Looks like Ragman is headed to Star City in the next season of Arrow, and they’ve already found an actor to portray the vigilante superhero.
Ragman will be played by Joe Dinicol, who you may have seen on NBC’s Blindspot.
Fresh from a personal tragedy, Rory hopes to find answers in Star City, where he ultimately crosses paths with Green Arrow (Stephen Amell).
Ragman first appeared in Ragman #1 in 1976, and was created by Robert Kanigher and artist Joe Kubert. Because of the debut year, Ragman has origins in the Pre-Crisis, Post-Crisis, was involved in the Day of Judgement event, and was a part of Shadowpact with Phantom Stranger, Detective Chimp, and others.
The Ragman can draw upon the physical powers of any number of the corrupted souls that make up his suit. This way he can increase his strength, speed and stamina dozens or even hundreds of times over, though he has stated that it isn’t easy to tap into a large number of souls at once (at the time, he commented that the most he had ever done was somewhere over a hundred). This also allows Ragman to avoid most wounds as he can use one of his other souls to take the damage for him, allowing him to continue to operate at peak efficiency while the souls he has trapped take the damage for him.
Most significantly, having defeated an enemy, he can acquire new souls by absorbing them with the suit, although he can only do this for truly evil souls; as an example, he was unable to absorb the soul of super-villain Blue Moon because she was regularly sent to prison as her powers only worked at night, her time in prison counting as her having ‘served her time’ and preventing Ragman ‘punishing’ her himself. This adds a new rag to the suit, and thus adds to the Ragman’s power supply. However, Rory has mentioned that the process of acquiring a new soul gives him stomach cramps and nausea. Once a corrupted soul has helped him a certain amount of times, it is allowed to pass on to Heaven, having earned redemption for the sins it committed in life that would have sent it to Hell if it had simply died in the normal manner.
Also, the Ragman possesses a number of minor magical powers, such as kinetically controlling the suit (i.e. entangling Eclipso with his cloak while grappling with her). The suit will also automatically materialize whenever he is in danger, and will normally teleport him to wherever he’s needed.
It has recently been revealed that the suit can take on other forms, such as weapons and still collect souls. Whether Rory will use this ability in the future is yet to be seen. To date, it has taken the forms of a cloak in ancient Egypt, a spear during the Roman Empire, and a dagger in 19th Century England.
Season 5 of Arrow will debut on October 5, 2016 on The CW.
Ragman has been an interesting character that I don’t think has gotten enough attention over the years. Sometimes portrayed as a villain, other times as a overzealous hero, it will be interesting to see how Rory comes across on Television. My biggest fear? They’ll turn him into a watered down version of Spawn.
What do you think of this announcement?
