crossbreeding fanon with canon promotes genetic diversity

The only one that's really in any sort of presentable shape is Ray #29 which was ready to go to Jason [Armstrong, penciller]. Then we were informed that #30 had to be this "Darkest Night" thing, so Ruben [Diaz, editor] and I shuffled things all around... it's complicated. [...] #29 became a story about a house party that Ray and Jazz crash. It's at Ray's old house and he's gone back there to find the circus light Jenny gave him. He finds out the people who live there have gone off for the weekend and their teenage kid is having this outrageous bash (Hank is out back in a hot tub full of scantilly clad babes while watching a ball game on a rented Manga-Size TV). Ray bumps into those black guys from #13 (who keep calling him "Chicken Man," and they subsequently discover he has super powers. The party is bustyed by the cops and Ray gets thrown in jail. #30 became "The Darkest Night," where the sun is blown out or something. Ray is in jail. The brothers (from #13) bail him out and now Ray owes them, ("Oh, so, how NOW, Chicken Man!"). They drive him to their university (essentially a take on Lincoln University, a predominantly black college in PA) where they confront some very dangerous drug dealers, and look to Ray to clean these guys out of their neighborhood. They don't realize, of course, that Ray has no powers (since the sun has been blown out). Calamity ensues. #31 became the script originally for #29, part one of a two part good day/bad day. Ray's dad, Joshua, and Ray's mom are living in Ray's condo, which he now has to vacate since Vandal fired him. They are all driving him nuts. Ray goes to save a crippled satellite-- just to get away from them. Turns out the satellite was owned by a powerful Japaneese communications firm, and they award Ray the fee NASA was charging them for a shuttle mission to fix the satellite-- 34 million dollars. Moreover, the president observed Ray's heroic efforts to save the satellite, and invites Ray to dinner. A bunch of other extremely good things happen, including stuff with his dad, and a truce in the shooting war that's broken out between Gaelon and Jazz. This is the ish where Ray races to his old Center City ratty place, hoping to beat Jazz there (she's gone there to yell at Gaelon about something), and he slams into a wall of thick plastic Gaelon's put over his windows. Jazz finds Ray hanging outside his apartment window, still wearing the dress suit Ray wore to the white house. I guess you had to be there. #32 became the script originally for #30-- part two of the good day/bad day. This is where literally everything good that happened the previous issue turns comically awful. Ray can't cash NASA's check. Some nutty bad guy he fought in #31 comes back even more powerful and destroys Center City. Gaelon and Jazz go ballistic. Blah, blah, blah. As I said, most of this stuff (except for #31) is an unpresentable mess, but I might make some of this available down the road a bit. I'm still hoping DC will want to publish some of it as a special or something. I'll keep you posted.

And of course none of this got published.

He also talked about his intention to have Jazz and Gaelon be constantly fighting over Ray, played for comedy:

It would have escalated to the point where it wouldn't even *be* about Ray anymore, and Ray would have had nothing to do with either of them. Seriously dysfunctional Betty and Veronica.

To further that comparison, he adds:

there was already a plot outline where Ray would get knocked loopy and have a hallucination where his life was an Archie comic. We were going to get one of the actual Archie artists to draw an ish of the Ray in that style. I am being completely serious. This would have been Ray #34 or 35. We would have drawn a tic-tac-toe board on Ray's head. :-) Yes, Reggie would have been Hank the cousin. Jughead would have been Zone, that goofy counter man from Clucky Chicken.

Also some more hints about what Ray would have gotten up to his more slice-of-life moments:

But Ray doesn't shave yet. That's one of the big Year Three things-- Ray Grows A Whisker. Also promised: Ray Buys A Refrigerator, Ray Learns To Drive, Ray Becomes Puzzled By A Vending Machine, and Ray Gets Caught In A Vicious Catfight Between Two Babes.

There's also a later description of the next several issues, with slightly different details:

#29 (which I should post somewhere) was part one of a Good Day/Bad Day thing. During the Good Day Ray has the best day in his life, including making peace with his dad and his warring girlfriends (Jazz and Gaelon), protecting his brother (Papa Ray wanted Josh back into deep freeze), saving a good chunk of North America from a space station falling out of orbit, having lunch with the president, and winning 3.5 million dollars. #30, the bad day, absolutely *everything* goes wrong, and Ray ends up accidentally destroying Philadelphia (story title: "OOPS"). Umm, from there it gets hazy. I'm sure #31 was a house party story, where Ray's left the circus light Jenny gave him up in his old room, he goes to get it but the people who live there now are out of town and their kid's having this wild party that gets busted by the cops, and Ray gets thrown in jail. #31 had those black guys, "Wher the brother at?" from #13 bail Ray out of jail in exchange for his help in ridding their college campus of drug dealers. Ray's all set to bounce the dealers when he loses his powers (was supposed to be part of the Final Night or whatever). Some other stuff I can't remember . . . But, yeah, we woulda had some fun. We'd done away with (ghah) Death Masque, and the bothersome tie-ins to the Justice League books. Vandal, stung by Ray's rejection, was to become *seriously* evil as we transitioned him back to the Flash book. There was to be a special issue where Ray raced the Flash, a confrontation engineered by Vandal.