As a young man, Roy Raymond became a successful TV host, fronting the program “Impossible – but true!” He had been born into money and this enabled him to travel the world collecting various artifacts that made his home a veritable museum.
Finding strange facts was one thing – but because of this, Roy was often a target for hoaxers. He became so brilliant at exposing the hoaxers that he became known as the TV Detective. With the backing of his assistant, Karen Colby, he went through many exciting adventures, sometimes seen creating hoaxes himself to aid the police in trapping criminals.
Then came the day Roger Rivers appeared on the show. He claimed he had a teleportation machine and asked Roy what he should materialize. Roy chose a Kangaroo and it appeared. Roy vowed to expose Rivers as a charlatan on his next show – but that was the last time Roy was seen for years.
It was Superman who ultimately discovered the truth. Rivers had kidnapped Raymond and was controlling Raymond’s brilliant mind to reshape the world. He boasted of causing fanatics to launch suicide attacks, making a hijacker blow up a plane – with himself in it – and setting off bloody revolutions in several countries.
Superman, however, let Roy’s brain waves into his own mind, merging the two and allowing Roy to break free and defeat Rivers. Morgan Edge offered Roy the opportunity to revive his show, and the “Impossible Man” signed up to do a series for Galaxy broadcasting.
Roy Raymond decides to use Swamp Thing to further his career. He and his assistant Lipschitz are trapped in a limo driven by a failed Earth-elemental called Wild Thing. He spends his days brokering a hallucinatory deal with Morgan Edge, the head of broadcasting company WGBS. His new facial surgery has come undone, and now has facial damage. Lipschitz dies from laying down face first in a limo of filth, injured, and unable to move. Raymond would later rebound, with an older looking face, and recommitted to being an honest investigative reporter revealing society’s corruptions and ills.