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Unsolved Mysteries of Firebird

Avengers Spotlight #24 features a ten page story by Fabian Nicieza featuring Firebird, called "Waste Not, Want Not." This was Bonita Juarez's first solo appearance and takes the opportunity to provide some retrospective continuity on her origins. But like many poorly-researched retcons (and uncharacteristically for Mr Nicieza) it fails to account for all the facts.

Firebird first appeared as one of the Rangers, a midwest group of second-string heroes who debuted in the Hulk's book if I'm not mistaken. Her first Avengers appearance was in West Coast Avengers #4, but although she accompanied them on several consecutive missions during their early days she was never invited to be an Avenger at that time (Hawkeye had his sights set on the Thing). She later joined the team as a reservist as of Avengers West Coast Annual #4. Firebird had (and has) the ability to manipulate "all forms of heat energy", which allows her to fly, generate flame blasts, and (in one particularly improbable issue of Avengers Spotlight during the Acts of Vengeance) carry huge skips full of metal debris with "thermal updrafts".

In her final major story arc in the West Coast Avengers before her Avengers Spotlight #24 appearance - the "Lost in Time/Space arc - she had taken the new costumed identity of La Espirita, a name more in keeping with the Christian calling she felt she had received to be a super-heroine. Bonita was at this time ascribing her powers (gained from a meteorite fall) as being miraculous in the true sense of the word.

In AS#24, however, Fabian seems uncomfortable with the idea of a "heroine from God". In this tale, Firebird is captured by aliens called S.H.I.E.L.D. (that is, of course, the Society of Higher Interstellar Education and Logistical Development, from the planet Rus) who wish to examine her powers. It seems that a student of the academy, Pupil Yoof, carelessly disposed of the by-products of his unsuccessful experiment, and this hazardous waste was the meteorite from which Bonita gained her abilities. Firebird is crushed, humbled as her faith in her miraculous powers is destroyed. Yet by the last panel she has come to recognise that God could have worked through this absurd coincidence and that there is still much work that she needs to do.

But this does not explain some other things that Firebird has been seen to do. During the Avengers' trip to the nether-worlds where the Cat People dwell and on a couple of other occasions, Firebird actually sensed evil. The demon that possessed her fellow Ranger Shooting Star admitted to splitting up the Rangers' team so that Bonita would not sense her presence. Her flames appear to be especially efficacious against demons such as Mister Pandemonium's hordes (to the extent that Pandemonium concludes that she may well have one of the fragments of his missing soul).

Another puzzling aspect of Bonita's background is her resemblance to a series of direct and indirect female ancestors whom the Wackos encountered in their time travelling. On one occasion Firebird has a clear recollection of her distant relative's last moments, treacherously shot in the back. This strange aspect of the "Lost in Time/Space" storyline was never fully explained.

And then there's Avengers Annual #2. In this the West Coast team agree to follow the fallen East Coast group into the realm of death. The Collector provides them with an especially potent poison because the only way to enter death's realm is to die. So powerful is this venom that even Wonder Man's ionic form is slain instantly. And Firebird... well. It has no effect on her at all. Even the Collector is baffled, and is keen to add her to his collection because he has not had a mortal who cannot die in it.

So how is this consistent with Pupil Yoof's abortive dumped experiment? I submit that plainly it isn't. Someone's got to retcon the retcon. There is far more of this story yet to be told.

The Firebird before AS#24 is far more interesting than the "one more fire-using flying type" heroine left behind afterwards. After all, two Human Torches, Frankie Raye, one of the Force of Nature members, Firebrand, even the early Johnny Blaze Ghost Rider all have similar flame shticks. But a spiritually sensitive heroine who cannot die, and for whom the flames are merely an outward extension of something else that is far more powerful and profound? That's unique (Or it was. Peter David has taken Supergirl somewhat in this direction of late).

My theories on Firebird's history tend to the wild side a bit. Was S.H.I.E.L.D. a ploy from Mephisto? Was Immortus behind the Bonita's-ancestors-through-history sequence? How do flame-manipulation powers make one immune to poison? I'd love to hear from anybody who feels they can make sense of all of this.