Forced Spectrum: The Ray #1 Review

Let’s get the good part of the review out of the way up front: Jimmy Palmiotti’s, Justin Gray’s and Jamal Igle’s The Ray is a fun comic that I intend to keep buying, at least for the time being. It has a likable protagonist, a stack of interesting supporting characters, and an old-school, “Wrong place, wrong time, boom! Dude gets superpowers” attitude toward it’s origin story that reminds me of comics like Nova and Firestorm when I was a kid back in the 70s.

The bad part of the review is that The Ray feels like the obligatory “black best friend” that DC Comics will trot out at SDCC 2012 to prove to extremists in Batgirl costumes that they’re not racists. But we’ll come back to that.

Our hero is Lucien, a lifeguard in San Diego who gets blasted by something called the Sun Gun – probably because if it was the actual Large Hadron Collider that it’s clearly meant to be aping it would imply that he got his powers from something called a God Particle, which would draw out a whole different kind of extremist to SDCC – and gets the power to control light. All of this happens in three pages, and one of them is the opening splash page. Compare that to, say Ultimate Spider-Man, where we’ve gone four issues without even putting Miles Morales in his own costume, and you can tell we’re looking at a fast-paced origin book like, say, the original Spider-Man.

Of course, it takes a little longer than for Lucien to get his costume on because gaining the control of light apparently means losing the ability to wear pants. Everything he touches burns, which means that The Ray will be the first superhero to die of a backup of semen to the brain stem. In fact, a large part of this issue revolves around Lucien’s pants problem, meaning that we spend a lot of time in the company of a naked young man, and that there is a particular demographic who can use the book to make sure they are in no danger of death by semen accumulation.

All of which sounds a little silly, but stuff like that is part of this book’s charm; Palmiotti and Gray are clearly just trying to make a fun book here. In most comics, the origin story is showing the hero fucking up in costume the first few times – this book even acknowledges it explicitly. In reality, you’d fuck up your house. You’d gork out in private before you put on a spandex suit to be a gork in public. There’s something compelling about watching a guy with his friends and family, embarrassing himself before he goes out to kick people in the face. It makes Lucien a much more relatable character than you sometimes get in an origin story. After all, we’ve all had the Naked At Work dream, so Lucien’s travails are a hell of a lot more universal than, say, the Your Battle Armor Tells You To Kill Green Lanterns might be. Unless you’re me; I have that dream nightly. Except I’m naked. But mind your own fucking business.

In fact, the greatest strengths of this book aren’t the superheroics, but seeing Lucien interact with the people in his life. Most superhero comics throw in cameos from other heroes early on to try and make the new guy relatable, like seeing a new set of tights talking to a familiar one are the best way to make a hero likable. In The Ray, Palmiotti and Gray show Lucien working through his powerset with his parents, best friend and girlfriend… which in reality is what any of us would do. If I found myself glowing in the dark with my wang hanging out, I would probably go whimpering home to Mommy… if only to curse her for the Irish blood that would make my wang hanging out so Goddamned humiliating.

Unfortunately, the supporting characters are also this books biggest weakness… along with the hero. The hero is Korean-American. His best friend is African-American. His girlfriend is Indian-American. His parents are white California liberals. All of which is perfectly reasonable, and all the characters are well-written, but the sheer scope of diversity in this book makes everyone feel like an Affirmative Action hire. It feels forced.

And I will grant as a white male of voting age firmly ensconced in the middle class, I have a particular worldview that might be working against me here. But the aforementioned Ultimate Spider-Man, Jason Rauch Firestorm, Ryan Choi Atom, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, all felt more natural and less forced than the casting in The Ray. I’m all for diversity in comics, but here it served to take me out of the story a bit.

Jamal Igle’s art is picture perfect for an origin book that presumably is meant as an entry hook. It’s sharp, with solid facial expressions and action storytelling (For what action is actually here). It’s nothing special, and it’s not especially stylized or challenging, but that’s not a bad thing. His pencils are dynamic and the Rich Perrotta inks sharpen them to make good, old-fashioned comic book art. And he draws smoke, debris and ambient objects to discretely hide floppy manparts like no one else in the business.

This is a fun book about a new hero, meaning that even four months into the New 52, we’ve still got a place to get in on the ground floor. The characters are fun, the book is full of humor, and the visuals are accessible. The supporting cast is compelling, and as long as that continues, I’m guessing that the “We need a $array_Underrepresented_Ethnic_Group[i]” feeling will quickly fall by the wayside.

Bottom line: you looking for a fun comic with new characters that isn’t mired in continuity? Check it out. But if you’re checking it out to relieve any… backups? Leave me out of it.