About 2 years after his mini-series ended, and after he'd gotten some play in that era's Justice League titles, The Ray got an ongoing series. It lasted 28 issues, counting the Zero Hour tie-in #0, Christopher Priest the writer, Howard Porter the penciler for most of the first half of the series, Jason Armstrong illustrating most of the second half.
Jack C. Harris' mini-series was about moving beyond adolescence, growing and coming into your own, with Ray accepting his powers and symbolically shutting the door on the home where he'd spent his entire life up to that point. Priest carries that forward, but with more emphasis on the reality of being a "grown-up" versus the illusion.
Ray's an adult now! He gets to live in his own place! Earn his own money! Date the girl that was his childhood best friend! Hang out with his birth father! Be a superhero!
Except it's not such a great time. The only apartment he can get has no fridge, and comes with an ugly industrial sculpture bolted to the floor. He works at a fast food chicken restaurant. He has almost no furniture, because he spent his money on a souped-up laptop and a cardboard standee of Superman. Jenny, who was not only accepting, but encouraging of Ray embracing his powers, no longer seems to have time for him. Eventually there's a young woman he meets first in the future, then the present, then her future self travels back to his present to avert a bad future. There may have been at least one other brief romantic interest, but if so, the character made zero impact.
Happy Terrill turns out to be not just a congenital liar, as he's still deceiving Ray and Ray's mother - Ray thinks she died in childbirth, she thinks Ray was stillborn - but a domineering, frankly, abusive prick. When he thinks Ray isn't taking his powers seriously, Happy somehow makes Ray think he stole his powers, then dumps him in Chernobyl. Later, when Ray seems to have adjusted to not having powers, Happy disguises himself as a robber and jams a shotgun in Ray's face to terrorize him. It's like Happy took all his parenting techniques from Silver Age Superman.
I was entirely OK when it appeared Happy was killed by Death Masque, the game program Ray designed as a training tool, which subsequently slipped his control and eventually conquered a country. Unfortunately, Priest revealed Happy wasn't dead near the end of the series, which might have been with some notion of reconciliation, as part of a larger thing Priest was doing about family, but I wasn't really having it. If there was some chance Happy could fix all his mistakes, maybe, but he hadn't demonstrated that level of competence in anything, so everyone's really just better off if he's dead.
Ray's superheroing doesn't go so great either. Obviously the issues with Death Masque, which hang over the book throughout. Especially when one of the Justice League squads - I don't know which, that Triumph character was leading it, straight to the dollar bin I assume - refuses to help, so Ray turns to Vandal Savage for some reason I'm sure was addressed in another book. Priest tried to acknowledge developments in Justice League comics that might impact Ray, but as I didn't buy those comics or care about them, it just ends up being confusing. Ray was gone for months because of what? Long-distance space travel time dilation? Huh?
His team-up with Superboy almost results in Ray killing Superboy, then almost dying against Brimstone because Ray exhausted all his power. Black Canary takes advantage of his school boy crush to get him to help her chase a crook through a dimensional doorway to another world, which later results in Ray having to fight Lobo, then time-traveling and messing up certain details of his father's life. The better half of Dr. Polaris contacts Ray to warn him about the return of the Light Entity, but when Ray can't make heads or trails of the warning, and neither can anyone else, he busts out Emerson. Which backfires when Polaris retakes control. Neron approaches Ray, initially as a woman, and after revealing his true form, Ray's more freaked out he kissed a guy than that the devil is bargaining for his soul.
Porter's work in less exaggerated than Quesada's. He tones down Ray's frankly ridiculous hair and Jenny stops looking like her skirts and suits are going to tear apart if she breaths too deeply. But he and Garrahy don't have the same knack (interest?) in playing with contrast in how they depict Ray's powers or appearance. He still looks similar when powered up, but there's less flair to it, less exaggeration for effect. Ray's not suddenly turning into a little bowl-cut version of himself while interacting with the Light Entity.
Though Priest doesn't entirely forgo embarrassing Ray for comedy's sake. Ray has to kick Lobo out of a space station bar to get Canary medical treatment, and on his initial approach, Lobo simply tears the top off Ray's helmet, taps his cigar ashes on Ray's head, then slams the helmet closed again. Ray gets attacked by Happy while still a little power-drunk from contact with the Entity, and after getting knocked into a clothing shop, emerges wearing a sun hat and a body-length green dress with polka dots. Porter's art has the pacing and body language to sell those moments, despite the times where you can feel his work veering into that '90 Image style of too much cross-hatching or characters gritting an impossible number of teeth.
It's strange, a big part of the series revolves around family. Ray's strained relationship with Happy, especially when he thinks Happy's dead. Ray trying to covertly kindle a relationship (not romantic!) with his mother, by pretending he wants to earn money mowing her lawn. (His mother assumes he's the result of some affair Happy had.) Death Masque is like a jealous child, especially once Vandal Savage starts sniffing around. It turns out Ray has a brother who is both older and younger than him, who comes into play in the last-third of the series. Ray's cousin Dean pops up occasionally, dealing out sage "wisdom."
I'm not sure what the goal is, given Priest also seems to be making the point, as an adult, Ray has to solve his own problems. Ray ultimately stops Death Masque, and settles down the Light Entity. He has to protect his mother and his younger/older sibling. He has to find their dad. He has to recognize Vandal Savage is a scumbag who was never going to help Ray, but instead groom Ray into something Savage could use. That fits with the notion of adulthood that, at a certain point, you have to take ownership of your life, but as far as the "family" aspect, I'm less sure. It's caring about his family that makes Ray stop whining about not being able to beat Death Masque, and just knuckle down and do it to save their lives?
