Via Superheo Hype:

CW Seed has announced today that it will debut a new animated series with Freedom Fighters: The Ray, based on the DC Comics character. Inspired by the Grant Morrison version found in the pages of The Multiversity, The Ray will be the first gay superhero to lead a show when he debuts in 2017.

Based on the characters from DC, Freedom Fighters: The Ray is from Berlanti Productions in association with Blue Ribbon Content, with executive producers Greg Berlanti (Supergirl, The Flash, Arrow) and Marc Guggenheim (Arrow, DC’s Legends of Tomorrow).

Raymond “Ray” Terrill was a reporter who discovered a group of government scientists working on a secret project to turn light into a weapon of mass destruction. But before he could report on his findings, the project head exposed Ray to a “genetic light bomb.” The bomb failed to kill him and instead gifted Ray with light-based powers. With these abilities, Ray realized he could go beyond reporting on injustice – he could take action to help stop it. Calling himself The Ray, he was recruited by Uncle Sam and the Freedom Fighters to fight violence and oppression wherever it exists.

The first Ray was Lanford “Happy” Terrill, a Quality Comics character. Quality Comics operated from 1937 to 1956. when DC purchased themHappy Terrill was retconned as a member of the Freedom Fighters on Earth-X. Following DC altering much of its continuity and history in the storyline Crisis on Infinite Earths, Happy Terrill was now an inhabitant of the mainstream DC Comics universe and his son Ray Terrill became the second Ray. Later, the character Stan Silver briefly operated as the third hero called “the Ray.” In the “New 52” relaunch of DC Comics, where continuity and history is again being restructured, a new character called Lucien Gates is introduced as the Ray. Although historically he is the fourth superhero character to use this name, in The Ray #1 (2012), set in a rebooted continuity, he refers to the origin of Happy Terrill as a story he had heard as a child.