Steven J. Ray
Remembering a friend
I lost a dear childhood friend. Steven J. Ray. We met in 1981, when we were 11, during the first week of high school. We walked to school together (and back) nearly every day for the next 6 years.
Steve’s loss is made harder as, despite being very close as teenagers and young adults, we had become estranged over the last few years. The reasons don't really matter, just that we did. Fortunately, however, over the last year, we had reconnected over the thing that brought us together as friends in the first place: Comic books.
Steven Ray was the first friend I made at Cardinal Manning Boys RC School, in North Kensington, London. That's Ladbroke Grove to the locals, and a stone's throw from Portobello Road and in the vale of Notting Hill.
Unlike most of the kids my age, I had moved over from a non-denominational (non-religious) primary school in a catchment era area that was a bit further away. I started school alone and without friends.
But it didn’t stay that way for too long. On the first morning, while walking down Ladbroke Grove, I met Steve and his mum. They recognized my school uniform. We walked the rest of the way together, and once it was clear we both absolutely loved and collected superhero comics, we became fast friends. He was really into Batman, whilst I was into Superman. We both loved The Flash. If we could've been our own Justice League, we would have.
Steve was an amazing kid. He could effortlessly draw anything he saw with any implement. Watching him draw was like seeing images coming out of a photocopier or camera. He could look at something and reproduce it flawlessly - in any medium - but usually he would just use a ballpoint pen and whatever was at hand: A scrap of discarded paper or the back of an envelope.
My superpower at the time? I could solve a Rubik's Cube in less than 60 seconds. Steve would time me on his brand new Casio digital watch, which had a million functions (including a stopwatch). Comic books, digital watches, and Rubiks Cubes. The 80s was a great time to be a kid.
Another passion we shared was Hip Hop - specifically rap and human beatbox. When we were 13 years old, we formed a rap group (as was the form for teenage youth back then). I rapped and we both did the beatbox. We used his dad’s portable twin tape deck to mix tunes together. We also used it to act out comic books into audio dramas. I like to think we were actually quite good, and in a different multiverse thread, 'London's Finest Crew' made it to the big time. Note: the name of our crew was a riff on World's Finest Comics, which was the comic book that starred both Superman and Batman.)
The nerdism continued when I introduced Steve to role-playing games like Dungeons & Dragons and Golden Heroes. Along with our other friends, we spent hours - sometimes entire days and even entire nights - battling the forces of evil, armed with just pen, paper and dice.
And so it was, thick as thieves we were. We wrote stories together, made audio dramas and mixtapes, and collaborated in artwork. We were creative maniacs. I still have a few handfuls of our work, but a lot of it is lost to time.
As we reached our late teens, we decided with our friend Markel to start a company where we would create cool graphics, stories, games etc... nerdy stuff. We called it The Ideas Factory.
It never amounted to much at the time. We had no idea what it meant to have a business. We just wanted to be creative - and eventually the idea of The Ideas Factory fizzled out... until a decade later when myself, Markel, and a handful of others turned The Ideas Factory into a real company. By then, Steve had moved on, but he was (is) always a founding member of the IF Collective.
The Ideas Factory was the jump start to my now 30-year career in computer graphics, visual effects, and animation. I guess I have, in part, Steve to thank for that.
Although he was an excellent student - he was top of the class in that first year at Cardinal Manning - Steve didn’t continue with his education and instead went out into the world of work. He was the first of us to marry, and the first of us to become a father and homemaker.
In more recent memory - a little over a decade ago - I introduced Steve to the idea of blogging and podcasting about pop culture. Myself and some other friends had created a successful indie podcast and website called The Liberation Frequency. We asked Steve to review some material for us - Batman graphic novels of course - and even though he'd never done that before, he loved it. The work became his life’s passion, and he went on to become the Editor in Chief of Dark Knight News, with pop-media journalism becoming a full-time vocation.
Unfortunately, it was around this time that a distance developed between us so I didn't really get to enjoy this final chapter of his life with him as I should have.
At the end of last year, I saw on Facebook that Steve was selling some of his comic collection. He's the only person I know with more comic books than me, and believe me when I say I have a lot of comics. Steve had four times the amount I have. I can't begin to tell you how much that is because I've got enough to fill a comic book store on my own.
I reached out to him, realizing that we hadn't spoken properly since before the pandemic and my relocation to Canada. He told me he was downsizing and he needed to sell some comics. So, I bought some from him. One specific comic in fact, a rare, graded edition of the first appearance of Captain Marvel (a present for Gavin).
He also told me he had cancer.
The last time I spoke to him was shortly after the graded comic book arrived. He said, "Don't worry Dee, I'm going to defeat this thing. You know how stubborn I am. I'm not going to let it get me down." That was at the beginning of February this year.
On 15th July 2024 Steven J. Ray died, in London, UK, Age 54.
I hope Alfred has kept the cave warm for you. I'll see you when I get to the fortress. Then we can travel to Cloud Nine together and see if its anything like we imagined.
Rest in Peace Little Brother