I’m a little bit late for Pride Month, but this list was fun to put together nonetheless! Rainbows are great. They’re bright, they’re colorful, and everybody still loves them after no doubt seeing them their whole lives. As we all know, rainbows are caused by light refracting through water droplets in the air, usually after it rains. And that image is sometimes used for comic book characters.

Rainbows work as both a costume idea, a way to describe someone’s powers or just a fun accessory for the superhero. They fill a page with color and energy, and bring smiles wherever they go. I knew of some rainbow-based comic book characters already, but the internet is ever giving, and I found even more to fill out this list. And it’s a fun list!

Join me after the jump for six of the more colorful, light refracting off water droplet characters in all of comics!

6. Crazy Quilt

Crazy Quilt is as crazy as he sounds. He’s been around since 1946, a villain who suffers an eye injury so that he can only see bright colors. He leaned into this madness with a really colorful costume, and a helmet that emits bright rainbow lights that allow him to see in most situations. The helmet and lights also have mind control and laser powers, so he’s not just a weirdo in a funky costume. Crazy Quilt is a Batman and Robin villain who just keeps popping up like a bad penny every now and then.

5. Rainbow Girl

Rainbow Girl is a modern member of the Legion of Super-Heroes (or one of the alternate teams). She first appeared in the original Legion comics very briefly, then was revived and remodeled so that her rainbow powers were connected to the Emotional Light Spectrum. I think that’s a fun use of the Spectrum. Rainbow Girl wanted to use Legion membership to become a movie star, which sounds like a reasonable career path to me.

4. Color Kid

Speaking of Legion-adjacent characters is Color Kid! He’s one of the original members of the Legion of Substitute Heroes because he was rejected from the main Legion of Super-Heroes. It makes sense, because his power is to change the color of any object. That’s it, change the color. Sometimes this has been expanded so that the color change also changes the chemical makeup of the object, specifically changing the type of Kryptonite that’s threatening Superman. If you change green Kryptonite to blue Kryptonite, then Superman is fine. So that’s what Color Kid is good for.

3. Julie Power

One of the sisters on the Power Pack, Julie Power has really come into her own in modern day comics. She’s got the power of flight, mainly, and that flight includes a rainbow streak behind her. She can sometimes use this streak for other things, but mostly Julie just flies and looks awesome. Julie is also the only confirmed — I think — LGBTQ+ rainbow character on this list. So that’s pretty neat!

2. Rainbow Raider

Rainbow Raider is a classic Flash villain. He has special goggles that launch beams of rainbow light, which he uses to surf and slide along to get to his crimes. His dying father built the goggles in an attempt to overcorrect for Rainbow Raider’s colorblindness. He immediately put them to use committing crimes and becoming a super-villain. He was just that evil. And just that flashy with his rainbow costume and sense of style. The best thing of all is that his real name is Roy G. Bivolo, because comic creators are mad geniuses.

1. Rainbow Boy

Oh boy, oh boy, it’s all been building to this! Rainbow Boy is a kid sidekick from 1942, from the pages of Reg’lar Fellers Heroic Comics. I already love it. He’s the only character on this list whose powers are actually connected to rainbows. When light is shining on him, Jack Walton gains the power to fly at the speed of light, while trailing a rainbow behind him. He can also use this rainbow trail to grab bad guys and make shields. He started out as one of those teenage radio geniuses that the 40s loved so much, then became the sometimes sidekick of Hydroman. That rainbow mohawk is as cool as superhero costumes get. And best of all, Rainbow Boy is in the public domain, so surely somebody can give him a modern reboot one of these days!

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