Created by Chuck Dixon
A decidedly minor addition to private detectives to have appeared in DC Comics, ROY RAYMOND Jr. made his debut as a minor character in Robin (#38, in March 1997, to be precise).
He was, of course, the grandson (or was it son?) of the fondly remembered Roy Raymond, TV Detective, who had starred in a long-running backup feature in Detective Comics throughout the fifties.
Like Grandpa, Junior hosted a television series in Gotham City. It was called Roy Raymond: Manstalker, and definitely suffered in comparison to his grandfather’s old show. Unfortunately, Junior was definitely more of a splinter than a chip off the old block, with Junior always coming off as a little more sleazy and desperate than his grandfather. Of course, it didn’t help that Roy was tall and handsome, whereas Junior was usually depicted as being bespectacled and somewhat schlubby, and seemingly always only a short step from being covered in flop sweat.
Not that he didn’t have detective chops–even Batman (in Detective Comics in 2006), admitted that Junior was one of the few detectives he admires, and lamented that Roy “chooses to waste his talents on daytime television.”
Eventually, though, his ego and his blundering caught up with him, and he was caught in an epic fail, when a scheme to catch a dangerous costumed gang live on television went belly up. Junior relocated to Keystone City where, in a story arc in The Flash, he went to work for a local news station, where he contributed to their anti-Flash smear campaign by dubbing the speedster the “Most Awful Human in the Universe” award.”
Junior next shows up up as a member of The Outsiders in 2009, becoming the costumed crimefighter Owlman, but by then I was starting to wonder…why?
The most recent appearance I could find was “Odyssey,” a Batman story in Detective Comics #1027 (November 2020), where Junior, still seeming a little desperate, appears as the host of a mystery-solving podcast, on a treasure hunt with Bruce Wayne, and his regular cast of Martin Compass, Sandra Bradley and Cathy Saunders. the “grandchildren of some of Gotham’s greatest detectives.”
FURTHER INVESTIGATIONS
- Detectives in Detective Comics
A listing of all the private eyes who have shown up in DC comics.
