Comic book fans have been quite lucky over the years with some of the animated series based on comic books. Not only have shows like Batman: The Animated Series and Justice League Unlimited provided good stories featuring characters who fans love, but they occasionally introduce new characters who later make their way into the comics. Here are five notable examples of that changeover.
1 Harley Quinn. Probably the most famous example is Harley Quinn, the sidekick to the Joker that Paul Dini and Bruce Timm introduced in Batman: The Animated Series in 1992. She made her way to the “official” Batman comic book continuity in 1999 after Dini and Timm wrote the Eisner Award–winning one-shot comic book The Batman Adventures: Mad Love, which revealed Harley’s origin for the first time. She has since gotten her own ongoing series and costars in Gotham City Sirens and Suicide Squad.
2 Firestar. Initially, Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends was going to star Spider-Man, Iceman, and the Human Torch. Torch’s rights, though, were tied up somewhere else, so the show’s team decided to create their own replacement. Veteran comic book costume designer John Romita Sr. designed the costume for Firestar. Romita clearly patterned her basic look on Mary Jane Watson, whose costume Romita had designed years earlier. The show proved to be popular and after it ended, Firestar was introduced into the Marvel Universe. She had her own miniseries and has since appeared as a member of the New Warriors and the Avengers.
3 H.E.R.B.I.E. The rights problem that the Spider-Man series had also affected a late 1970s Fantastic Four adaptation, depriving them of one fourth of the Fantastic Four! So they replaced the Human Torch with a tiny robot named H.E.R.B.I.E. A few years later, after the show had been canceled, H.E.R.B.I.E. was written into the Fantastic Four comics and given the duty of being the babysitter for Franklin Richards, son of Reed and Sue Richards (Mister Fantastic and Invisible Woman, respectively). Recently, Franklin and H.E.R.B.I.E. have starred in their own series of comic books called Franklin Richards: Son of a Genius.
4 Renee Montoya. Montoya is an unusual case, as she appeared in the Batman comic books before she ever appeared on Batman: The Animated Series. However, that was simply to get fans comfortable with the character. She was created by Paul Dini and Bruce Timm. She has gone on to become probably the most important police character in the Batman comic books outside of Commissioner Gordon. She was more or less the star of Gotham Central, a comic book series starring the cops of Gotham City. In that title, she dealt with the stigma that came with being a lesbian. After her partner was murdered, she, in turn, murdered the crooked cop who did her partner in. She quit the police force and eventually assumed the mantle as the new Question, replacing the former Question, who trained her while he was slowly dying of cancer.
5 X-23. X-23, a female clone of Wolverine, first appeared on the animated series X-Men: Evolution in 2003. She made her comic book debut in 2004 in the series NYX, about a group of young mutants in New York City. When she appeared in the comics, she was working as a prostitute. Her creators, Craig Kyle and Christopher Yost, were soon hired by Marvel to work on comic books there. They wrote two miniseries telling her origin story (and doing a good job explaining away the prostitute part). Currently she stars in her own ongoing series written by noted novelist Marjorie Liu.