Radiation Roy
2981 - Roy Travich is born on Earth, heir to the Travich fortune.
2990 - 9-year-old Roy Travich is the self-professed biggest fan of the newly founded Legion of Super-Heroes.
2993 - 12-year-old Roy Travich's parents die in an accident. He begins using their money to find a way to give himself super powers.
2995 - 14-year-old Roy Travich succeeds at granting himself powers, gaining the ability to emit radiation just in time for the Legion of Super-Heroes recruitment drive. He is rejected because of the horrific images Imra Ardeen discovers in his mind, making her unable to sleep for days, but is told that it is because he lacks control. His radiation starts to affect his body, forcing him to spend his fortune on treatment.
3005 - 24-year-old Roy Travich, toothless and covered in lesions, is approached by Kirt Neidrigh to join the Justice League of Earth.
3007 - 26-year-old Roy Travich and Justice League of Earth go public and stage a coup to control Earth's population. They fight Legion of Super-Heroes.
Radiation Roy's Comic HistoryRadiation Roy is one of the much more prolifically appearing future members of the JLA. He debuted back in 1964 in a quick four-panel appearance in Adventure Comics #320, where he revealed that he had spent his family fortune to give himself powers, and then quickly showed that he didn't have enough control over them. He actually gets a much gentler sendoff than a lot of rejected applications, who often get chased away like raccoons. Still, the next time we see him in 1968 he is trying out for the Legion of Super-Villains where he made several appearances and was often depicted as a partner to Spider-Girl.
The Post-Zero-Hour Reboot of Legion continuity gave us a new version of Roy, this time still a rejected Legion candidate, but instead of joining the Legion of Super-Villains, he went on to work as a hero-for-hire with the team Workforce, again working alongside Spider-Girl. He has a very cool new costume here, but when his face is injured and he starts to leak dangerous radiation he has to start wearing an antiradiation suit, a design detail that will be picked up later. Roy makes one more quick appearance in the pages of Supergirl and the Legion of Super-Heroes in 2006 during the "Threeboot" timeline, when a bystander during a rally attacks some Science Police with gamma radiation, and someone shouts "Roy, no!" It's obscure, but I'm counting it. |
Our Radiation Roy StoryThe era of the Legion that brought about the Justice League of Earth is referred to as the "Retroboot" when the team starts to deliberately look more like its original Pre-Crisis self, which is why both Roy and Spider-Girl returned to their more villainous ways, but this new version of Roy also picked up the idea from the Reboot timeline that his radiation powers were out of control and slowly destroying him.
While Spider-Girl definitely has more appearances than Roy, This new version is more of an amalgam of the different versions of the character that have come before and represents an interesting innovation on the concept. I don't think we actually had to do anything with this character at all to adapt him to our timeline. He already had an explanation of his powers in place beyond them just being inherent to his species; he's actually a wealthy fan of the Legion who spent his family fortune to give himself powers, only to have it figuratively blow up in his face. His transition into an irradiated monster is very canon, is creepy as hell, and is just great fodder for a classic comic villain. We like Roy. |