[2] The character, created by artist Lou Fine, first appeared in Smash Comics #14 (Sept 1940) and continued in the book until issue #40 (Feb 1943).

In 2011's New 52 relaunch of DC Comics, where fictional history was again restructured, a new character called Lucien Gates was introduced as the Ray.

[4] 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, Langford "Happy" Terrill is originally described as having been exposed to lightning and sunlight at the same time while ballooning and gains energy-based superpowers.

[6] According to Jess Nevins' Encyclopedia of Golden Age Superheroes, "The Ray fights the Hindu mystic Bela Jat, Cadava the Crumbler, the Mongol warrior Khan, and the pied piper of crime, Stradivarius".

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.

After accidentally killing his mother in a fit of rage on his birthday in February 1954, Joshua was placed in suspended animation by his father, only to wake up again in the future, still only 8 years old.

[8] After a brief association with his old team the Freedom Fighters in the 1970s, Happy Terrill married a woman named Nadine and settled down.

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 (his brother Thomas).

The new Ray is Stan Silver, and he was described by Justin Gray as being "capable of turning his body into a living laser light" and "the playboy of the group".

Working as a foreign correspondent for the Washington Sun, Silver was exposed to upper atmosphere radiation while covering a story, thus gaining power over various forms of light.

In Uncle Sam and the Freedom Fighters #7, he battles his former teammates and is defeated by Ray Terrill, and is sent back to Father Time.

Lucien Gates is a Korean-American San Diego County lifeguard who, while on duty, was caught in the path of a particle beam.

The beam, accidentally fired from a solar energy cannon commissioned by an unnamed government agency, mutated a number of living organisms before striking Gates.

Distinctively, Gates cannot direct his flight as is common for airborne superheroes, instead traveling in a straight line as a literal ray of light.