Wildcat

64 years ago - Ted Grant is born in Gotham to Henry Grant, a former Navy Boxing Champ

56 years ago - 8-year-old Ted learns to box from his father Henry Grant

48 years ago - 16-year-old Ted becomes a junior boxing champion.

44 years ago - 20-year-old Ted begins his professional boxing career, quickly climbing the rankings. His father falls ill, and he starts working with the Flint & Skinner, managers of his friend “Socker” Smith.

42 years ago - 22-year-old Ted and his friend Socker fight for the championship, but Ted's gloves are tampered with by his managers Flint & Skinner, and he is framed for Socker's murder. A hit intended to silence him kills two cops, and Ted becomes a fugitive. He chooses to don a costume and become Wildcat, clearing his name. He continues to use his Wildcat identity to fight corruption and protect people.

39 years ago - 25-year-old Ted wins the WBO international boxing championship

38 years ago - 26-year-old Ted helps found the All-Star Squadron, regularly partnering with Laurel Drake.

37 years ago - 27-year-old Ted goes on a championship fight streak, unifying the world boxing heavyweight titles. He is then injured while fighting Surtr the Fire Giant with the All-Star Squadron, and relinquishes his titles while he rehabs.

35 years ago - 29-year-old Ted is regularly antagonized by Paula Brooks, constantly enticing him to chase her.

34 years ago - 30-year-old Ted travels to Japan, studying under O-Sensei.

31 years ago - 33-year-old Ted reclaims the WBO heavyweight championship.

30 years ago - 34-year-old Ted starts teaching 6-year-old Dinah Lance as she starts spending time in the All-Star Squadron Perisphere. She insists that she's also going to be a hero someday.

29 years ago - 35-year-old Ted reclaims the IBF & WBC heavyweight championships.

28 years ago - 36-year-old Ted & Laurel Drake are severely injured fighting William Zard. When he relinquishes his belts, he chooses to retire undefeated, wanting to instead focus on his own training. Laurel quits superheroics completely.

26 years ago - 38-year-old Ted & Laurel Drake are attacked by the Monkey Fist Cult.

24 years ago - 40-year-old Ted travels to Japan when the All-Star Squadron ends, bringing Laurel Drake and Dinah Lance to meet O-Sensei. Dinah spends several months training under Richard Dragon & Ben Turner, while Ted works with Jack Shaw, remembering him for his utter mastery of certain fighting mechanics and his complete disregard for others

23 years ago - 41-year-old Ted buys his gym in Gotham which his father operates.

22 years ago - 42-year-old Ted agrees to keep training Dinah Lance in secret after her mother Laurel Drake forbids her from taking up the mantle of Black Canary after the death of Larry Lance.

20 years ago - 44-year-old Ted and Laurel Drake both accompany Dinah Lance on her first tour as her managers. He helps her secretly don her own costume and set our as the new a Black Canary

18 years ago - 46-year-old Ted returns to Gotham, taking care of his ailing father and running his gym. He meets young street kid Selina Kyle, and seeing her potential starts training her.

9 years ago - 55-year-old Ted helps found the new Justice Society. He asks Laurel Drake to join, but she declines.

8 years ago - 56-year-old Ted helps Dinah Lance & Richard Dragon free Ben Turner from the control of the League of Assassins. He is introduced to Holly Robinson by Selina Kyle, and starts training her.

7 years ago - 57-year-old Ted falls into a deep depression when Laurel Drake dies. He starts to compete in local fighting promotions, not realizing he's being slowly mind controlled by underground promoter Veronica Sinclair to pull him into her underground powered fighting tournament.

6 years ago - 58-year-old Ted is severely injured by Baran & Selinda Flinders in Veronica Sinclair's underground powered fighting tournament. While he recovers Dinah Lance enters the tournament in his place, bringing them down. Once his rehab is finished he returns to the Gotham Gym, retiring as Wildcat.

5 years ago - 59-year-old Ted's gym is assaulted by Roman Sionis’s men attempting to kill him because of his association with Selina Kyle. He fights them off, and when Holly Robinson brings an injured Slam Bradley to him, he keeps them safe. Holly starts to work with him, occasionally donning her own Wildcat persona.

4 years ago - 60-year-old Ted agrees to return to the Justice Society specifically to teach hand-to-hand combat as Karen Starr focuses on bringing in a new generation.

3 years ago - 61-year-old Ted Grant ends the gangwars around his Gym during No Man’s Land, enforcing a general truce to keep people safe. He helps Holly Robinson as she becomes the new Catwoman.

1 year ago - 63-year-old Ted Grant receives an invitation to the Monkey Fist Tournament. He enters because he wants to be there for Dinah Lance, providing her backup as she investigates the Golden Dragon.

now - 64-year-old Ted Grant starts training 13-year-old boxing prodigy, Yolanda Montez.

Wildcat is an incredibly simple character. The trope of "guy wants to be a hero so he puts on a costume and punches people" was so prolific in the Golden Age. and something very particular needs to be incorporated to make a character stick. In Wildcat's case, that special something was boxing. The character was built around the world of athletics and boxing, and it manifested those ideas in superheroics. It does seem a little odd that this concept is being pulled off by a guy dressed as a big animal, but I think that the reason it all works is because it's being executed by Bill Finger, who knows a thing or two about getting a superhero costume to work.

Wildcat's Comic History

Wildcat's first appearance was in 1942, as one of several back-up stories in Sensation Comics. The book was clearly built as a vehicle for brand-new character Wonder Woman, but it actually had quite a few really interesting supporting features like the Black Pirate and the Gay Ghost. Wildcat and fellow Sensation Comic character Mr Fantastic both debuted in Sensation Comics #1, and both stood out as characters who didn't need a catalyst to become excellent; they were characters who had achieved excellence for their whole life. In Ted Grant's case, what made him unique was his focus on boxing; he was a natural athlete and an exceptional boxer. His origin story showed him falsely accused of murder and becoming a fugitive that has to fight to clear his name, and in a cute bit of meta fiction, gets the idea to wear a costume from a kid on the street who wants to buy Green Lantern comics. Wildcat continued to appear in every issue of Sensational Comics until 1949, a staggering 90 consecutive issues.

Interestingly, this incredibly prolific run as a recurring supporting feature actually makes up the bulk of Wildcat's Golden Age appearances. While modern audiences know him as part of the old guard of Justice Society members, he actually only made two appearances as a member of the Society in that era, issues 24 & 27 of All-Star Comics, neither of which actually featured his joining the team. Once the Society started making guest appearances in Justice League, or appearing in their own comics as All-Star returned to regular publication, Wildcat was consistently depicted as a regular member, but this is actually functionally a retcon.

Of course, as the Crisis of Infinite Earths rewrote the role of the classic Justice Society, Wildcat was always depicted as part of the team's history. We did briefly get a new WIldcat in the Post-Crisis Infinity Inc in Yolanda Montez, but the characters built at that point in the series all largely faded into obscurity, and soon Ted was back as a founding member of the new JSA.

Ted's position as the old-school scrapper of the superhuman set was pretty quickly established. You started to see him referenced in a lot of character's backstory as having trained practically anyone with any martial prowess; Batman, Black Canary, and even Superman. He was depicted having an intense affair with Catwoman (clever), and was even established as having been the lover of the time-displaced Queen Hippolyta during her adventures in the 40's. Ted has evolved into one of the most beloved elements of the classic Golden Age catalog of characters, even though when these characters were actually published, he was really just a well-liked backup feature.

Our Wildcat Story

We had a pretty big decision to make with Ted, because he's not someone we wanted to split between the fixed WWII and sliding modern timelines. He needed to be in one or the other. At first, we considered his ties to the Justice Society the most important part of the character, and chose to focus on those, setting aside all of the relationships depicting him as the mentor or coach for so many modern characters.

Eventually, however, dissenting voices became loud enough that we just tried a modern timeline to see how it would look, and suddenly the character just exploded. His timeline is absolutely bursting with fun interactions with heroes of all ages in different eras. He's a lifelong ally of fellow All-Star Squadron mainstay, the original Black Canary Laurel Drake, and a beloved uncle and mentor figure to her daughter Dinah. He helped train Catwoman, and her protégé Holly Robinson. He trained alongside Richard Dragon and Ben Turner, and in that capacity even unknowingly helped train Batman. He has stories of his own playing out in the underground fighting tournaments of Roulette, becomes a part of the events of No Man's Land in Gotham, is a combatant in our Monkey Fist Tournament, and even briefly gets a legacy of his own when Holly goes by Wildcat for a time on her way to becoming the new Catwoman.

I'm not going to pretend Ted's previous World War II timeline was even CLOSE to as fun and dynamic and interwoven with the larger character tapestry as this one is. We closed the timeline with him training a young boxing prodigy, Yolanda Montez, which eagle-eyed readers will know suggests that maybe that extended Wildcat legacy might be on its way after all.

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