Fictional Character Biography
Also known as the Mind Master, he was actually a Doctor Strange-style 'replacement' for a previous long-running series character in House of Secrets named Mark Merlin. A blue suit and black bow tie-clad supernatural detective who lived in the small suburban hamlet of "Cloister" in a mansion on "Mystery Hill" that he had inherited from a stage magician uncle of the same name, Mark Merlin used its vast collection of occult literature and artifacts to battle those who would use the occult for evil ends with the assistance of his beautiful blond secretary/fiancee Elsa Magusson and his black cat Memakata who he found in the tomb of a pharaoh of the same name and whose body he could transfer his mind into with the help of an ancient cat-headed amulet.
When Mark Merlin is banished to the other-dimensional lost world of Ra by the lizard-masked villain, the Gargoyle using the mystic oil lamp of Imhotep, he gains mind over matter powers from an emerald-like six-sided jewel that represents the strange hexagon-shaped green sun that hangs above the ancient Egyptian-style realm and which grants all who dwell there immortality. However, he cannot return to Earth in his own body, so the kindly Kranak, a scientist-sorcerer who had led his persecuted peace-loving followers to the alien refuge of Ra over 4000 years ago, uses a potion to reincarnate Merlin's spirit and memories in the body and brain of a long-dead young wizard named Prince Ra-Man, a hero whom ancient legends proclaimed as the son of the sun god for whom their pyramided planetoid was named. The reborn Ra-Man is able to go to Earth in his place and defeat the Gargoyle with his mighty "mental beam" which gives him control over virtually all non-living matter, allowing him to telekinetically levitate objects and to transform stone, metal and even the air itself into other shapes and forms under his command.
Although he longed to return to the peaceful paradise of Ra and Kranak's lovely dark-haired daughter Rimah, the bearded and brooding Ra-Man moved into the mansion, telling Elsa that Mark was dead, and vowed to continue his predecessor's work against the forces of evil. Riding around on his flying carpet-like six-sided green 'sun-disc' armed with his magic gem and an encyclopedic knowledge of black magic, he fought such arcane antagonists as the Heap (no relation to any of the other comic book creatures of the same name) and Lord Leopard and twice battled the evil Eclipso, another House of Secrets regular. The "Prince Ra-Man" feature ended in House of Secrets #80 (September-October 1966).
The "Whatever Happened To Mark Merlin and Prince Ra-Man" backup story in DC Comics Presents #32 (April 1981) finally has Ra-Man reveal his full origin and true connection with Mark Merlin to Elsa whom he had kept it a secret from in the original series, with the Mind Master having been accidentally trapped in Memakata's body after a battle with Merlin's old archenemy Doctor-7 in the years since then. Prince Ra-Man would later be killed in the last issue of Crisis on Infinite Earths. The only panel in which he appeared was his death scene, which was witnessed by the original Shade, the Changing Man.
Read more about this topic: Prince Ra-Man
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