Lightray
1767 - Lightray is born on New Genesis.
20 years ago - Lightray goes to Apokolips to help Orion as he tries to free his mother Tigra. While Bekka hides Orion with her powers, he creates a diversion, alerting the armies to his presence and outrunning them. before he escapes with the help of Himon.
6 years ago - Lightray and the Gods of New Genesis descend from Supertown to assist the Justice League in freeing the Bugs from the minions of Glorious Godfrey. They attend the wedding of Scott Free & Big Barda.
4 years ago - Lightray and the Gods of New Genesis, alerted to the Parademon wave invasion by Jimmy Olsen, travel to Earth to extend their pact to include Earth.
While there are plenty of characters in the Fourth World who are front and center, driving the narrative with their epic adventures, there are also quite a few that were clearly invented by Jack to populate the world. Lightray is obviously a character Jack had a lot of affection for in how prominently he's so often featured, but he's never been the main character of any New Gods stories. You're left with a character who is easily as powerful as the main heroes, but is nonetheless playing the role of supporting cast, which is an interesting balance to maintain.
Lightray's Comic HistoryLightray was one of the original design drawings in Kirby's pitch to Stan Lee that eventually evolved into his New Gods story. He appeared for the first time in the very first issue of New Gods, as one of the many other denizens of New Genesis that Orion interacted with. He would continue to appear in the series establishing that he is one of the youngest warriors of New Genesis, and would soon come to be Orion's most regularly occurring ally during his Earth adventures.
After the original Jack Kirby adventures, Lightray would continue to play a regular role in practically every New Gods series to follow. He was very rarely a central character, more often representing the rest of the characters on New Genesis, but he did play a major role in Jim Starlin's Cosmic Odyssey, and even briefly joined the J. M. DeMatteis Justice League alongside Orion in the early 90s. Essentially, any time New Genesis is depicted in practically any capacity, Lightray is the character you're most likely to see representing them. |
Our Lightray StoryLightray really doesn't require a ton of work to include in our timeline, because there really aren't any specific Lightray stories that we have to get right. There have been a few minor backup tales, perhaps most notably in the 1989 New Gods series where it's established that Lightray is the only New God to have superpowers above and beyond the standard super strength/invulnerability of the other New Gods... which is why he uses the name Lightray rather than his given name Solis? That's pretty immediately and obviously not true, but I at least appreciate the attempt to innovate.
For our timeline, the most important thing to get right is to have Lightray be at Orion's side in some of his most important battles, most notably his attack on Apokolips. We wanted to really make Lightray's role in that adventure an epic one, so in Orion's second attempt to free his mother, he does so with Lightray providing a distraction, literally alerting and outrunning the ENTIRE Apokolips war machine, something that only a character whose whole schtick is that he's almost as fast as light can pull off. After that, he is simply one of the main New Genesis warriors, taking part in every major battle to defend New Genesis and protect the universe from Apokolips. |