Rainbow Raider

Bates said in a 2008 interview that "Rainbow Raider's color-blindness (as well as the color-emotion powers and origin) was an attempt on his part to emulate those classic Rogues' Gallery villain origins Bates enjoyed so much from the sixties".[3]

Bates elaborated on the characters creation stating "Having grown up on a Flash Rogue’s gallery full of villains who were adept at weaponizing things like mirrors, cold, heat, magic, boomerangs, etc., Julie and I thought the color spectrum gimmick had the potential to be a worthwhile addition."^[4]

Fictional character biography

As a child, Roy G. Bivolo always dreamed of a career as an artist, a lofty goal considering he was completely

Turning to crime because the world did not appreciate his art, Roy, now the Rainbow Raider, went on a crime spree focused mostly on art galleries, saying that if he could not appreciate the great works of art in them (due to his disability), then no one else would. During this time he often clashes with the

Roy is slain by the villainess Blacksmith when she impaled him with his latest work of art.^[10]

During the Blackest Night storyline, Rainbow Raider is one of the many deceased characters temporarily reanimated as a zombie within the Black Lantern Corps.^[11]

In 2011, "

Chroma later appears somehow alive and intact. He and Tar Pit are robbing jewelry stores until they are stopped by Flash.[13]

Rainbow Raiders

Since Rainbow Raider's death, a team of color-themed supervillains have dubbed themselves the Rainbow Raiders in his honor.

Powers and abilities

Rainbow Raider's powers are derived from the special goggles he wears, which allow him to project solid beams of rainbow-colored light he can either use offensively or as a slide for travel. In addition, he can coat people in certain colors of light to induce emotions (coating someone in blue light, for instance, would make them sad).

Reception

• Jonathan Kent posed as a supervillain called Rainbow Raider as part of a plot to get Superboy to capture gangster Vic Munster and his gang by using a hypnotic device on his helmet. Vic Munster later used the Rainbow Raider identity where he was defeated by Superboy.^[16]
• Dr. Quin (a villain from the first Dial H for Hero series) appears in House of Mystery #167 (June 1967) as a different Rainbow Raider. This version temporarily gave himself powers using a rare crystal that changed his body into different colors (slowly following the sequence of the rainbow). Depending on which color he was at the time, he would gain a different superpower: Red gave him a super-hot beam, Orange gave him an obscuring cloud, Yellow gave him the ability to drain energy and super powers, Green enables him to slow the bodies of others to the point of paralysis for an hour, and Violet shrinks people and objects for an hour. His Blue and Indigo powers are never shown. He also had a secret final color power called Ultra-Violet which made him invisible.^[17]

In other media

Television

• Two incarnations of Rainbow Raider appear in The Flash:
  • Roy G. Bivolo appears in the
    Red Death's Rogues.^{[citation needed}
    ]
  • A female incarnation named Carrie Bates / Rainbow Raider 2.0 appears in the
    seventh season episode "Good-Bye Vibrations", portrayed by Jona Xiao.^{[citation needed]} She is a former collections officer who was previously fired from three collection agencies for cancelling debts instead of collecting them and became a metahuman capable of inducing euphoria.^{[citation needed}
    ]
• Roy G. Bivolo appears in the Teen Titans Go! episode "Real Art", voiced by Scott O'Brien.^{[citation needed]}
• Rainbow Raider makes a non-speaking cameo appearance in the Harley Quinn episode "B.I.T.C.H.".^{[citation needed]}

Film

Rainbow Raider appears in Teen Titans Go! To the Movies.^{[citation needed]}

Video games

Rainbow Raider appears as a downloadable playable character in Lego Batman 3: Beyond Gotham as part of the "Rainbow" DLC pack.^{[citation needed]}

Miscellaneous

• Rainbow Raider appears in Batman: The Brave and the Bold #14.^[19]
• Rainbow Raider appears in The Flash tie-in novel The Haunting of Barry Allen.^{[citation needed]}

References