Fire
31 years ago - Beatriz Bonilla De Costa is born.
14 years ago - 17-year-old Beatriz begins her professional modeling career.
12 years ago - 19-year-old Beatriz is tapped by the Brazillian government to become a covert operative.
10 years ago - 21-year-old Beatriz is caught in a pyroplastic explosion & gains her green flame powers. She becomes the Brazilian hero Green Fury.
7 years ago - 24-year-old Beatriz joins the Justice League during its first major recruitment drive. She meets Tora Olafsdotter & changes her name to Fire.
5 years ago - 26-year-old Beatriz & Tora leave the Justice League after the attack by Doomsday. They accept an invitation to join the Global Guardians.
3 years ago - 28-year-old Beatriz starts her modeling website.
There are occasionally small pushes from DC's editorial to create more characters that hail from outside of the US. This is an attempt at inclusivity, sure, but it's also just common sense. There's no way that ALL superheroes are from the same country. Sadly, most of those characters never really take off, but occasionally some of them find their footing and actually take on a role in the larger fabric of DC's story. one of the absolute best examples of this is Fire, a character that served through much of the eighties and nineties on the Justice League, and has even gone on to appear in the Justice League Unlimited animated series. She's going to be in our League, as well as a founding member of the Global Guardians.
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Fire's Comic HistoryBeatriz appeared for the first time in 1979, in The Super Friends #25, a comic spinning out of the animated series. The issue features a few other 'international' characters that had already been established in the series, like Nubia, Tasmanian Devil, and the Seraph. Beatriz appears as Green Fury for all of two pages, trying to stop a mind-controlled Superman from taking over Brazil, and promptly losing. She's also shown flying by shooting fire out of her nostrils. It's weird as hell.
Pre-crisis, as a member of the Global Guardians now called Green Flame, Beatriz's powers were all attributed to tribal mysticism, but like many DC characters she had her story rewritten after the Crisis of Infinite Earths so that they were now based on science, specifically an accident that happened during her career as a Brazillian government operative. She was primed to join the new spin-off series Justice League International in 1988, where she changed her name to Fire and became a mainstay of the Justice League for the better part of a decade. |
Our Fire StoryWe're changing remarkably little about Fire's story. She's a government agent who develops superpowers in the course of her duty, and chooses to become a hero in the service of her country before she steps up to represent Brazil in the larger world of the Justice League.
In our timeline, the Global Guardians actually happen later on, formed in response to the death of Superman. As Beatriz is actually on the Justice League team that fights Doomsday, and because she is, in the normal comic continuity, a major member of the Global Guardians, she becomes a founding member here as well. We do also make a point of leaning on the connection between Beatriz and Tora, in that they both join the Justice League at the same time and immediately become incredibly close, going so far as tying their superhero identities together, taking the names Fire & Ice. I always liked that about them; they weren't sisters, didn't have a shared origin, they just found each other, and that's very cool. In all honesty, there's a part of me that would love to make their relationship romantic because they would be a fun couple, but I actually think there's something even more fun about them being loving platonic friends. Their personalities contrast in a really fun way, and that makes them fun to read. |
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Fire's CostumeOf course, when Fire's powers are in full effect, she's basically a sexy green Human Torch. Outside of that look, however, she's had a few different looks over the years, and while they're all cool, It's worth remembering that they were also the product of the late eighties.
Her original costume was basically a bathing suit, but it's been done really well a few times. My favorite was in the 2008 Brave and the Bold animated series, which you can see here. This is actually a cool choice for her pre-Justice League costume when she still went by the name Green Fury, but once she joins the league and becomes Fire the bandana and midriff-baring costume are actually pretty iconic. Is it an overly sexualized costume? Yeah, pretty much, but Beatriz has alway had a fun way of embracing her heritage and sexuality in a way that managed to be pretty empowering. It's also aged well, even when fan artists steer the look out of the eighties and lean into its dance aesthetic, like this unknown artist. In order for the Global Guardians to be a solid team in our modern timeline, it needs powerful, cool characters in it's lineup, and Fire is exactly what we need. |
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