Wildcat - SCIFIPEDIA

Wildcat

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

Wildcat

Gender	Male
Publisher	DC Comics
Origin	Place of birth unrevealed
First Appearance	Sensation Comics #1 (1942)
Creator(s)	Bill Finger and Irwin Hasen
Alter ego	Ted Grant
Aliases	None
Abilities	One of the foremost hand-to-hand combat experts alive.
Affiliations	Justice Society of America

Wildcat is a fictional comic book superhero owned by DC Comics.

Ever wonder what kind of superhero Rocky Balboa or Muhammad Ali might have made? Wildcat is interesting because his story seems like the most logical and actually possible of any comic book superhero. As the heavy-weight champion of the world, Ted Grant would be expected to have some amazing boxing skills. Since his fists have achieved the legal status of a lethal weapon, it makes sense that he couldn’t use them to help people in the open. So creating a costumed identity to do so seems a (relatively) practical solution.

Ted was one of the members of the Justice Society of America (JSA) during the Golden Age of Comics. This makes him decades older than you would expect a practicing superhero to be. Various bizarre circumstances related to his adventures with the JSA have retarded his aging, so that he is as vital and fit as he was in the 1940s. This is also true of Jay Garrick, the original Flash, and Alan Scott, the original Green Lantern. Together, these three represent the first generation of the JSA in its modern incarnation. They help maintain the strong heroic sense of legacy and a vital link to its past.

Ted has trained some of the great non-super-powered fighters in the DC Universe, including Batman, the modern age Black Canary, and Catwoman. His fifty-plus years of experience have only made him more formidable.

Character Origin

A Wildcat comic cover from the 1940s.

Sometime in the early 1940s, Ted Grant is the undefeated heavy-weight boxing champ of the world. When he appears to murder his mentor “Soccer” Smith in the ring, he is stripped of his title. It turns out that his managers Flint and Skinner, attempting to fix the fight, had planted a needle with a sedative in his boxing glove, which was supposed to knock-out his opponent. Instead, something went wrong and Soccer received an overdose which killed him. Fearing Ted would figure out what happened, Flint and Skinner try to kill him by forcing the police car carrying him into an embankment. The policeman with him is killed, but Grant survives. Now free, in hiding, and at a loss for what to do next, Ted is inspired by a kid’s description of Green Lantern from a comic book. He creates the costumed identity of Wildcat and sets out to clear his name. He finally succeeds by tracking down his managers and forcing them to confess.

His strong sense of morality and his love of action leads him to continue in his Wildcat identity and to join the Justice Society of America.

Other Wildcats

When Ted was injured during the limited crossover series Crisis on Infinite Earths, his god-daughter Yolanda Montez became the new Wildcat. She was eventually killed in a battle with the villain Eclipso.

Recently, Ted found out that he has an illegitimate grown son named Tom Bronson. It is discovered that Tom is some kind of meta-human, and can change into a half man/half jungle cat creature. In this form, he gains in strength, speed, and agility, and has animalistic senses. Tom has taken on the Wildcat name and is working with his father and the Justice Society.