The Ray’s Sexuality

The Ray has a long history in comics, and has gone through a lot of changes throughout the years.

The first Ray was "Happy" Terrill, who was published by Quality Comics. Quality was bought by DC Comics in 1956, and in 1973, the Ray was grouped with other Quality characters as the Freedom Fighters, superheroes from Earth-X, a world where World War II never ended. Following Crisis on Infinite Earths (1985), the Freedom Fighters were established on the new Earth as active during WWII.

In 1992, DC introduced a new Ray, Ray Terrill, who was the son of the original Ray. He went on to join the Justice League, and has also been on teams such as Young Justice and a new incarnation of the Freedom Fighters.

Following Infinite Crisis in 2005, DC introduced a new Freedom Fighters and a new Ray named Stan Silver. He's not very important. Another new Ray, Lucien Gates, was introduced in The New 52, but he's not very important either.

A couple years ago, Grant Morrison redesigned the DC multiverse in a series called Multiversity (2014). He brought Earth-X back, but made a few changes; in addition to the world being called Earth-10 and now having a Justice League, albeit one that works for the Nazis, the Freedom Fighters were made up of people targeted by the Nazis. With that in mind, the Ray was now homosexual. It's not clear which Ray this is, but he's dressed like the original Ray.

In August 2016, DC announced it would be making an animated series called Freedom Fighters: The Ray, set on Earth-X and part of the multiverse that the other DC CW shows (Arrow, Supergirl, et al.) belong to. They also noted that this Ray would be Ray Terrill and the art they released with the announcement showed him wearing a version of Ray's classic outfit.

Surprisingly, Freedom Fighters: The Ray didn't debut until over a year later - December 8, 2017. This version of The Ray actually made his first appearance in the Arrowverse crossover "Crisis on Earth-X" the week before (November 27-28, 2017). That's why I noted when the show was announced, because in January 2017, DC released Justice League of America: The Ray - Rebirth #1, which introduced Ray Terrill to the new Reborn DC Universe - a Ray Terrill that happens to be gay.

Now, you may be thinking this could just be coincidence. Maybe the show and the book independently decided to base their Rays on the Multiversity one. That's possible...except check out which characters got Justice League of America spotlights:

The Atom is on Legends of Tomorrow (and that suit is based on his appearance in the show). Killer Frost is on The Flash. Vixen is on Legends of Tomorrow and Vixen (and that suit is based on her appearance in the show). And The Ray is on Freedom Fighters: The Ray. All CW shows, all part of the Arrowverse. I don't think that's a coincidence.

Appearance Spotlight Addendum: Nick Fury

Way back in 2012, I posted about Phil Coulson making his way into the comics and noted that he was bringing along a black Nick Fury as well.

The way they did that was pretty convoluted, involving a son of Nick Fury named Marcus Johnson who ends up losing an eye and changing his name to Nick Fury, and oh yeah, he also happens to be black.

Well, it turns out Mighty Avengers #13 (May 2008) managed to do it in a much simpler - albeit admittedly less long-lasting - way a couple years earlier: it was a disguise.

Given the time frame, it's possible that this was a reference to the Ultimate line of comics, which is where the black and bald Fury originated. Or it could've been a tie-in of sorts to Iron Man, which was released the same month. Either way it counts, as I've included cross-reality immigrants before (here, here, and here).

In case you don't know, here's what Nick Fury usually looks like in Marvel Comics:

Character(s) Spotlight: Coldmoon and Dragonfire

In November 2011, Marvel released Point One #1, a comic that touted "The Future Begins Here!" It set up stories across the Marvel Universe, including major ones like Original Sin, Avengers VS X-Men, and Age of Ultron, but right there in the middle was the first appearance of two brand new characters: Coldmoon and Dragonfire, two yin yang-themed Chinese teenagers with fire and ice powers.

These characters were never seen again. According to Fred Van Lente in his Reddit AMA, they were created for the Marvel Heroes video game, by Gazillion Entertainment, to help the game appeal to the Chinese market and included in Point One to help promote that. Normally this is where I'd show you the video game versions of them as proof, but they never appeared in the game. This issue is literally the only time Coldmoon and Dragonfire appeared anywhere.

It's a shame; with such a high profile introduction, you'd think someone would've seized the opportunity to use them somewhere. Oh well. For all we know, someone will dust them off twenty years from now and they'll be the surprise character find of 2040. Worked for Squirrel Girl!

Appearance Spotlight: Hydra Logo

Hydra has been around in comics for a long time. In fact, their first appearance was in Strange Tales #135, all the way back in June 1965. And in that time, their organization's logo has pretty much been the same. Here are some examples:

The comics were still using this version of the logo in January 2011 when they published Captain America: Hail Hydra #1, and continued through all five issues of that miniseries:

When Hydra appeared in Captain America: The First Avenger (July 2011), they kept the symbol mostly the same, but they did make a few changes. The most noticeable is that it's red, both to tie in to the Red Skull - who leads it in this version - and to make the color scheme closer to the Nazi Party. The other change is that they made the negative space inside the tentacles resemble gears because this version of Hydra started as the Nazi science division. (There is an interview that confirms this but I can no longer find it. If anyone has a source for this information, please let me know.)

I don't have a definite date for its first appearance (although the earliest date I can find is 2013), but this symbol has become the standard in comics. Here are some examples of that:

As you can see, while all of the pre-2011 examples are green and yellow, the post-2011 examples have started using the red from the movie as well, in some cases.