Fire (comics)

Fire (Beatriz da Costa) is a fictional superheroine from the DC Comics universe.
Publication history.
A version of her first appeared in "Super Friends" #25 (October 1979) and was created by E. Nelson Bridwell and Ramona Fradon.
Fictional character biography.
Pre-Crisis.
Super Friends.
Beatriz da Costa, alias Green Fury, had originally been bequeathed her powers due to Brazilian mysticism and was the president of the Brazilian branch of Wayne Enterprises. She possessed an array of abilities which included the power to exhale vast quantities of mystical green fire. She could also fly, alter her clothing at will, and displayed a limited capacity to project hallucinations. In her first appearance, she confronted and battled Superman, who was controlled by the "puppet master" Overlord, Sandor Fine. In her next appearance, Green Fury called The Super Friends to help defeat the villain Green Thumb (Fargo Keyes), and months later revealed her secret origin to them to thwart the demons from a green hell.
Global Guardians.
Green Fury became a member of the Global Guardians when Superman, recruited by Doctor Mist, asks for assistance in locating one of many ancient artifacts being pursued by a powerful group of evil mystics. 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, on Easter Island. The heroes catch a break when it's learned Superman had faked the artifacts with 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.
Post-Crisis.
After the "Crisis on Infinite Earths", her history was altered so that she had followed an unusual career path. Renamed Beatriz Bonilla da Costa, she started 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's SNI (Serviço Nacional de Informações - National Information Service), actually Abin (Agência Brasileira de Inteligência - Brazilian Intelligence Agency). In the course of one of her missions, Beatriz was trapped in a pyroplasmic explosion that endowed her with the unusual power of being able to exhale an eight-inch burst of fire. She assumed the identity of the Green Fury, and then soon changed it again to Green Flame. She joined the international superhero team the Global Guardians, of which she was a long-standing, loyal member.
She first met the American heroes Infinity, Inc. while on a mission to Canada.
Justice League.
Shortly after changing her name to Green Flame, the Guardians' United Nations funding was withdrawn in the wake of the formation the Justice League International. Beatriz convinced her teammate and best friend Icemaiden into joining her to apply for Justice League International membership. Remarkably, in the wake of Black Canary's resignation and the abduction of several members, the short-handed JLI took them on. Eventually, she once again changed her heroic name, this time to Fire in affinity with Icemaiden's shortening of her name to simply Ice. As a result of the "gene bomb" detonated by the alien Dominators, Fire's powers were dramatically increased, but were less reliable for a time.
Fire always assumed a big sister role with Ice, watching out for her and her interactions with the "real" world. For example, Fire stepped in when Ice did not realize she was 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.
Beatriz remained with the Justice League International for the remainder of its existence — in fact she served the longest tenure of any JLI member. During this time, she was also trained in the arts of battle by Big Barda.
In the battle against Doomsday, Bea lost her powers by taxing them to their limits while trying to blast Doomsday, in effect "her fire went out". She remained with the team but by the time she returned in "Justice League America" #88, it was too late to help prevent her best friend's death, as Ice was killed by the Overmaster. As Beatriz tried to cope with this loss, she briefly had a romantic relationship with Ice's former lover, Guy Gardner, and a longer one with Nuklon. When the first Icemaiden, Sigrid Nansen, joined the League Ice's place, Fire befriended her. However, their friendship was tainted by Bea's irrational grief-driven behavior, and Sigrid's romantic attraction to Bea.
When this League collapsed, Beatriz returned to Brazil, and tried to re-establish herself as the country's main protector. This met with varied success, which she blamed partly on the Martian Manhunter's prominence in the Southern hemisphere.
The Super Buddies.
Fire eventually tried to retire from being a superhero and establish a career as an internet glamor girl when Maxwell 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 found herself sharing an apartment with Mary Marvel and, in a characterization reminiscent of her relationship with Ice, became a reluctant "babysitter" for the naive teenager.
In one adventure with the Super Buddies, Fire and the others were given the opportunity to rescue Ice's spirit from Hell (or a similar dimension). Yet like in the Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, Fire could not resist looking behind her, which caused Ice's spirit to vanish. During the Super Buddies' time in Hell, Etrigan the Demon suggested 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.
Infinite Crisis.
The Super Buddies did not realize that Maxwell Lord was also secretly the Black King of Checkmate. After the Buddies' dissolution, Bea became an agent of Checkmate as well. It has not been revealed whether Lord recruited her. Regardless, she helps Booster Gold and Guy Gardner find the connection between Lord and the death of the Blue Beetle. She joins her former JLI teammates against a group of OMACs. She is badly wounded, but is saved by the sacrifice of Dimitri Pushkin, the Rocket Red.
During the "Infinite Crisis" created by Alexander Luthor, Beatriz returns to her espionage roots by joining Amanda Waller, who took over Checkmate after Lord's death. One of Fire's first missions was to retrieve the A.I., Brother Eye, which had crashed down in Southern Saudi Arabia. This plan was thwarted by Sasha Bordeaux, also formerly of Checkmate.
She appears later, criticizing Booster for his shameless self-promotion while the search continues for the missing superheroes. She is also on hand at a memorial for Ralph Dibny's wife, Sue.
Checkmate.
Nearly one year later, after the Crisis, Checkmate was reformed under the supervision of the United Nations and Beatriz became the Black King's Knight. Though she no longer reported to Waller (who was made White Queen), Waller blackmailed Bea with evidence against her father and forced Bea to perform covert assassinations. Waller had previously implied that Beatriz actually enjoyed the violence and depravity that was a part of her job. It was revealed that as a girl Bea had been trained to kill by her father.
Despite her past as a dutiful soldier and daughter, Bea expressed remorse over taking part in a Checkmate mission that resulted in the deaths of as many as 50 Kobra agents, many of whom were immolated by Fire herself. Waller once again blackmailed Fire into covering up a coup in Santa Prisca. There, Fire killed Colonel Computron for Waller in order to protect her father, who, in the mid-1970s, under a right wing military dictatorship, had ordered thousands of innocent deaths in Operation Condor, a US-supported South American anti-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 was exposed by fellow Knight Thomas Jagger, Fire was jailed. After a visit from her superior, the Black King, Col. Taleb Beni Khalid-Isr, Beatriz agreed to turn over her father to international authorities for war crimes. Khalid had convinced her to act as the superhero that he'd chosen for his Knight.
Reunited with Ice.
In "Checkmate" #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 of "Birds of Prey".
Their renewed relationship, never shown on panel, is referenced again when Ice, accepting a date on Oa with her lover Guy Gardner, refuses his proposal to cohabit on Oa claiming how she decided to get her life together, on Earth, with some help from Beatriz herself. Gardner claims that Fire is manipulating Ice.
Generation Lost.
Fire appears as one of the central characters in "", a maxi-series that takes place during the wider "Brightest 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 and Ted 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, and Captain 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. After she tries to tell Wonder 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.
Afterward, Fire encounters Lord in JLI headquarters. After mind-controlling Fire and then Booster Gold to prevent them from stopping him, he ports from the old JLI embassy back to Checkmate. Before they can figure out their next move, the base comes under attack by the Creature Commandos. Caught while powered down, Fire is shown having been shot several times. Fire is able to heal 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. While the team deals with the apparent loss of Blue Beetle, Fire bonds with Gavril Ivanovich the current Rocket Red and the two grow close, eventually sharing a passionate kiss.
The New 52.
In The New 52 reboot, Fire appears as part of the Justice League International team. Fire is injured toward the end of the first story arc and is sidelined for the remainder of the run.
Powers and abilities.
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 cast illusions 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 by Batman in hand-to-hand combat. Due to the events of the "Crisis 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 saturation by an organic energy source called Pyroplasm, was the ability to breathe a jet of green flame from her mouth. During the "Invasion" crossover event, the alien Dominators set off a "metagene bomb" in the upper atmosphere which affected almost all DC characters with superpowers and, after a period of illness, Fire found her powers greatly magnified as an after-effect. The "new" Fire was now able to completely turn into a being of green plasma, in which form she could fly and throw devastating blasts. Solid objects could pass completely through her form without causing injury, but it took her some time to come to terms with her increased powers, and she often "flamed on" involuntarily when stressed or angry (and sometimes still does), a distressingly common event for a character depicted as having a tendency towards passionate outbursts. The Super Buddies continuity established (and made light of) the fact that flaming on destroyed Bea's clothing, rendering her naked when she stopped using her powers. "Checkmate" and other appearances have ignored this. Beatriz is also a skilled investigator and espionage agent, and in the latter context was considered a valuable asset by Checkmate chief Amanda Waller for her ability and willingness to kill in order to complete missions (unlike many of her contemporaries who maintain a no-kill policy).