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About Rachel Roth

Raven is a fictional character that appears in comic books published by DC Comics. The character first appeared in DC Comics Presents #26 (October 1980), and was created by writer Marv Wolfman and artist George Pérez. Raven is an empath who can teleport and control her "Soul Self", which can fight physically as well as act as Raven's eyes and ears away from her body. Raven's chronology is typically[citation needed] separated into three lives; her first life, 18 years, was spent in the Temple Azarath and creating The New Teen Titans. Her second life began once she started wearing the garb of White Raven, and lasted under two years. Her third life, is her current form. Unlike the transition between her first and second lives, with her third life came a new, younger body.

First life
A character with a morbid past and origins, Raven is the half-breed daughter of a human mother named Arella and the interdimensional demon Trigon. She grew up in an alternate dimension called Azarath, with pacifistic inhabitants whose spiritual leader was the mystic Azar. In her homeland, she was taught to "control her emotions" by Azar, in order to suppress her inherited demonic powers. Essentially, it was feared that if Raven was allowed to feel any strong emotion, she could become a demon like her father.

During this time, Raven rarely saw her mother and grew detached from her. Upon Azar's death, Arella began the task of raising and teaching Raven. Around this same time, Raven's demonic heritage was revealed, as she met her father face to face for the first time. Soon after her 16th birthday, Raven learned that Trigon planned to come to her dimension, and she vowed to stop him.
Cover of Tales of the New Teen Titans #2 (July 1982). Art by George Perez.

Raven initially approached the Justice League, but they refused her on the advice of Zatanna, who sensed her demonic parentage[volume & issue needed]. In desperation, she reformed the Titans as the New Teen Titans to fight her father. The team consisted of Robin, Wonder Girl, Kid Flash, Starfire, Cyborg, and Beast Boy. Raven and her new friends later came to think of one another as family. In this incarnation, Raven was considered to have a gloomy disposition, often revealed through sarcasm and wry remarks.

Raven has occasionally succumbed to her emotions, leading to problems with her fellow teammates. Upon his recruitment into the team, Kid Flash agreed to be a member after Raven used her powers to coerce him into loving her. During another meeting with the Justice League, Zatanna revealed this information, which led the other Titans to mistrust Raven. Ultimately, it was revealed that she manipulated Kid Flash's emotions and removed his knowledge of the encounter in order to save his life.

This separation didn't last long when Trigon kidnapped Raven to his home dimension. The team defeated Trigon and sealed him in an interdimensional prison with the help of Arella, who stayed at the interdimensional door as Trigon's Guardian[volume & issue needed]. However, Raven continued to fight her father's influence as he wasn't completely destroyed. For a period of time, Raven lost control several times in high-stress situations, but managed to regain control before Trigon could assert himself.

Popular storylines such as "The Judas Contract" took place during this period[volume & issue needed]. Eventually, however, Trigon escaped his prison, came to Earth, and took control of Raven, destroying Azarath in the process. The Titans came together and were forced to kill Raven, thereby allowing the souls of Azarath to possess her and guided by the spirit of Azar, who was acting through the body of the Titans' ally Lilith, used her as a channel to kill Trigon. After this battle, Raven rose again from the ashes, purged of Trigon's evil, and vanished.

Second life (White Raven)
Later on, the minions of the Titans' enemy, Brother Blood, captured Raven to control Nightwing (the former Robin) as part of Blood's plans of resurrection. The Titans rescued them both and prevented Brother Blood from returning. Raven then donned a white cloak to represent freedom from her father's influence.[volume & issue needed]

Some time later after being free to feel, Raven found she was able to not only sense, but control others' emotions[volume & issue needed]. She learned to handle this power only after unintentionally making Dick Grayson/Nightwing believe that he loved her for a brief time, when she thought that she was in love with him. It was during this incident that Starfire and Raven became close friends.[volume & issue needed] Raven also fostered a relationship with technopath Eric Forrester, who was using the life force of women he seduced to regain some of his lost humanity, a result of interfacing with computers. Forrester knew that Raven's soul-self could help him to permanently retain his humanity. This attempt was cut short by the intervention of Joseph Wilson (Jericho), who helped Raven overcome her love for Forrester by destroying him and saving herself.[volume & issue needed]
Evil Raven makes her appearance in the "Terror of Trigon" storyline, which began The New Teen Titans v2,. Art by George Pérez.

Raven's life went on without change until she was kidnapped by the Wildebeest Society during the Titans Hunt storyline.[volume & issue needed] The Wildebeest, lead by the Trigon-possessed souls of Azarath, were going to use several Titans to bring about the return of Trigon. During a massive battle in the remains of Azarath, Raven was possessed by the evil souls and once again became the evil doppelgänger of her father. Arella, along with Danny Chase, used the power of Azar's soul to cleanse Raven; however, through the battle, her body was destroyed, and Arella and Danny joined the cleansed souls of Azarath to become Phantasm.

Now free of its bodily prison, the evil energy that was Trigon's in Raven's soul took on sentience and possessed a metahuman with a resemblance to Raven. Raven appeared possessed by her evil conscience, and attempted to implant Trigon's seed into new bodies. She interrupted Nightwing and Starfire's wedding, and implanted a seed of Trigon into Starfire. Instead of corrupting her, she actually implanted the soul of the good Raven. This caused Starfire to leave Earth in order to escape from the evil Raven, who implanted seeds into several other superheroes. The Titans were able to defeat her only because of the help they received from Phantasm.

Raven returned later, still evil, in order to destroy the good version of herself implanted in Starfire.

Third life
In this spirit form, Raven wandered Earth looking for her place in the world when Brother Blood came to claim her. Her spirit was reincarnated in the body of a teenage girl by the Church of Blood. A new incarnation of the Teen Titans discovered that the Church of Blood were worshipers of Raven's father, Trigon. They also found a prophecy which told of the marriage between Brother Blood and Raven that would result in Armageddon. The team interrupted the wedding, and Raven forced the cult to escape. She then joined the Teen Titans and enrolled at a high school as Rachel Roth in honor of her mother's birth name.

After her rebirth, Raven began developing romantic feelings for her teammate Gar Logan (a.k.a. Beast Boy), and the two recently became romantically attached.

Powers and Abilities
Raven has the psionic ability of empathy, enabling her to feel the feelings of others. She can also use her empathy to steal emotions from others, rendering them emotionally "numb". She can absorb the pain of injured people to ease their suffering, and induce rapid healing. There is some ambiguity as to what happens to the pains Raven takes in after she has healed another person. In some sources (New Titans #50) it is stated that Raven feels these pains for the rest of her life and merely accepts them. Opposing sources (Who's Who Vol. 1) state that once Raven takes others' pains into her body, they are then expunged. She has the ability to heal herself and others, as she did when defying Trigon's curse against a young girl. Similarly, Raven seems to be able to absorb another person's knowledge with a touch, such as the language spoken by that person.

Raven has the ability to force outside emotions into other people, consciously or otherwise. She has used this ability many times, first notably on Wally West, in order to save his life.[13] Later, after being freed from her father's powers and starting her second life, she had a short-lived romance with Nightwing and unintentionally used her power to make him believe that he did love her, but it ended when Starfire, who became her close friend, convinced her that she wasn't really in love with Dick Grayson as she thought.

Raven can manifest her "Soul-Self" through a form of astral projection. It normally takes the form of either her human shape or a giant raven. Through the use of her soul-self, Raven can project her consciousness into the mind, for therapeutic purposes (to aid in her own meditation, or to help calm an agitated ally), or for offensive attacks, rendering her enemies unconscious (yet otherwise unharmed) or being destructive in other variations. It also serves as a way to travel into other dimensions. In many instances, her soul-self has also functioned as a "shield," although it seems to absorb attackers and projectiles rather than repel them. In The New Teen Titans vol. 1 #17 (1982), she used this ability a few times to absorb the objects that Frances Kane had uncontrollably drawn towards herself. These objects included all manner of household appliances, eventually progressing to larger objects such as road signs and steel bars. However, Raven admitted during the issue that she could not sustain her soul self long under such conditions. Her soul self also 'regurgitated' the objects after the danger. Using her soul-self, she can convert her physical body into her 'soul-self' and carry/teleport (or rather, use portals to move between dimensions) herself and others over vast distances. Raven also displays the ability to manipulate and or generate shadows and darkness. This ability comes in different variations, from having destructive capabilities to causing pain, tension, and fear-based illusions to whomever or whatever is caught in its range. This ability was displayed when Raven traveled to Conner Kent's farm (Teen Tians #26, 2003)in Metropolis and expells a large aura of darkness from her cloak to Kent in which he began to express severe pain.

In The New Teen Titans foundation storyline, Raven explained she was able to predict Trigon's invasion of the Earth-2 dimension. She was unable to control or consciously activate it, but happens occasionally. It is unknown whether she still possesses this ability in her current body. Shortly after the character was introduced, she was shown to have the ability to project mental illusions into someone's memory (see Ravager in The New Teen Titans #4). She has also used this on the villainess Phobia, but this ability is usually forgotten.

In a number of instances, Raven has also displayed sorcerous abilities. In New Titans #65, the last issue of the Titan Plague arc, an infected Raven forces unconsciousness upon a then-neophyte Tim Drake with a touch of her finger, and was able to slam Nightwing aside and suspend him upside-down with imperious gestures. In The New Teen Titans Annual #4 (1988), a villain called Muse forced the Titans into individual murderous nightmares. In her dream, Raven retaliated by flying out of his reach and then releasing energies from "within the folds of her cape" that caused him to be consumed by fire. Though these abilities could be dismissed as being part only of her nightmare, it should be noted that none of the other Titans displayed abilities out of their normal powers in their nightmares.

In the Family Lost storyline of current Teen Titans continuity (Teen Titans vol. 3 #8-12), shortly after being resurrected by Brother Blood (Sebastian), a captive Raven tries to summon the Titans through ominous signs, such as possessing several psychics and Beast Boy with her soul-self, by turning a river into blood, animating the skeletal remains of her demon father Trigon, and drawing swarms of migratory birds to her location.

Like her brothers, Raven can induce and amplify one of the seven deadly sins (in her case, pride) in any living being, however doing so will cause her to suffer spells of nausea and vomiting for several days afterward.

Raven also appears to be an adept hand-to-hand combatant and expertly combines her fighting skills with her teleportation ability. This was revealed in Titans #18 (December 2009). The only other time she displayed any fighting prowess was while she was under the influence of Brother Blood, where she engaged then-Wonder Girl Donna Troy and boasted that, with Blood's gifts, they were easily equals. Why Raven rarely uses her fighting skills or where she truly acquired them have yet to be explained.

Recently Raven has joined Beast Boy in mentoring the New Teen Titans. After a recent attack from a demonic entity of unknown origin, Raven was left in an unconscious state that allowed her both her mind and body to heal. While she is recovering Beast Boy states that he is in love with her and will remain so despite whatever difficulties are involved.