The Ray

The Ray
The original Ray on the cover of Smash Comics #25. (Aug 1941). Art by Gill Fox.
Publication information
Publisher	DC Comics
First appearance	("Happy") Smash Comics #14 (September 1940) (Ray) The Ray #1 (February 1992) (Silver) DCU Brave New World (July 2006) (Gates) The Ray #1 (December 2011)
Created by	("Happy") Lou Fine (Silver) Justin Gray Jimmy Palmiotti Daniel Acuña (Gates) Justin Gray Jimmy Palmiotti Jamal Igle
In-story information
Alter ego	- Lanford "Happy" Terrill - Ray Terrill - Stan Silver - Lucien Gates
Team affiliations	(All) Freedom Fighters ("Happy") All-Star Squadron (Silver) S.H.A.D.E.
Abilities	Generation of light and solid light constructs Conversion to energy form Flight

The Ray is the name of four fictional characters, all superheroes in the DC Comics universe.

The first Ray was Lanford "Happy" Terrill, a Quality Comics character. When DC Comics later purchased Quality Comics, Happy Terrill was retconned as a member of the Freedom Fighters on Earth-X. Following DC altering much of its continuity and history in the storyline Crisis on Infinite Earths, Happy Terrill was now an inhabitant of the mainstream DC Comics universe and his son Ray Terrill became the second Ray. Later, the character Stan Silver briefly operated as the third hero called "the Ray." In the "New 52" relaunch of DC Comics, where continuity and history is again being restructured, a new character called Lucien Gates is introduced as the Ray. Although historically he is the fourth superhero character to use this name, in The Ray #1 (2012), set in a rebooted continuity, he refers to the origin of Happy Terrill as a story he had heard as a child.

Prior to the Crisis on Infinite Earths reboot, Happy Terrill was originally described as having been exposed to lightning and sunlight at the same time while ballooning, and gained energy-based super-powers.

His post-Crisis origin is more involved. Before World War II, the government established a secret group known as RONOL (Research on the Nature of Light). One RONOL member, Dr. Dayzl, theorized that the light that originated millennia ago where Earth now orbits would eventually circumnavigate the universe and return as a dangerous, conscious entity.

The only way to stop the "Light Entity," Dayzl believed, was to talk to it. Tricking a reporter named Happy Terrill into joining them, Dayzl and his assistants staged an upper atmosphere ballooning "accident," making certain Terrill was exposed to a genetic "light bomb." Dayzl calculated that Terrill's offspring would be a unification of human and light energy, a potential liaison to the Light Entity. Unaware of the truth, Terrill used his resulting powers to become the super-heroic Ray. Simultaneously, RONOL lost government backing due to Dayzl's unorthodox beliefs. Dayzl's fate remains unknown.

In 1950, after learning the truth, Terrill vowed to quit his Ray identity. Happy and his first wife, had a child named Joshua. For a time Joshua accompanied Ray on missions as his sidekick "Spitfire". However Joshua was prone to violent outbursts, he was placed in suspended animation in the 1950s only to wake up again in the future, still only 10 years old. After a brief association with his old team, the Freedom Fighters in the 1970s, he had married and settled down. Everything seemed normal until Happy saw his newborn son glowing with crackling energy in the hospital nursery. Happy was convinced Dayzl's theories were correct. He now knew his son would one day have the power to confront the Light Entity. Not wanting to put his wife through torment, Happy told her that the baby had died and then set up his son with a foster father (Happy's brother Thomas).