<span class="SFPTagline"> From SCIFIPEDIA </span>

Wildfire
Gender	Male
Publisher	DC Comics
Origin	Earth
First Appearance	Superboy #195 (1973)
Creator(s)	Cary Bates and Dave Cockrum
Alter ego	Drake Burroughs
Aliases	ERG-1
Abilities	Shoot powerful blasts of anti-energy, flight
Affiliations	Legion of Super-Heroes

Wildfire is a fictional comic book superhero, known as a member of the Legion of Super-Heroes, a 31st century superhero team owned by DC Comics. He was the first new Legionnaire character created in the Bronze Age of Comics.

Drake Burroughs is a being of pure “anti-energy” who maintains human form only through the use of a “containment suit”. When he first applied for Legion membership, he had learned to shrink, grow, control chemical reactions, fly, and pass through solid objects. Since there was a Legion rule at the time that each member must have a super-power that is not duplicated by other members, and these powers were already available to them by Shrinking Violet, Colossal Boy, Chemical King, Mon-El and Phantom Girl, he was rejected. His final power, to expel his energy in a giant force blast, was one he did not believe he could recover from, so he could not demonstrate it at the try-out. He later used it to save Colossal Boy’s life, but seemed to be lost forever, leaving nothing but an empty containment suit.

Later, he would be able to re-gather his dispersed energy and re-enter his containment suit. Since then, due to a re-design of his containment suit, he has lost his duplicate powers, and is able to fly and disperse blasts of anti-energy without harming himself. He later gained the ability to have his energy take human form without the suit. He is in love with fellow Legionnaire Dawnstar, but has not been able to win her heart, partly due to the fact that he has no physical body.

Character Origin

Drake Burroughs was an astro-engineer, part of a team developing an anti-matter propulsion system. When a safety valve snapped, he was blasted by a rocket exhaust of lethal anti-matter energy. Instead of dying, he became a sentient being of anti-matter energy (called anti-energy for short), Knowing he couldn’t survive long in this form, a Professor Vultan siphoned his energy into a special containment suit, which allowed him to keep his energy together until he learned better control.