batman. How he had dreamed of them when he was a kid, how he had saved newspaper stories about them, watched videoclips on the tube about them, collected their true-crime comics...

He visualizes Batman punching out Two-Face, and Green Lantern blasting a spaceship from Qward. They seemed to work on two levels, he thinks. There was the DOWN-TO-EARTH kind of hero, who punched out stock CRIMINALS...and the SUPREME hero, who saved the whole WORLD on a twice-monthly basis. And they were all members of the same CLUB.

Cut to: The writer, a day later, standing before JLE headquarters, looking up and wondering.

PAGE FOUR: The writer looks up to the top level of the building and sees figures, indistinct, of people passing back and forth. Who were they? MR. MIRACLE? The MARTIAN? One of the GREEN LANTERNS? Or -- just BUTLERS, MAIDS, and TV REPAIRMEN?

A bobby comes up to ask the writer his business. No business at all, replies the writer.

The bobby makes him produce an ID card from his wallet. He does so. Looking at it, the bobby says that the writer doesn't appear to match any post-office posters he knows...but the chief has asked him to keep an EYE out for loiterers around the building. You'll be moving ON, son.

Thank you, says the writer. Have you--

Yes? says the bobby.

Have you SEEN them?

Oh -- THEM? replies the bobby. Yes -- but on the whole, TOM JONES is a lot more impressive.

PAGE FIVE: The writer trudges home, thinking he'll never know what it's like to understand one of these strange over-people -- to talk to one, to know the GAP BETWEEN--

(He almost stumbles into John Constantine, who is exiting a beanery.)

The writer heads up the stairs to his apartment. For me, he thinks, it's the REALITY. The UNPAID RENT. The editor at TIME OUT who won't return my calls. The WIFE who took the kids and WENT.

Inside the door, through the mail slot, is a batch of mail and a TV Channels magazine with a picture of the JLE on its cover, advertising a TV documentary.

Yeah, it's all very well for YOU, thinks the writer, holding the magazine. You and your STARBREAKERS -- you and your WORLD-SAVING.

We pull back for a long shot of the writer at his window. We don't get to SAVE the world, he thinks -- just bloody LIVE in it.

PAGE SIX: A rap on his door. The writer opens it and sees Ralph Dibny in civvies, not in costume. The writer gapes.

Ralph says the writer's name, and then says, "Did you have BUSINESS with me?"

You're the LONG MAN, croaks the writer.

Ralph laughs. Then he stretches out his hand to the writer -- a good foot longer than a hand should properly be. The writer, tentatively, takes it. It's firm -- quite a surprise. He's got a good handshake.

Well. WELL, then, says the writer. Do you...drink COFFEE?

Thank God you didn't say TEA, says Ralph, and he steps inside the apartment.

PAGE SEVEN: Ralph and the writer sit inside, coffee in hand, Chick Corea on the stereo, playing softly.

Ralph says, My wife MENTIONED you to me some days ago. Then we saw you outside our headquarters, on a surveillance camera--

And the cop told you my name, says the writer.

Sure enough, says Ralph, stretching his arm out to turn the kitchen tap on, putting water into the coffeepot in the sink. And we ran your name and features through our computers. And nothing bad popped up.

Ralph's arm dumps the filled pot into the top of a coffeemaker. So I decided I'd come calling and see why you were HANGING AROUND, he says.

Uh -- did your NOSE-- says the writer.

Ralph makes his nose twitch back and forth like a windshield wiper. Yeah, my NOSE TWITCHED, he says. I do this better than Samantha on "BEWITCHED", don't you think?

The writer cracks up, not so much at the joke as at the notion of the Elongated Man cracking a mundane old TV joke. Ralph laughs, too, as the coffee pot catches the drippings and everything seems more in synch.

PAGE EIGHT: The writer fumblingly explains how he had wondered about super-heroes, and what it would be like to speak to one -- to ask about the GAP between mundane man and SUPERMAN--

Ralph fixes him with a thoughtful eye. It was something like that for ME, in the beginning, he says.

Flashback to young Ralph Dibny, watching an India rubber man at a circus (see Elongated Man's origin story in FLASH #112). For me, he says, the RUBBER MAN -- COLE JACKSON -- was my first hero. And I wondered what it'd be like to BE him...to STRETCH with bones like SILLY PUTTY...

Young Ralph is kidded by Jackson backstage about how the stretching business is a TRADE SECRET. But Ralph sees the bottle of GINGOLD in Jackson's dressing room.

Then we see Ralph, in his cheap hotel room, clothes hung on a line stretched across the room, stretching himself -- and ripping apart his undershirt. He mentions that he refined the active agent of Gingold...and became an ELONGATED MAN.

PAGE NINE: We see the young Elongated Man, masked and costumed, catching a falling kitten before the Flash (Barry Allen) can do so. In the caption, Elongated Man remarks, Catching a falling CAT -- one hell of a DEBUT, eh?

Then, a scene of Elongated Man, putting on a front of nonchalance, shaking hands with the Flash. But inside (as we learn in the caption), he is all goosebumps, thinking how strange it is to be shaking hands with a real live super-hero!

Cut to: years later, in the JLA headquarters, an unmasked Flash and Elongated Man are relaxing together and cracking up as Ralph tells the Flash of all the butterflies he had in his stomach when he first met him. The Flash says, Oh, REALLY? Let me tell YOU--

Cut to: Flash and the original Justice League members deciding to form the team, and, in the caption, Flash telling Ralph how awestruck HE was to meet all these NAMES and COSTUMES and heroes who really RATED...and how STUPID he felt when he suggested that they call themselves "THE AVENGERS!"

PAGE TEN: Ralph, back talking with the writer, who is asking him why he came here alone; wasn't he afraid the writer might be a villain in disguise or something?

No, says Ralph. You learn along the way which people you can trust. There's only a few you know that about at first glance.

Ralph tells the writer that he's glad to have had the chance to talk. London's still such a strange city to him...and he doesn't get a chance to talk with real people much, just shop talk with super-heroes. And you wouldn't BELIEVE what a bore THAT is... Stop by for dinner someday, okay?

He stretches out under the door and is gone.

Cut to: The present. Sunrise on the horizon as the writer, visible through his window, finishes his piece.

The writer looks out his window, cigarette in hand, and smiles. After all, he thinks, THOSE jokers have to SAVE THE WORLD twice a month.

WE get to LIVE in it!