When Pride Month rolls around, many of us raise the rainbow flag to show who we are, the community family to which we belong, and of course, whom we love. As comic book fans, it behooves us to reflect on those who donned or employed the rainbow colors—not necessarily to show any kind of pride—but more times than not to bumble into a pathetic attempt at a life of crime. Lets pause for a moment, on this gayest time of the year, to look back on these fashion-handicapped characters. Not to increase our own sense of pride, but rather to give us all a cheap laugh at their expense.

To properly kick things off, we simply must begin with perhaps the lamest rainbow-ized character of all time, the dastardly villain Doctor Spectro. This multicolored nutbag first sashayed onto the comics pages back in 1966 in the Charlton comics' Captain Atom #79. In perhaps the worst costume ever seen up until the fan-designed Supergirl outfits foisted upon us in Adventure Comics years later, Spectro posed the deadly threat of tossing around colors that could change people's moods, such as an unspecified "hate color" that could turn a crowd of onlookers into a raging mob bent on thrashing our atomic champion. Comic book scientists have since determined that this color could well have been fuchsia. Others argue taupe. Not content with leaving his headache-inducing palette in the sixties, Doctor Spectro carried his wardrobe gayness to DC's Captain Atom in 1987, where even the smashing artwork of Pat Broderick could not save the disco light-speckled uniform the villain had switched to. Seriously, he could not have looked more like the floor of a seventies discotheque were John Travolta to dance across his chest. I have no clue what became of Doctor Spectro, presumably he died of a terminal lack of fashion sense or perhaps Carson Kressley beat him to death with a Prada handbag. And no, it did not match his outfit. Nothing does.

Sticking with DC for the moment, whose initials may as well stand for "Deranged Color scheme", this publisher also brought us the Rainbow Raider, whose only defense against his uniform was that he was completely color blind. We should all be so lucky. First appearing in Flash issue #286 in 1980, the skilled hands of comic legend Carmine Infantino could only do so much to spruce up this guy's ensemble, to say nothing of his back-story. Rainbow Raider turned to crime because the art world didn't appreciate his godawful paintings made of hideously clashing colors the artist couldn't distinguish (imagine that!). He employed a pair of goggles made by his optometrist father that allowed his son to fire solid beams of rainbow-colored light. The Raider then unleashed his fury on art galleries, declaring that if he could not appreciate the lovely art due to his disability, then no one would! This rampage, of course, was the only logical step to take, rather than say, working solely in black & white photography or doing something really radical like labeling his paint tubes. To add insult to injury, Rainbow Raider later got his head handed to him by more sensibly color-themed Booster Gold. And this was before Booster was cool. Ouch.

Rainbow stupidity does not stop here for DC villains. Since back in 1958 in Adventure Comics (what IS it with that title and godawful color choices?), rainbow themes have been associated with embarrassing villainy. It was there we met the Rainbow Archer, who would have been a truly gifted counterfeiter, had he only been able to get the colors on a dollar bill right. He was tracked down by Green Arrow Oliver Queen—who, despite his name, is completely straight—and after fleeing his operation created a whole quiver stuffed full of multicolored arrows. He left out the green ones, though, as they reminded him of that annoying emerald crime fighter. Rainbow Archer then began a crime spree after hooking up with a couple of crooks named Joe and Iggy, presumably picked up at a local gay archery range and dance club. No one knows what became of the Rainbow Archer. No one cares. A rumored romantic threesome with Joe and Iggy remains unconfirmed.

The last of our villainous lineup is the infamous Doctor Spectrum of Marvel Comics. Unlike Captain Atom's Doctor SpectRO, Spectrum has had at least five different identities, or at least characters using the same name and similar costumes. Just when the reader thinks he knows who this guy is supposed to be, he changes. He gives a whole new meaning to the word "questioning". Strap in, this gets confusing.

Spectrum started out with an uber-colorful full-body spandex costume and a startling ability to accessorize with minimalist jewelry, provided that we can refer to a rock the size of your forehead as minimal. This rock, a gem called the power prism, used to create multi-colored energy and constructs, was wielded by one Kenji Obatu, who showed up in Avengers #69 in 1969. He was a member of the Squadron Sinister, who chose their team name because the name "We're NOT Trying To Be The Justice League, I Swear To God We've Never Even Heard Of Them, Why Does Everybody Keep SAYing That?!" was too lengthy to fit across the top of their office stationery. Kenji later duked it out with Iron Man in his own title wherein shellhead thoroughly trounced him.

The next nasty Doctor Spectrum was Billy Roberts, an evangelist who had the power prism given to him by a sanitation worker who'd happened upon it. Yet another example of how those in the TV pulpit will nab anything the duped blue collar viewer is willing to fork over. But, also like most evangelists, Billy is so odious that even the power prism itself pries itself from him and goes so far as to try to bond to super heroine the Wasp in order to get the hell away from him.

The last of the line of villainous Doctors Spectrum that I can recall was actually a woman, one Alice Nugent, former lab assistant to the Avengers' Henry Pym. Alice got the prism when the cosmic baddie the Grandmaster reformed the Squadron Sinister. The new team went up against the Thunderbolts, a group of evil villains posing as heroes, some of whom actually became heroes - and oh my stars have I got a headache now.

So we have a gaily-decorated jewel-waving bad guy who has been at one time or another an African, an evangelist, and a chick who looks good in tights. The one thing that remains consistent about Doctor Spectrum is that he is, or at least started out as, a rip-off of Green Lantern. No matter what he or she says. (These are just the versions of Spectrum that were villains, mind you.)

So all these villains have dressed up in rainbow colors and exhibited pretty odd behavior. Does that make them gay? Thank heavens, no. But it can make us gay, or at least gayer, to point and laugh at them. How ironic is it that these villains with the most eye-wateringly horrendous outfits can reply truthfully when we ask them, "Look at you! Are you color blind?" by saying, "Yes, I am. But I'm not gay."

Brian Douglas Ahern (Briz), a cartoonist best known for his long-running strip The Adventures of Bumpkin Buzz, writes reviews for Prism and is also a photographer and a certified hypnotist. He's presently working with fellow Prism-featured creator Randall Kirby on an adventure/humor comic book featuring gay characters. Brian's videos of his cartoons and hypnosis can be seen at http://www.youtube.com/user/BrizyComics.

Iron Man #63 © 1973 Marvel Comics. Review © 2010 Brian Douglas Ahern.

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