In "Follow the Path," I spotlight changes made to comic book characters that are based on outside media, as well as characters who entirely came from outside media. I’m sure you can think of other examples, so feel free to e-mail me at brianc@cbr.com if you want to suggest some other examples for future installments.

Today, we look at how Felicity Smoak made her way from the DC Universe to the Arrowverse and then back to the DC Universe all changed.

Oddly enough, not only did Felicity Smoak debut in the DC Universe, but she actually was a rather major character in a DC Universe title for over 75 issues! That's a pretty big run for any character!

Felicity debuted in Fury of Firestorm #23 (by Gerry Conway and Rafael Kayanan), where she is someone who is not happy about Firestorm's method of saving the day, as his rescue of a train ended up ruining all of her equipment that was being shipped on the train...

At the time, there were not a whole lot of comic book characters who were computer experts, so Felicity was a bit of a novelty. Sadly, her software company took another hit when Firestorm stopped a bad guy by magnetizing a building, a building where Felicity's software business was, which ruined her computers again!

This is a great example of how we, as a society, have progressed in some areas. Check out this next scene...

Note that the comic book agrees that it was a bad thing for Ronnie to do, but the Professor (who shares the Firestorm body with Ronnie Raymond) chastises him mostly just for making Felicity more angry at him and not because it is super damn disturbing to just essentially pants some lady in front of a bunch of people. That's some messed up stuff right there, Ronnie, and if a comic book character did something like that today, you better believe there would be quite the negative reaction.

Anyhow, Ronnie's dad, Ed Raymond, goes to work at a new newspaper and somehow Felicity also works there...

Ed asks her out, but she is now an attorney and while she likes Ed, she reveals that her real purpose is suing Firestorm to heck...

Her case against Firestorm actually gets to court, and Firestorm makes an eloquent opening statement...

The next issue, she drops the case.

Then, in Fury of Firestorm #50, Ed Raymond is kidnapped and Felicity calls Ronnie for help, revealing that she knows that he is Firestorm!!

She and Ed get married at the end of the issue, after Firestorm saves his dad...

In the next issue, Felicity explains why she dropped the suit...

Felicity continued as a regular cast member in the series, even as John Ostrander took over the series and took the book in some wild new directions. She was Ronnie's step-mother, so she stuck around to pretty much the bitter end of the series (when it ended with #100).

Then she mostly went into limbo, although she still popped up in the occasional Firestorm comic book.

Okay, so now the TV show Arrow needed a computer expert in their third episode and so they used the name of one of the few female computer experts in the DC Universe not named, well, you know, and so Felicity Smoak made her Arrow debut...

Emily Bett Rickards was so good at the role that they quickly bumped her up to a regular cast member and she soon both learned Arrow's secret identity and began to work for him as his computer expert...

She and Arrow also fell in love and, this past season, got married...

So how did this new version of Felicity make it into the DC Universe?

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The "New 52" was a continuity reboot and Green Arrow was one of the most affected characters. Three years into his series, two writers of Arrow, Andrew Kreisberg and Ben Sokolowski and artists Dennis Sampere and Jonathan Glapion brought Felicity into the DC Universe in Green Arrow #35, where she reveals herself to Green Arrow and his associate, John Diggle (also from the Arrow series) as someone hired to kill him...

She explains that she wouldn't take the job and instead wants Green Arrow's help to "save the city"...

At the end of this arc, in Green Arrow #40, she is offered a job at ARGUS, but appears to stay with Green Arrow and Diggle...

But the next issue, Henry returns as Green Arrow's tech guy and Felicity hasn't been seen since. She presumably took the ARGUS job. Well, we can at least hope she some day returns!

If anyone else has a suggestion for a comic book character changing due to TV or movies, drop me a line at brianc@cbr.com!