Bronze Tiger
47 years ago - Ben Turner is born in Detroit.
42 years ago - 5-year-old Ben, begins studying martial arts as an outlet for his violent temper.
39 years ago - 8-year-old Ben's father is killed in a gang shooting. He focuses his anger entirely on his martial arts studies, quickly becoming a prodigy
35 years ago - 12-year-old Ben's mother is shot by a local drug dealer, He steals their money and moves to Japan, where he finds his way to the dojo of O-Sensai.
33 years ago - 14-year-old Ben first meets his fellow student under O-Sensai, Richard Dragon.
21 years ago - 26-year-old Ben & Richard Dragon are recruited by King Faraday & becomes covert assets for the DEO.
20 years ago - 27-year-old Ben Turner & Richard Dragon agree to help a promising young Dinah Lance master her fighting style.
15 years ago - 32-year-old Ben & Richard Dragon confront the League of Assassins & fight Lady Shiva, who then joins them.
13 years ago - 34-year-old Ben, Richard Dragon & Lady Shiva go their separate ways. Ben begins training with the League of Assassins, not realizing that they are slowly brainwashing him.
12 years ago - 35-year-old Ben performs an assassination of a Russian Pakhan for the League of Assassins as Bronze Tiger. Dmitri Pushkin & the Rocket Red Brigade are unable to stop him.
11 years ago - 36-year-old Ben helps train Cassandra Cain.
9 years ago - 38-year-old Ben acts as the League of Assassins agent in Star City, testing Green Arrow. He finds that the true threat to the League is Dinah Lance, but recognizes her as his former student, overcoming his brainwashing to misdirect the League away from her.
8 years ago - 39-year-old Ben is saved from the control of the League of Assassins by Richard Dragon & Dinah Lance. He returns to Detroit and opens his own Dojo, where he begins training Mari McCabe.
5 years ago - 42-year-old Ben is recruited by Amanda Waller to lead the Suicide Squad, using his time spend as an assassin as leverage.
2 years ago - 45-year-old Ben leaves the Suicide Squad & returns to his Detroit Dojo.
1 years ago - 46-year-old Ben accepts a request from Nathan Adam to join the JL Task Force for the American government.
Ben Turner belongs in a category of Martial Artists that stand head and shoulders above everyone else in the entire DC catalog... characters that are understood to be the absolute best in the world. What makes him unique, however, is that unlike a lot of his contemporaries, he's not hiding off in some secluded mountain somewhere; he's right out amongst the rest of the characters, having made a much more fluid transition into an actual comic book superhero.
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Bronze Tiger's Comic History1973's Enter the Dragon was a pop culture juggernaut, forever cementing Bruce Lee as an icon of cinema and bringing martial arts to the forefront of popular culture. Before the year was over Marvel comics had introduced Shang Chi, with Iron Fist coming in 1974. DC, for their part, elected to adapt Denny O'Neil's novel Dragon's Fists into the new series Richard Dragon, King Fu Fighter in 1975. In the comic, Richard Dragon becomes a student of his ancient master O-Sensai, and trains alongside his best friend and partner Benjamin, who is a pretty clear send up of Jim Kelly's character Williams from Enter the Dragon.
It's hard to ignore that there were a lot of weird race dynamics in Richard Dragon, perhaps most notably in the whiteness of it's main character, but often in just the overall tone. Including Benjamin (his last name 'Turner' was added later) probably helped, but he was quickly taken out of commission when he was shot in the second issue and was sidelined for the first entire year of the series. |
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In the final issue of Richard Dragon, Ben Turner goes missing. We discover that he is mind controlled by a mysterious enemy, and later appears as the masked 'Bronze Tiger'. Denny O'Neal would go on to use the mind-wiped Bronze Tiger over in the pages of Detective Comics, having him actually beat Batman. Once he overcame his brainwashing, Ben became a regular recurring character in the Suicide Squad, where he would by far have the vast bulk of his appearances.
During this time, Ben would have his backstory slowly refined, retconning the time he spent brainwashed as being associated with the League of Assassins. He's become one of the most prolific guest star characters in DC's roster, appearing in books like Checkmate, Wonder Woman, Robin, Nightwing, Green Arrow, Hawk and Dove, Manhunter, Batgirl, briefly serve as a member of the Justice League Task Force, and of course regularly teaming up with his original partner, Richard Dragon. The New 52 has had some interesting ideas about how to use Bronze Tiger. At times, he's been a dangerous threat to many of the major heroes, referencing his appearances on the CW show Arrow where he was played by Black Dynamite himself, Michael jai White... but he's also been depicted as using a magical talisman to change into an actual anthropomorphic tiger-man. Which... I think we can all agree is missing the point of the character? |
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Our Bronze Tiger StoryBronze Tiger is such a prolifically occurring guest character that it's actually really easy to forget that he is also a character in and of himself, and while we're using him in so many places, we still want to make sure that his own story is also given the focus he deserves.
There are a few major chapters in his life, but each one should feel distinct. His time working alongside Richard Dragon and Lady Shiva for the DEO is essentially the original series. In the comic, they would sometimes work for the agency 'G.O.O.D.', but it just makes a little more sense to make them assets for Agent King Faraday. He then looses himself to the brainwashing of the League of Assassins, becoming one of their operatives, to eventually be freed by Dragon and his one-time student, Black Canary. For a time, Ben would just operate his Dojo in Detroit, although this would fall entirely into the time when Vixen is making that city her home, making him a vital friend and trainer for the young heroine, before his time as an assassin for the League catches up to him in the person of Amanda Waller, who makes him the new field leader of the Suicide Squad after the death of Rick Flagg. Finally... after a career of sweeping change and chaos, of being a pawn for other people's agendas, Ben finally gets a chance to step up into a role of his own choosing. We made him a member of our new Justice League Task Force. It's a role he's absolutely earned, and represents a really cool new chapter in an already wild story. |
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