As Green Arrow embarks on an impromptu team-up with a Golden Age Justice Society icon, he witnesses one hero’s secret power firsthand.
WARNING: The following article contains spoilers for “Punching Evil” from the Green Arrow 80th Anniversary 100-Page Super Spectacular #1 by Tom Taylor, Nicola Scott, Annette Kwok and Clayton Cowles, on sale now.
If there’s one Golden Age superhero that has served as a mentor figure to an entire generation of heroes that came after him, it’s the Justice Society of America’s Ted Grant, Wildcat. A champion heavyweight boxer and World War II veteran, Ted has trained some of the DC Universe’s most formidable hand-to-hand combatants in the sweet science of boxing, with Batman, Black Canary and Catwoman among his star pupils. And as Green Arrow goes in for some quick, hard-hitting training himself, he witnesses firsthand one of Wildcat’s forgotten superpowers.
While Green Arrow undergoes some on-the-spot boxing training with Wildcat, enduring some of Ted’s most devastating pugilist moves, the sparring match is interrupted by the supervillain Yellow Wasp. While Green Arrow managed to decisively take down Yellow Wasp with a makeshift trick arrow, Ted was shot square in the forehead and apparently killed right in the middle of the boxing ring. Before Ollie has a chance to mourn for Ted in the aftermath, however, the venerable superhero comes back to life, evidently healed of all mortal wounds as he gruffly dismisses his recent brush with death and reveals how he was able to rise from an early grave, alive and well.
Ted reveals that he has magically been gifted with nine lives, true to his superhero moniker, now with six lives left after his lethal ambush at the hands of Yellow Wasp. Towards the end of World War II, during an encounter with the Golden Age magician Zatara and his longtime nemesis King Inferno, Ted was cursed with having nine lives. Upon being killed, Ted returns to life shaken but without any discernible physical harm that he injured from his previously mortal wounds. And more than just offering Ted multiple leases on life, the nine lives curse has served as Ted’s own personal fountain of youth.
Despite being approximately a century old, as with many of his fellow co-founding Justice Society members, Ted has the physical appearance of a man roughly half of his actual age. For teammates Alan Scott and Jay Garrick, this discrepancy is attributed by their connection to Starheart and the Speed Force, respectively. For Ted, his diminished aging was a result of the nine lives curse, with the magical enchantment keeping Ted at the peak of human physical fitness, even at his advanced age, with his superhero career stretching for approximately eighty years as one of the elder statesman heroes of the DCU.
Ted Grant is one of the greatest superhero mentors in the DCU and lent his matchless boxing skills to countless generations of heroes following in the footsteps of the Justice Society. And while Wildcat may be more experienced than most superheroes currently in the game, that doesn’t mean he hasn’t endured mortal injuries over the course of his long career.
While the magical curse guaranteed that Ted would outlive most of his contemporaries, it has given him the opportunity to teach plenty of new heroes and contain to maintain his vitality for decades, ready to take on supervillains and continue to serve as a prominent member of the Justice Society in the relative present of the DCU.
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