By popular (okay, one repetitive) request:
![](https://mightygodking.com/images/whoswho/rainbowraider.jpg)
First off, understand that Roy. G. Bivolo (yes, that is apparently his real name, which is one step above Kite-Man’s real name being Charles Brown) is an embittered super-criminal who turned to a life of super-crime because he could have been a truly great artist if only he had not been born colourblind! Of course, the fact that you can create perfectly brilliant works of art in monochromatic tone (Escher did it all the time) never seemed to pierce Roy’s psyche. So probably he was lying about being a potential artistic child prodigy.
But it would make sense that he was lying, because Roy didn’t build his super-powered light generators himself – his father made them for him, shortly before dying of natural causes. How lame is that? At least Weather Wizard killed his brother to get that weather-wand. How does Roy have any self-respect at the super-villain club nights? Really, it’s supervillainy, not soap box derby racing.
“Yeah, I fell into a vat of super-chemicals and they turned me into a massively strong giant. How’d you come up with that light thing you do?”
“…my dad made it for me…”
On top of that, the powers themselves? Well, he’s got a sort of made-in-Chinatown version of the Green Lantern ring since he can create solid-light objects, although he never uses it for anything other than to create rainbows to travel upon. But even less impressive than that is his power to use colors to influence emotions. For example, he can use red light to make you angry! I imagine this is particularly useful when he is fighting Hawkman.
Hawkman: I am going to stop you, Rainbow Raider!
Rainbow Raider: A HA! Red light in your FACE!
Hawkman: I WILL KILL YOU AND WEAR YOUR BALLS AS A HAT! MACE MACE MACE!
Rainbow Raider: Oh, fu- (rest of sentence ended by mace smashed violently into mouth)
Finally, it is worth noting that among a criminal history that included such noteworthy moments as teaming up with Dr. Double-X (“less randy than Dr. Triple-X, more daring than Dr. Single-X”), one of the Raider’s most infamous criminal moments was attempting to drain all the colour out of Central City. Which left all the other criminals scratching their heads, because… why?
“Now they won’t be able to use… traffic lights! The city’s traffic will come to a standstill without giving me the riches I demand!”
Oh, Roy. Roy, Roy, Roy.
![](https://mightygodking.com/images/whoswho/rexrating-rainbowraider.jpg)
There’s a reason Geoff Johns used this guy as a stupid whipping-boy.
Top comment: This character makes much more sense if you assume he’s trying to get revenge on the world not over his colorblindness, but over his father cursing him with a really stupid name. I mean, come on… Roy G. Bivolo? It’s like his father wanted him to have the crap beaten out of him in school. — Skemono
Related Articles
45 users responded in this post
Didn’t Johns have Blaquesmith kill the original Raider? I’m pretty sure the one in recent crowd shots is a legacy baddie…
BWAHAHAHAHA!!!!
Okay, this was some funny shit, although I’m not sure if I’ll send a link to the friend who told me about the Raider in the first place. She likes the character and she wishes he hadn’t been killed off, but maybe she’d find this funny too, I don’t know.
This was me cashing in on MGK’s promise to consider writing a post about a topic of our choosing if we voted for him in the ’08 Canadian Blog Awards. If you haven’t done the same, time’s a wastin’!
Even though I laughed I still feel a little bit bad for Roy so I’ll defend him where possible. Which doesn’t leave me a whole lot; I mean, he could have made monochromatic art, or he could’ve abandoned painting landscapes in favour of something like abstract expressionism (did anybody care what colours Jackson Pollack used?), so there’s no reason why he couldn’t have been an artist. I can’t really defend his dad giving him his powers either, because as origins go it is decidedly not the most impressive. The scheme to drain all the colour from Central City? Can’t defend that either, “why?” indeed…actually I guess he wanted everybody to be colourblind just like him, but it’s still a lame scheme.
But there are two points I can make. First, the example of Catman. Catman had been a loser too, who actually became progressively more pathetic over the years, but eventually he clawed his way (sorry) out of it and has now earned not only the respect of his peers but a spot in what’s arguably the best DC title currently on the shelf. Proving that there’s hope for just about any character.
Second, while Bivolo might screw up in just the way you described and use the red beam, he’d be more likely to use a blue beam to make Hawkman too depressed to fight him. Or a green beam to…uhm…make…Hawkman…buy a Prius? I dunno.
(Actually, now that I bother to read the scanned entry, green causes envy and I can’t imagine how that could be useful, but yellow causes cowardice. That could come in handy.)
Wow what a waste of so much potential. I mean with the whole Lantern thing with all the colors they could have updated this character and made him one of the most powerful villains in the DC Universe.
The device his father built could be tapping into all of the power sources for the rings.
Look the Silver Age brought out a lot of lame, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be made better. So if you’re reading this Mr. Geoff “It’s My Universe and I’ll Do What I Want” Johns quit being a dumbass and use such obvious villains to their true potential.
Actually, now that I bother to read the scanned entry, green causes envy and I can’t imagine how that could be useful, but yellow causes cowardice. That could come in handy.)
Use of the Envy ray:
Raider is cornered by Barry Allen and Wally West (in whatever role Wally’s been left after Rebirth). He uses the green beam on Wally and all of a sudden:
“Goddammit Barry, I get kicked out of my title after twenty years to make way for your return because some guys in their forties can’t get over Superfriends?! Screw you, Johns and Didio!”
And then they fight.
Also works if he’s cornered by Hal Jordan and Kyle Rayner.
Oh, it is ON. I will not have anyone picking on the Raider! You have just made yourself an enemy for life, good sir!
It is true that Roy was a prodigy (an art expert said so in a flashback from his origin issue), and he did sometimes paint in black and white. He probably would have been wise to continue doing that, but even I will admit that Roy wasn’t always all that smart.
As for why he drained the colour out of the city, he was attempting to give himself colour vision (and it worked, briefly) as well as inborn powers. For a while, he didn’t need the goggles at all, he was just zapping the hell out of everyone and nearly killed the Flash.
Also, when he was hanging out with Dr. Double-X (they didn’t really work together, they just swapped foes), he beat up Batman. SO THERE.
Viva la Raider!!
I find the fact that he was killed with a painting highly entertaining.
Ah, hello Lia! I guess this renders the question of whether to send you the link moot. You seem to be taking it reasonably well, though. 🙂 And now his plan for the city does make more sense.
Unfortunately though, I found some scans of the Raider, including one fight with Batman. And–I can’t believe this–the first one he shoots Batman with is the red/anger-making one! (Oh Roy, Roy, Roy…you didn’t make it easy for people to posthumously plead your case.) You may have that issue, so would you be able to tell me if there was a reason why none of the emotion rays worked on Bruce? Some bat gizmo? Or is he just dead inside?
All right, see, just picturing that makes me wish this guy were still around. 😀
Yeah, it says in the entry that he could create solid light objects, so if he were better at using his powers he could’ve been a lot better. It’s all in how he, or any other character, is written. Although one exception to that rule would be Paste Pot Pete/Trapster. I don’t think that guy will ever be an A-lister. Sometimes, though, you can retire a villain and still get good mileage out of the character, as Mark Gruenwald did with Fabian Stankowicz, formerly known as the Mechano-Marauder.
Nah, I think it was a waste. Even if a character’s pathetic that doesn’t mean you kill the poor sap in a couple of panels. The Porcupine was pretty much a joke, but he was given a decent sendoff and even honoured posthumously by the Avengers.
Any bit character, like some nameless crook, could’ve been killed the same way as a demonstration of Blacksmith’s power.
The strangest thing for me is MGK has finally posted a DC character I’ve heard about before. Ganted I first heard of him when reading an old Wizard magazine where he was Mort of the Month, but there you go.
Wow what a waste of so much potential. I mean with the whole Lantern thing with all the colors they could have updated this character and made him one of the most powerful villains in the DC Universe.
I had similar thoughts. In fairness to Johns, however, he killed Rainbow Raider off BEFORE he started writing Green Lantern and spinning the color emotional spectrum idea.
If nothing else, we need Keith Giffen to do another Ambush Bug mini-series with a resurrected Rainbow Raider parodying the upcoming “Blackest Night” saga. 🙂
“Now they won’t be able to use… traffic lights! The city’s traffic will come to a standstill without giving me the riches I demand!”
MGK – have you been reading my fan-fiction?
I think that’s more “Dr. Double-Cross” – as in, “help me out and I’ll totally stab you in the back when we’re through” – which, I imagine, would be the absolute LAST doctor you would ever want to team up with.
And really? Do you really think its a good idea to hand Green Lantern powers to some fruity washed-up artist’s dad? And not just Green Lantern powers, but Rainbow Lantern powers, which trump all other colors by virtue of being fabulous? I mean, it takes – what? – a small village full of Guardians to make one of these things properly. And some dude can just crap one out in his basement before he kicks it?
Yeah, overpowered. I’m not too disappointed that Rainbow Raider doesn’t have much bang for his buck.
C’mon man – why does every villain NEED to be a goddamned Joker. I won’t defend Raider’s competence or abilities because you aren’t SUPPOSED to. There are criminals in the world with really dumb reasons for doing what they do, that will have potential and most of the time muck it up. If you always kill those guys or make them the goddamn Joker you end up with the DRAMA FILLED ANGST verse and nothing to fill in your padded fun areas – this is comics man! FUN. You know Flash fight Roy almost as a cool down after having dealt with Murmur or whatever the hell crisis. That is what kinda character he is!
PLUS I call you out on the Booster Gold Raider – he took out Booster blinding him, which was cool and then when the art gallery caught fire he worked alongside Booster to save all the artworks within.
You forget, because this is comics, if there weren’t something to bitch about, it would be manufactured. I mean, look at this whole conversation. It’s permeated by the underlying belief that there’s no bad characters, just writers and editors WHO ARE GROSSLY INCOMPETENT AND RAPING MY CHILDHOOD AND MOLESTING MY FAVOURITE CHARACTERS BECAUSE THEY ARE EVIL VILE MEN WHO ARE OBVIOUSLY THE SAME AS PEDO RAPISTS BECAUSE THEY DON’T WRITE COMICS LIKE THEY ONLY EXISTED IN MY MIND NOT HOW THEY REALLY WERE WHEN I WAS A KID.
And man, I’m glad I don’t pay attention to the Bat-cast if Joker’s all about teh angst.
The best Rainbow Raider “owned!” moment was in an issue of Flash where he was in a prison yard complaining to another lame villain (I want to say it was Crazy Quilt) about Wally.
“Damn the Flash and his stupid blue costume…”
“For the last time, you colorblind spastic, the Flash’s costume is a bright shade of RED!”
The whole entry seems like it was written by Roy’s prison shrink trying to prop up the poor guy’s self-esteem. “Sure, you had to have your dad build your powers for you as a consolation prize for being you, Roy, but remember, you’re special! You have remarkable powers over colored lights, even if you can’t actually see them.”
Matt: I’ve never read that scene, but that is awesome.
Rob Brown: I don’t think even Trapster is irredeemable. I think the trick to using villains that appear lame isn’t to amp up their powers or make them more bad-ass, but to have them use their existing, goofy abilities with spectacular competence. *Anyone* can bring the city to its knees with a nuclear-powered battlesuit with railguns and heat-seeking missiles. But to do it with adhesives and solvents? *That* would be impressive (and extremely entertaining).
This guy has a lot more potential than his Pride parade costume lets on.
First of all, he can create solid objects out of light, presumably out of any color of light and it doesn’t depend on his willpower so that can give him an advantage over, say, a Green Lantern, whose power is dependent on his willpower it thus psychically connected to all his creations.
Second, he can control people’s emotions with beams of light. Imagine if you were a politician who was worried about losing an election and maybe all you needed was for your opponent to make one public display of cowardice or inappropriate anger that would ruin his chances. An assassination would cause too much political turmoil, but a simple character assassination would always be in demand.
Third, using his black light, he drains people of their power. Of course, the draining of their color makes the signature move a dead giveaway, but this could easily be used as a way to escape a losing battle quickly.
Fourth, controlling the color of light would make him an excellent arsonist. All he would need to do is change the color of the red and orange flames to blue in order to increase the temperature of the flames.
He needs a new name (both of them) and a new costume, but his powers give him an exceptional amount of potential. Which ultimately leads to the question, why the hell doesn’t Lex Luthor just round up all these wasted technologies and use them for his own purposes?
cool comic book illustrations!
@Zenrage: Oh man, Lex with choose-your-own Kryptonite.
By bizarre coincidence, there’s an article in the New York Times about how color can affect mood & cognitive performance: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/06/science/06color.html?ref=science.
Apparently blue makes you more creative and red increases accuracy.
It’s too bad he’s dead now. He could have rented himself out to corporations that wanted to improve employee productivity and made a fortune.
I have a question though: If he’s colorblind, how does he know which color to use?
Anne: Colorblind people aren’t really color bind, it’s just that their brains interperet colors in different ways. Take Matt’s example above, what Roy sees as blue is accutally red. I knew a guy in high school who was colorblind and where color makes a difference you use something else. For traffic lights for example he went by the position the light was in, not the color of it.
I think you’re onto something. He wouldn’t even be the first Rogue to try something like that; the Top did so as well, but Roy might have better luck if he used his powers the right way. If.
That’s awesome. 😀
Well, sure there are bad characters, Andrew. But I think it’s better to try and make a bad character into a good one than to say “this character sucks, let’s just kill him.”
Strangely, in one scan of his origin it shows him trying the goggles on and seeing everything in black and white. Which, according to Bivolo, is the same as he’s always seen it. I guess that was written by somebody who didn’t understand colourblindness; the person who wrote the exchange above, about the Flash’s blue costume, clearly understood that it wasn’t as simple as “black & white” vs. “many colours.”
@Kyle: He already did that.
He was a 3rd rate Silver Age Hero. This is definitely a case of big fat writer fail.
There are rare cases of people who are totally colourblind (who cannot see any colour at all). And from what we’ve seen of Raider’s history, he is one of them. There have actually been several panels which show the world from his POV, and it was in nothing but shades of grey.
This, I think, makes his bitterness and anger a little more understandable.
Control over color could be a useful one. Make things transparent or you could change print (all the labels in the pharmacy are changed!) or change the color of people’s eyes, thus making them blind. Illusions, a quick car paint job….
Actually, colorblind people *are* unable to see certain colors. And some people are unable to see any colors at all. I have an uncle who saw only in black and white, and I have problems distinguishing red from green.
I’ve never considered it tragic enough to power a life of supervillainy, though. I get more emotional about my family’s history of male pattern baldness than the colorblindness thing.
Stark; the recent Action Comics Legion had a “Rainbow Girl” who seemed to have a mixture of this guy’s powers AND the new ’emotional spectrum” GL powers. Maybe a great^5th grand-daughter?
What was wrong with “Color Kid”?
Johns brought in a whole legacy group called the Rainbow Raiders (1 per color) to replace him.
Well, he did.
This character makes much more sense if you assume he’s trying to get revenge on the world not over his colorblindness, but over his father cursing him with a really stupid name.
I mean, come on… Roy G. Bivolo? It’s like his father wanted him to have the crap beaten out of him in school.
Huh, guess I didn’t know as much about colourblindness as I thought I did. If nothing else, this has been educational.
@Skemono: Well, there’s nothing wrong with the name “Roy,” and there wasn’t much his father could’ve done about the last name. I think the blame lies with one of those guys on Ellis Island. You know the type, the people whose job it is to say “Welcome to America! What’s your name?…No it’s not, your name is ‘Bivolo’ now.”
My mental image of what they could look like is very Power Ranger-y.
Here are a couple of pictures of the Rainbow Raiders group — they only had two appearances, and are kind of lame.
http://www.hyperborea.org/flash/rainbow-raiders.html
Also, once I posted a whole bunch of Raider scans just for the hell of it. Enjoy.
http://community.livejournal.com/flash_rogues/24614.html
By the way, it includes the “colorblind spastic” panel.
@Lia: You know, I don’t know much about art, but I know what I like. (Has that not been said in so long that it’s stopped being a cliche, or did I just spout a cliche?) And I would buy that painting he was working on when he disappeared in that one panel.
The guy did have his moments (puce or not, it still looks like that blast was pretty effective, and you know what they say about vomit-inducing-rays by any other name).
Kind of ironic that he’d mock Booster Gold as being second rate (with Booster probably thinking the same about him) and then, according to Axolotl’s comment above, stop fighting him and team up very shortly after.
In one of those scans he’s yelling at a guy named Morris. The natural assumption would be that he is doing this because he doesn’t like Morris, and that assumption would be…absolutely correct! You can see the reason here (the commentary isn’t kind to the Raider either, although if Roy were alive he might take small comfort in what was said about Morris’ outfit):
http://www.seanbaby.com/stupcom/rainbow4.htm
I like that version of his origin the best. He got ditched by his business partner and supposed friend right when they were on the brink of success, then immediately after that he had to deal with his pop’s death. That’d put me in a crime-committing mood!
Here’s something else. An interview with the Rainbow Raider:
http://www.fanzing.com/mag/fanzing43/iview.shtml
The following is a spoiler quote and most of the final part of the interview, but I am compelled to include it. Partly because it includes an explanation for what you told me about the way he was acting before getting killed, Lia, and I guess that’s as good an explanation as any. 😉
Roy. G. Bivalo. Sounds like something a mom would teach their kid to help them ace a science quiz.
You guys do get the name, right? Just checking.
Kinda hard not to get the name. Its not that subtle.
The one name I never did get was Ben Riley. I’ve seen two insect-themed characters given this name as an alter-ego (The Scarlet Spider, Deathfly). I have yet to figure out why, though.
Yes, but I can’t claim credit for figuring it out; right there in his Wiki entry is the reason for his name. :p
@Zenrage: Well, in the case of the Scarlet Spider you had Peter’s clone trying to make a life for himself and he needed an alias. He got the first name from Uncle Ben, of course, and Reilly was Aunt May’s maiden name. As for this Deathfly person, it is a mystery to me as well…
Kind of ironic that he’d mock Booster Gold as being second rate (with Booster probably thinking the same about him) and then, according to Axolotl’s comment above, stop fighting him and team up very shortly after.
Booster persuaded him to help save paintings from a fire in the art museum. Roy could not let all that art be destroyed!
I like that version of his origin the best. He got ditched by his business partner and supposed friend right when they were on the brink of success, then immediately after that he had to deal with his pop’s death. That’d put me in a crime-committing mood!
Yeah, it does make sense.
. . . okay, so I now need to know what the hell his indigo, violet and orange blasts made people feel. Seriously, you guys. It’s going to bug me until I find out. Goddamit.
I can’t help you with the violent and orange beams, but from that interview I linked to above:
😉
…okay, that totally changed my mind. Rainbow Raider is the best supervillain ever.
Let me offer a possible explanation for his street name:
In the Germanic languages, V is often pronounced F, while the Japanese tend to confuse L and R. Combine these and Roy’s last name comes out Biforo which is not far off from Bifrost which is the name of the rainbow the Norse gods use to travel between Asgard and Midgard. Wow, that’s a big stretch.
The thing I always remember about the Rainbow Raider is that he was, of all the Flash’s villains, apparently the one that was most likely to go completely, violently insane if you stepped on his gimmick. That’s how they ended up dealing with Dr. Spectro in Captain Atom… they put him in the same prison as the Rainbow Raider, and shortly thereafter, he cut a deal with the government to keep his mouth shut about Captain Atom’s secret in exchange for protection from the Raider’s murderous wrath, after the Raider had almost killed him twice.
[…] Somehow I missed this when it was posted, but Mightygodking has an off-kilter profile of the Rainbow Raider. […]