Rags-To-Riches: A Man and A Doll

Rory Regan was a Vietnam veteran, who's father owned a pawn shop in Gotham City. When Papa Regan and three of his buddies... an acrobat, a circus strongman, and a former prize-fighter... came upon a stash of cash in a mattress, they decided to save it for Rory. Sadly, it was the ill-gotten gains of some hoods who hid it there, and when the old men wouldn't reveal where they held the money, the crooks shot some power lines which ensnared the quartet. As Regan arrived to find his dad and three pals stuck in an electrical snare, he attempted to free them. Instead, the elderly gents perished and Rory gained their athletic abilities. Adopting the alias of Ragman, wearing a costume his father got him, he became a protector in the poorest part of Gotham. 

Peter Merkel was formerly a contortionist and exotic dancer for a travelling carnival. When his employer went out of business, he decided to use his triple-jointed skeleton to pursue a lucrative criminal career. To that end, he was inspired to dress up as that which he'd become known as, a Rag Doll. Exploiting his ability to mimic a life-size stuffed toy, Merkel found success until he faced Earth-Two's Flash. 

Ragman would twice meet and team up with Earth-One's Batman, even trading costumes on one adventure. However, Regan mostly kept to himself, never joining a superhero team, although he was present during the Crisis on Infinite Earths.

Rag Doll resume his confluct with the Flash decades later, both under the influence of the Thinker when the mental mastermind manipulated the Flash into repeated failures at capturing the Rag Doll. Still later, Rag Doll was recruited into the Secret Society of Super-Villains, where he severed a couple stints with he fellow felons.