[2] A blue suit and black bow tie-clad supernatural detective who lived in the small suburban hamlet of "Cloister" in a mansion on "Mystery Hill" that he had inherited from a stage magician uncle of the same name, Mark Merlin used its vast collection of occult literature and artifacts to battle those who would use the occult for evil ends with the assistance of his beautiful blond secretary/fiancee Elsa Magusson and his black cat Memakata who he found in the tomb of a pharaoh of the same name and whose body he could transfer his mind into with the help of an ancient cat-headed amulet.

When Mark Merlin is banished to the other-dimensional lost world of Ra by the lizard-masked villain the Gargoyle, using the mystic oil lamp of Imhotep he gains mind over matter powers from an emerald-like six-sided jewel that represents the strange hexagonal green sun that hangs above the ancient Egyptian-style realm and which grants all who dwell there immortality.

However, he cannot return to Earth in his own body, so the kindly Kranak, a scientist-sorcerer who had led his persecuted peace-loving followers to the alien refuge of Ra over 4000 years ago, uses a potion to reincarnate Merlin's spirit and memories in the body and brain of a long-dead young wizard named Prince Ra-Man, a hero whom ancient legends proclaimed as the son of the sun god for whom their pyramided planetoid was named.

The reborn Ra-Man is able to go to Earth in his place and defeat the Gargoyle with his mighty "mental beam" which gives him control over virtually all non-living matter, allowing him to telekinetically levitate objects and to transform stone, metal and even the air itself into other shapes and forms under his command.

[2][3] Although he longed to return to the peaceful paradise of Ra and Kranak's lovely dark-haired daughter Rimah, the bearded and brooding Ra-Man moved into the mansion, telling Elsa that Mark was dead, and vowed to continue his predecessor's work against the forces of evil.

[11] In Grant Morrison's Seven Soldiers of Victory, Zatanna met a floating fakir-like pale green-skinned, balding and big-headed being known as King Ra-Man in the process of investigating the coming Sheeda menace.