‘Ragman’ Writer Ray Fawkes Avoided Referencing ‘Arrow’

Ragman may have departed Star City and Team Arrow last year on The CW superhero series, but he’s busy in his own DC Comics series. However, fans shouldn’t expect the comic book hero to be too much like his television counterpart.

While Ray Fawkes has seen Arrow and the show’s take on Rory Regan, an unusual superhero who wears the mysterious Suit of Souls that gives him the ability to summon the forces of all the souls who reside there, he didn’t draw on the television portrayal of the character when it came to writing the comic. Fawkes said that there was so much more he wanted to do with the character now that he was the center of his own book.

“I’ve seen the character in Arrow. I think he’s cool, but I did steer away from it because I feel like television and film are a great way to realize these characters but they’re also very restricted by budget and realism,” Fawkes told ComicBook.com. “They want to look real, and so there’s only so far you can go, especially with a character like Ragman who is a secondary character on Arrow.”

On Arrow, Rory Reagan/Ragman appeared in the show’s fifth season. Played by Joe Dinicol, Ragman was the sole survivor of the nuclear destruction of Havenrock and wears his suit of ancient rags when he comes to Star City to exact vengeance from AmerTek, the company that developed the missiles that destroyed Havenrock. Oliver Queen/Green Arrow (Stephen Amell) managed to convince him to step back from vengeance to become a real hero instead. However, after Rory uses his rag suit to stop a nuclear blast, he discovers that the suit has lost its power, which leads Rory to leave Star City, telling Felicity (Emily Bett Rickards) that he will return.

The comics version of the character is quite a bit different. In Fawkes’ version, with art by Inaki Miranda, Ragman is a war veteran named Rory burdened with grief at having lost his partners when a mission they had to raid a tomb in the Israeli desert fails. However, when Rory gets home to Gotham, he realizes that what was in the tomb has followed him home — the Suit of Souls.

With the two versions of the character being so different Fawkes explained that he didn’t dislike Arrow‘s take. He just wanted to do something visually very different.

“So, while I was aware of it, and I don’t dislike it, I didn’t want to be held to it because I wanted visuals to really wow people and blow their minds,” Fawkes explained. “I wanted to tell Inaki [Miranda] that he could just go completely nuts and try and not try and make it like anything else, just make it his own thing really.”

Ragman #3 will be available Wednesday, December 13th.

Arrow airs Thursdays at 9/8c on The CW.