Appearance Spotlight: Firefly

As I was doing research into my post about Firefly, I discovered information for this entry. I love it when that happens! It'll be a short one today, but one I'm fond of.

Firefly is a Batman villain with a long history. Long histories usually come up with a few change-ups in appearance, and Firefly is no different. Here he is in his debut in Detective Comics #184 (April 1952):

While later he looked like this:

In the 90s, he got an outfit more befitting a professional arsonist:

And The New Batman Adventures took inspiration from that, while giving him a buggy mask:

But The Batman took the insect theme to the next level. In fact, the Firefly of this series, who premiered in the episode "The Big Heat" (November 2004), could be mistaken for being bee/wasp/hornet-themed if you don't see his bulbish jetpack.

This costume, as striking as it is, never really caught on in the comics. And until today, I thought it never appeared at all, but that's not the case. It was used in Superman/Batman Annual #3 (January 2009).

To my knowledge, it was never used after this, but who knows if that's really true. I've always liked this version of Firefly, so I'm glad it got used in the comics, even briefly.