Some men want to watch the world burn. Mick Rory wants to light the match himself.

As a young child, Rory was fascinated with fire, entranced by the flames as they danced and glowed. However, fascination quickly turned into obsession, and Rory set fire to his family's farmhouse...with them still inside, watching as the flames engulfed everything. As he grew older, his obsession grew stronger and he continued to set fires wherever he went.

After getting to know many of the other villains of Central City and seeing how they operated, Rory created a fireproof suit and handgun-size flamethrower capable of reaching extreme levels of heat. With these, Rory moved from a simple arsonist to a super-villain—Heat Wave. Although he faced the Flash a number of times on his own, Heat Wave eventually joined the ranks of Captain Cold's Rogues, quickly becoming one of the criminal organization’s most prominent members.

Heat Wave is capable of creating flames so hot that he can instantaneously reduce anything flammable around him to ash and liquefy metal. He works regularly with the Rogues, but unlike the other members of the group who follow a code, Heat Wave's only goal is to watch things burn—making him the most disturbed and dangerous of all the Rogues.