The Firefly’s Buggy Start!
DC’s biggest pyromaniac before he discovered fire!
Have you ever played a “superlatives” game with fictional characters?
Like, have you assigned a character you like something like “most likely to be caught with their hand in the cookie jar” or something actually traditional like “most likely to become president?”
I see it all over social media, from specific to general and from positive to roasting to obscure and weird (but in a good way).
If you asked the vast majority of Batman fans today who would earn the superlative “Most Likely To Commit Arson”, there’s one answer that dominates all others by quite a massive margin. Garfield Lynns, aka Firefly! He’s most known for an obsession with fire, and committing crimes with a flamethrower, bug-shaped helmet and a set of wings.
But from his first appearance to his first time being depicted like this, there’s actually quite a gulf, in both time and difference!
In his debut, in Detective Comics #184 in June 1952, we first meet Lynns as a crook involved in a robbery, who was on the run from Batman. After the usual chase, he manages to get a clean getaway, because he goes one way, and Batman mistakes a lit-up firefly for one of Lynns’ lit cigarettes. Inspired by this, and in debt to the little bug, Firefly is born as an illusion themed crook!
Ironically, his very first crime did involve fire, when he faked a theatrical fire using illusions in order to have his crew (because even the goofiest costumed criminals have a crew) steal from the patrons’ stuff they left behind.
He’d continue like this for the remainder of this appearance and beyond, donning color-based gadgets to create illusions in order to rob Gotham’s wealthiest. He wouldn’t even make the switch out of illusions and into just fire only until after the Crisis on Infinite Earths that rocked DC’s continuity in 1986!
He didn’t appear particularly often, at least earlier, due to the many other shiny weirdos and sci-fi fun had in his day, but later on in Batman #126, a certain new superheroine on the scene helps stop him due to the fact that Garfield, in his real persona, began masquerading as a rich socialite. Since she’s one as well, she got involved!
Of course, I’m talking about Batwoman, aka Kathy Kane, whose true debut we’ll explore another time, but suffice to say her arrival changes the shape of Bat-comics for close to a decade!
Back to Firefly, predictably he got caught and put in jail, and the cycle would eventually continue. Despite my love for goofy characters with odd powers and premises, I honestly believe the newer version of Garfield Lynns is a more compelling one. We have all kinds of illusion-based villains, and all kinds of brightly colored weirdo men, and adding the wrinkles you’ll see present in the later characterization are so much more satisfying.
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