| Fire | |
|---|---|
 Fire as depicted inCheckmate vol. 2 #2 (June 2006). Art byLee Bermejo. | |
| Publication information | |
| Publisher | DC Comics |
| First appearance | Super Friends #25 (October 1979) |
| Created by | E. Nelson Bridwell (writer) Ramona Fradon (artist) |
| In-story information | |
| Alter ego | Beatriz Bonilla Da Costa |
| Species | Metahuman |
| Place of origin | Brazil |
| Team affiliations | Checkmate Global Guardians Justice League Justice League International Justice League Task Force |
| Partnerships | Ice Icemaiden |
| Notable aliases | B. B. da Costa, Green Fury, Green Flame, Black King's Knight |
| Abilities |
|
Fire (Beatriz Da Costa) is asuperhero appearing inAmerican comic books published byDC Comics.
First created as Green Fury, Beatriz Da Costa is the first Latin American female superhero in mainstream American comics. She is the fourth Latin American superhero, after El Gaucho (DC), White Tiger (Marvel), and Bushmaster (DC).[1]Michelle Hurd played Fire in the 1997 pilot filmJustice League of America.Natalie Morales went by the name "Green Fury" in an episode of the 2017 seriesPowerless.
A version of her first appeared inSuper Friends #25 (October 1979) and was created byE. Nelson Bridwell andRamona Fradon.
Beatriz da Costa, aliasGreen Fury, is the president of theBrazilian branch ofWayne Enterprises. Due to Brazilian mysticism, she possesses an array of abilities which includes the power to exhale vast quantities of mystical green fire. She can also fly, alter her clothing at will, and display a limited capacity to project hallucinations. In her first appearance, she confronts and battlesSuperman, who is controlled by the "puppet master" Overlord, Sandor Fine. In her next appearance, Green Fury calls TheSuper Friends to help defeat the villain Green Thumb (Fargo Keyes),[2] and months later reveals her secret origin to them to thwart the demons from a green hell.
Green Fury becomes a member of the Global Guardians when Superman, recruited byDoctor Mist, asks for assistance in locating one of many ancient artifacts being pursued by a powerful group of evil mystics.[3] They battle a wizard called 'El Dorado' in an ancient, overgrown city deep in the jungle. The two face off against 'spirit jaguars' and seemingly lose the artifact, a crown, to the wizard. Costa then assists Superman and other Guardians in battling the wizards, El Dorado included, onEaster Island. The heroes catch a break when it's learned Superman had swapped the artifacts with fakes using his super-speed. This prevents the rise to power of the entity the wizards followed, Thaumar Dhai. Though not as powerful as planned, Dhai was still a threat. Green Fury's mystical based powers were essential in destroying him.
After theCrisis on Infinite Earths, her history is altered. RenamedBeatriz Bonilla da Costa, she starts as an amateur model on the beaches of Rio, then becoming a showgirl and stage performer before finding herself serving as a top secret agent for Brazilian government'sSNI (Serviço Nacional de Informações - National Information Service), actuallyABIN (Agência Brasileira de Inteligência - Brazilian Intelligence Agency). In the course of one of her missions, Beatriz is trapped in a pyroplasmic explosion that endows her with the power of being able to exhale an eight-inch burst of fire. She assumes the identity ofGreen Fury, and then changes it again toGreen Flame. She joins the international superhero team theGlobal Guardians, of which she is a longtime member.[4]
She first meets the American heroesInfinity, Inc. while on a mission to Canada.[5]
In the wake of the formation theJustice League International, the Guardians'United Nations funding is withdrawn. Beatriz convinces her teammate and best friendIcemaiden into joining her to apply for Justice League International membership. In the wake ofBlack Canary's resignation and the abduction of several members, the short-handed JLI takes them on.[6][7] Eventually, she once again changes her heroic name, this time toFire in affinity with Icemaiden's shortening of her name to simplyIce.[8] As a result of the "gene bomb" detonated by the alienDominators, Fire's powers are dramatically increased, but are less reliable for a time.[6][9]
Fire assumes a big sister role with Ice, watching out for her and her interactions with the "real" world. For example, Fire steps in when Ice does not realize she is being stalked by a delusional fan. However, Fire herself makes mistakes, such as torching the cash she'd just saved while foiling a bank robbery.[citation needed]
Beatriz remains with Justice League International for the remainder of its existence — in fact, she serves the longest tenure of any JLI member. During this time, she is also trained in the arts of battle byBig Barda.
In the battle againstDoomsday, Bea loses her powers by taxing them to their limits.[10] She remains with the team but by the time she returns inJustice League America #88, it is too late to help prevent her best friend's death, as Ice is killed by theOvermaster.[6][11] As Beatriz tries to cope with this loss, she briefly has a romantic relationship with Ice's former lover,Guy Gardner, and a longer one withNuklon. When the first Icemaiden, Sigrid Nansen, joins the League in Ice's place, Fire befriends her. However, their friendship is tainted by Bea's irrational grief-driven behavior, and Sigrid's romantic attraction to Bea.
When this League collapses, Beatriz returns to Brazil and tries to re-establish herself as the country's main protector. This meets with varied success, which she blames partly onMartian Manhunter's prominence in the Southern hemisphere.[12]
Fire eventually tries to retire from being a superhero and establish a career as an internet glamor girl whenMaxwell Lord talks her and several other former JLI members into reforming as a group of "heroes for the common man" called the "Super Buddies". She finds herself sharing an apartment withMary Marvel and, in a characterization reminiscent of her relationship with Ice, becomes a reluctant "babysitter" for the naive teenager.
In one adventure with the Super Buddies, Fire and the others are given the opportunity to rescue Ice's spirit from Hell (or a similar dimension). Yet like in the Greek myth ofOrpheus and Eurydice, Fire cannot resist looking behind her, which causes Ice's spirit to vanish. During the Super Buddies' time in Hell,Etrigan the Demon suggests that it was Fire who was fated to die instead of Ice.
Later, during her time in the group, she encounters an alternate universe version of Ice.
The Super Buddies do not realize that Maxwell Lord is also secretly the Black King ofCheckmate. After the Buddies' dissolution, Bea becomes an agent of Checkmate as well.[6] It has not been revealed whether Lord recruited her. Regardless, she helpsBooster Gold and Guy Gardner find the connection between Lord and the death of theBlue Beetle. She joins her former JLI teammates against a group ofOMACs. She is badly wounded, but is saved by the sacrifice ofDimitri Pushkin / Rocket Red.[13]
DuringInfinite Crisis, Beatriz returns to her espionage roots by joiningAmanda Waller, who took over Checkmate after Lord's death.[6] One of Fire's first missions is to retrieveBrother Eye, which had crash-landed inSaudi Arabia. This plan is thwarted bySasha Bordeaux, also formerly of Checkmate.[14]
She appears later, criticizingBooster Gold for his shameless self-promotion while the search continues for the missing superheroes.[15] She is also on hand at a memorial forRalph Dibny's wifeSue.[16]
Nearlyone year later, after the Crisis, Checkmate is reformed under the supervision of the United Nations and Beatriz becomes the Black King's Knight.[6][17] Though she no longer reports to Waller (who is made White Queen), Waller blackmails Bea with evidence against her father and forces Bea to perform covert assassinations.[18] Waller had previously implied that Beatriz actually enjoys the violence and depravity that is a part of her job.[14] It is revealed that as a girl Bea was trained to kill by her father.[19]
Despite her past as a dutiful soldier and daughter, Bea expresses remorse over taking part in a Checkmate mission that results in the deaths of as many as 50Kobra agents, many of whom are immolated by Fire herself.[20] Waller once again blackmails her into covering up a coup in Santa Prisca. There, Fire kills Colonel Computron for Waller to protect her father, who, in the mid-1970s, under a right wing military dictatorship, ordered thousands of innocent deaths in Operation Condor, a US-supported[21] South Americananti-communist program that involved assassinations, torture and forced disappearances. He was never caught and Beatriz had always kept his secret.
When the murder of Computron is exposed by fellow Knight Thomas Jagger, Fire is jailed. After a visit from her superior, the Black King, Col. Taleb Beni Khalid-Isr, Beatriz agrees to turn over her father to international authorities for war crimes. Khalid had convinced her to act as the superhero that he had chosen for his Knight.
InCheckmate #16, after years of anguish and grief over the loss of her friend and ally Ice, Fire is at last reunited with her after the long-deceased hero is miraculously resurrected in the pages ofBirds of Prey.[22]
Their renewed relationship is referenced again during a date between Ice and her loverGuy Gardner. Ice refuses his proposal to cohabit on Oa, as she decided to get her life together on Earth, with some help from Beatriz. Gardner claims that Fire is manipulating Ice.[23]
Fire appears as one of the central characters inJustice League: Generation Lost, a maxi-series taking during the widerBrightest Day event. At the start of the series, Fire is recruited as part of a massive group of superheroes tasked with hunting down the JLI's founder andTed Kord's murderer,Maxwell Lord. During an encounter with Max at the Justice League's former New York headquarters, Fire is rendered unconscious alongside Ice, Booster Gold, andCaptain Atom. The former Justice League members awake to discover that Lord has used his mental abilities to erase his existence from the minds of every single human on the planet, save for those present at the embassy.[24] After she tries to tellWonder Woman of her killing of Lord, Wonder Woman refuses to believe it. Fire discovers that Max has mentally influenced the world into believing that Checkmate has dismissed her for failing her psychological evaluation.[25]
Afterward, Fire encounters Lord in JLI headquarters.[26] After mind-controlling Fire and then Booster Gold to prevent them from stopping him, he ports from the old JLI embassy back to Checkmate.[27] Before they can figure out their next move, the base comes under attack by theCreature Commandos. Caught while powered down, Fire is shown having been shot several times.[28] Fire heals by using the bandages of the medic mummy of the Creature Commandos, but is unable to keep Blue Beetle from being kidnapped by Maxwell Lord.[29] While the team deals with the apparent loss of Blue Beetle, Fire bonds with Gavril Ivanovich, the currentRocket Red, and the two grow close, eventually sharing a passionate kiss.[30]
InThe New 52 reboot, Fire appears as a member ofJustice League International. Fire is injured toward the end of the first story arc and is sidelined for the remainder of the run.
InAbsolute Power, Fire loses her powers to Amanda Waller'sAmazo army. After the Amazos are defeated, Fire and Ice regain their powers, but have them swapped.[31]
The original Green Fury had magical flame breath powers due to Brazilian mysticism. She could control her flame breath to allow her to fly and land like a rocket. She was able to mystically alter her clothing when needed and change the color of her eyes from green to black, and vice versa. She was also able to create and castillusions with her "dazzle power" and fire blasts with her white-hot flame or super-cold freezing flame. Her green flame had the magical ability to heal and repair her costume after a battle. Beatriz was also trained byBatman in hand-to-hand combat. Due to the events ofCrisis on Infinite Earths, Green Fury never had any of these magical powers and had a new revised origin.
In her post-Crisis incarnation, Beatriz's only power, gained from an organic energy source calledPyroplasm, was the ability to breathe green fire from her mouth. During theInvasion! crossover event, theDominators' bomb magnifies Fire's abilities, giving her the ability to transform into a pure plasma being and become intangible.
Fire appears inJustice League of America, portrayed byMichelle Hurd.
Fire makes non-speaking background appearances inDC Super Hero Girls as a student of Super Hero High.
