Born and raised in the luscious city of Rio de Janeiro, Beatriz (Bea) Bonilla da Costa, was a lackluster Brazilian model and artist, until when, after losing/quitting her job, she managed to get a new one in the Brazilian espionage network. She surprisingy proved to be one of their best spies, mastering as no one else the use of a pyroplasm ray gun which could turn organic matter (pyroplasm) into energy. However, this powerful gun was stolen by the son of one of Bea's former bosses and she was assigned to recover it. During the mission, she used the pyroplasm gun and eventually blew the whole place up. No one was injured, but Bea, as a result of the energy liberated by the pyroplasm rays, got the ability to breathe green flame. She also became wanted by Brazilian secret service because of having disobbeyed their orders to keep the mission secret and discreet and to bring back the secret pyroplasm weapon, which was totally destroyed. Up

The Global Guardians

Beatriz decided she had better escape, dyed her hair green, took the identity of Green Flame and flew to Paris to become part of the Global Guardians. In one of their adventures, the Global Guardians teamed up with the Infinity Inc. in Canada, against the Injustice Society. Later, Green Flame met the heroine who would become her best friend, Ice Maiden II, Tora Olafsdotter. A princess of the mythic Ice People of Northern Norway, Tora, after being found by a team of scientists, decided to leave her homeland to get to know the world of the "warm bodies". Up

The Justice League

When the Global Guardians were disbanded in favor of the Justice League International, Bea, needing money, decided to join the JLI and persuaded Ice Maiden II to go with her. Passionate and headstrong, Green Flame practically forced her and Ice Maiden's acceptance by the League. They proved to be valuable allies during the invasion of Lord Manga Khan.

A while after joining the JLI, Green Flame made her secret identity public and was theme of a movie in her native Brazil. She also changed her code name to Fire, convincing Ice Maiden to be called just Ice.

During the Invasion, Fire was one of the heroes most deeply affected by the Dominators' gene-bomb. Her powers went out of control, she got in coma for a couple of days and stayed very sick for a while. Then she found out her powers were awfully expanded and improved, she became able to turn her whole body into a green flame, throw powerful fire blasts, fly and be virtually intagible while on her flame state. It took awhile, however, for Fire to be fully in control of her new powers. She would involuntarily flame on when too angry or stressed, putting her friends in danger, until being trained by Big Barda helped Bea master her newly developed abilities.

When the Justice League fought Doomsday in the events leading to the Death of Superman, Fire used her powers to their whole extension and her flame seemed to have burned away, but she remained an active member of the League. That dark period in Bea's life continued when the Overmaster mentally controled and killed her best friend Ice. The shock of witnessing Tora's death caused Bea's powers to come back. Bea gave Tora a Catholic wake and brought Ice's corpse to be buried by the Ice People in Tora's kingdom. In both occasions she made sure - by fire - that the internal divisions that were poisoning the League at the time were kept at bay. She would still mourn her Norse friend for a long time.

Her best friend's passing prompted Bea to re evaluate her carefree way of life and consider finally settling down with a significant other. She flirted with and almost proposed to Albert Rothstein, then Nuklon, who had recently joined the Justice League America. Nuklon, however, was not sure of his feelings for Bea and preferred to marry a Jewish girl. In that period, rumors had it that a heroine was catching criminals by icing them. Fire, hoping that Ice somehow had come back to life, eventually found out that it was the first Ice Maiden, Sigrid Nansen, who had returned from retirement inspired by Tora's death. Nansen was a Norwegian scientist who volunteered in a test to artificially duplicate powers of the Ice People and was the first heroine to join the Global Guardians under the code name of Ice Maiden. She left the Guardians when Tora - whose mystic/elemental ice powers were greater than her scientifically engineered ones- joined.

Beatriz convinced Icemaiden to join the Justice League and both remained members until that iteration of the team disbanded. Icemaiden eventually came on Fire, taking advantage of her resamblance to Tora and their old times at the Global Guardians. However, Bea and Tora's relationship had always been just a strong friendship, a sisterhood, and Nansen soon dropped out this idea and got involved with lawyer Olivia Reynolds. Icemaiden was probably the first bissexual member of the Justice League.

For a time, Fire lost her powers once more, during the attack of the white Martians known as the Hyperclan, who had used a device that inhibitted the powers of all the fire related heroes.

Even though both had a conflicting relationship while in the JLI, with Bea always trying to protect Ice from Gardner, Fire briefly dated Guy Gardner, a relationship that was maybe born from the mutual mourning of Tora. Their relationship began a little while after Gardner opened the Warrior's bar. The causes of their break up are still unknown, but Guy and Bea had returned to their mutual bickering since then.

Fire remained active throughout Latin America and especially in her home country, Brazil, sometimes joining forces with the Martian Manhunter to cope with some latin-american super-villains. When the DEO was investigating J'onn J'onnz, Bea was misled to believe that Cameron Chase was a journalist and unintentionally revealed important details about J'onn. She put Chase in her list of enemies. Another powerful enemy, though, seems to be sexism in Brazil and Latin America as a whole, which causes her to be underestimated as crimefighter just because she is a woman. Up

The Super Buddies

Profiting on the Internet business, Fire launched a paid website - http://www.blazingfire.com (fictional) - in which users had access to sensual photos of her in her flame state. She is believed to have earned lots of money with the website. Beatriz returned to New York following an invitation by Maxwell Lord to be together again with some of her former JLI colleagues (Blue Beetle, Booster Gold, Elongated Man, Sue Dibny, Captain Atom and L-Ron) in the SuperBuddies group. When Mary Marvel joined the team, Beatriz initially reacted to her childish behavior and naïvité with lots of sarcasm but soon befriended her and they even became roommates.

The Superbuddies fought against Roulette and Lord Manga Khan, among others. In one of their adventures, Booster Gold accidentally transported them all to Hell or at least a dimension that resembled hell. There they found - or at least were led to believe they found - the soul of Ice, who allegedly was trapped in hell by mistake. The Superbuddies tried to escape together with Ice. According to Etrigan or a being simulating to be him, to do so they had to observe the Orpheus protocols, what meant Ice would be following them and no one could look behind to check up on her until they were out. It was very difficult to Bea and Guy not to look back and eventually Bea violated the hellish rules, causing Ice to vanish, probably to the Valhala, saying "Beatriz, you always did care too much." Guy Gardner and Fire mourned together Tora's second passing and were devastated both by losing Tora once more and by not being sure it was really her or just a damned hellish game on them.

When the Superbuddies left "hell" they wound up in another dimension, were the group called Power Posse was an evil version of the Superbuddies that operated from a strip club. Beatriz now met an evil version of Ice, a stripper called Tiffany who had herself killed that dimension's Beatriz. Tiffany was about to do it again when the Superbuddies defeated their evil counterparts and managed to return to their proper dimension. Up

The OMAC Project

Her suffering in hell and in the Power Posse dimension unfortunately was only the beginning. Fire had to mourn another close friend when Sue Dibny was murdered by crazed Atom's ex wife Jean Loring. Months later, Blue Beetle was shot in the head by Maxwell Lord, who revealed to be manipulating their League into ineffectiveness all along. Max had become the Black King of Checkmate, corrupted the entire organization and took control of both Batman's satellite Brother I and the OMAC nanotechnology. Lord managed to mind control Superman and was killed by Wonder Woman.

Meanwhile, when learning of Blue Beetle's death, Beatriz put her espionage abilities into practice and came to the shocking realization that one former close friend - Max Lord - was behind the death of another one, Ted Kord. She then joined Booster Gold, Guy Gardner and other former JLIers and Superbuddies to find Max and fight the OMACs. During an attack on a group of OMACs in Russia, Fire was seriously injured. Her and her colleague's lives were saved only by the sacrifice of yet another former teammate, Rocket Red Dmitri Pushkin. Up

Checkmate

Most of her best friends violently dead, one of them revealed to be an evil mastermind, Fire's future One Year Later Infinite Crisis will unfold in the pages of the new Checkmate series, by Greg Rucka and Jesus Saiz. It so far has been revealed that she will help in the final destruction of Brother I and will later become Knight of the new Checkmate's Black Queen, Sascha Bordeaux. Checkmate will become a covert action UN organization under the aegis of the Security Council and a balance between human and metahuman members will be strictly enforce. It may be an interesting plot point exploring the relationship of Bea with a group that ultimately was responsible for the death of many friends of hers. Will she be there to make sure it never happens again? Will she be somehow forced to join? How will she reacted when she finds out her Black Queen did nothing to prevent Blue Beetle's death? Up