Science's Less Accurate Grandmother: Batman/Wildcat by Chuck Dixon, Beau Smith, Sergio Cariello, et al.

29 May 2023

Batman/Wildcat by Chuck Dixon, Beau Smith, Sergio Cariello, et al.

Batman/Wildcat

Collection published: 2017
Contents originally published: 1970-98
Acquired: March 2023
Read: April 2023

Writers: Chuck Dixon, Beau Smith, Bob Haney

Pencillers: Sergio Cariello, Irv Novick, Bob Brown, Jim Aparo
Inkers: Art Thibert, Danny Miki, Jaime Mendoza, Tom Palmer, Mike Esposito, Nick Cardy, Jim Aparo

Colorists: Jason Wright, Pat Garrahy

Letterers: Kevin Cunningham, Clem Robins

As I said when writing up Catwoman: Her Sister's Keeper, the discovery of a preexisting Ted Grant–Selina Kyle relationship in JSA Classified had me curious as to its origins; one of the stories that lead me to was a 1998 miniseries called Catwoman/Wildcat by Chuck Dixon, Beau Smith, and Sergio Cariello. I discovered it had been collected along with a 1997 mini from the same team, Batman/Wildcat, and five issues of The Brave and the Bold from the 1970s where Batman teams up with Wildcat. So, I picked up the whole collection.

Batman/Wildcat is fine. Like many Wildcat stories, it has to contrive some way to be about boxing. In this case, it's that old standby: the forced fight. Criminals are kidnapping people, mostly supervillains, and forcing them to fight each other on a super-secret pay-per-view channel (hey, it was the '90s). A mentee of Wildcat's get scooped up in it, though, and is forced to duke it out in a Wildcat costume, and so Batman and Wildcat run parallel investigations, then get kidnapped and forced to fight, and of course team up to dismantle the entire operation. I could probably go the rest of my life without reading another story where superheroes are forced to fight so rich people can gamble on it, to be honest; there's nothing about that premise that's ever interesting. What beggars belief is the bad guys don't even take Batman's and Wildcat's masks off to find out who they are; indeed, they put extra masks on them so they can't see who they're fighting! I think the story would have also benefited from making Ted's status quo clearer; at the end, he comes out of retirement to go back to fighting crime as Wildcat, but that was the moment I learned he was in retirement to begin with! (This would be set after the Justice Society falls apart in Zero Hour, before it reunites in Justice Be Done.)

Oracle! Ah, 1990s Birds of Prey nostalgia...
from Batman/Wildcat #2 (script by Chuck Dixon & Beau Smith, art by Sergio Cariello and Art Thibert, Danny Miki, & Jaime Mendoza)

The follow-up, Catwoman/Wildcat, is a bit better. Catwoman travels to Las Vegas to carry out a heist where, coincidentally, Ted Grant is in some kind of exhibition match. The heist, honestly, was very confusing. Selina's competing with like two other groups of criminals and there's a lot of double-crossing, and a lot of characters I didn't care about. What was consistently fun was the flirting between Selina and Ted. Selina knows who she is dealing with right away, but it takes most of the story for Ted to figure out who she is (there's a brief flashback to Her Sister's Keeper, despite Catwoman: Year 2's implication it didn't count), and so he doesn't get why this attractive younger woman is coming on to him. Whenever the story focuses on the antics of the two of them it is fun; whenever it focuses on the other characters, I hoped it would get back to Ted and Selina. Thankfully boxing has little to do with it.

It's a very different Selina to the one who seemed shocked at what Ted Grant might ask of her for defense training!
from Catwoman/Wildcat #3 (script by Chuck Dixon & Beau Smith, art by Sergio Cariello & Tom Palmer)

Both stories are pencilled by Sergio Cariello who has a... I guess I would say perfectly adequate 1990s style. It's not my jam, and I think he draws Selina/Catwoman a bit weird, but it's a good artistic fit for Chuck Dixon's over-the-top action-focused style of writing.

Cats in heat.
from Catwoman/Wildcat #1 (script by Chuck Dixon & Beau Smith, art by Sergio Cariello & Tom Palmer)

The five stories from The Brave and the Bold run the gamut. Each has to have some weird reason for Batman to pull Wildcat into the case; some are more compelling than others. The first, "Count Ten... and Die!" is probably the best. Bruce Wayne is coaching the American team in the World Youth Games in fencing, while Ted Grant is coaching the boxing team. Ted is heckled by the coach of the Russian team, but then also there's a lot of stuff about a spy and needing to transfer a secret tape. Boxing is worked in pretty organically here, and it has its moments, even if it can get a bit contrived. (At one point, Ted Grant sneaks out of a boxing match he is participating in to track Batman to a river in the countryside, rescues Batman from kidnappers after a pitched battle, and returns, all while forcibly dragging his opponent with him... and no one notices this because the lights are out!) I thought the culmination of Ted being goaded was going to be him rising above it, but Batman points out that if Ted Grant doesn't wallop this Russian guy, America may as well give up the Cold War, so Ted punches his lights out for patriotism.

If your story is set in Cold War Vienna, it is mandatory to have a key scene set on the Wiener Riesenrad.
from The Brave and the Bold vol. 1 #88 (script by Bob Haney, art by Irv Novick & Mike Esposito)

A couple feel like they could have been about any character, and Ted is barely even in them: in "The Smile of Choclotan!" he's mostly in a trance, in "A Very Special Spy!" Ted is for some reason an exec at an energy firm, and in "Dead Man's Quadrangle" he's running a health spa in the Caribbean. I guess post-JSA he made a run a lot of different businesses?

For some reason, everyone in Mexico calls him "Bat-Hombre." Not, say, "Murciélago Hombre"... or just, you know "Batman"!
from The Brave and the Bold vol. 1 #97 (script by Bob Haney, art by Bob Brown & Nick Cardy)

I was able to embrace the goofiness in "May the Best Man ~~Win~~ Die!" In this, Wildcat does an exhibition boxing match at a Gotham prison... only the guy he fights is a potential witness against the Joker, and the Joker uses the opportunity to infect Wildcat's opponent with a rare tropical illness, and soon the whole prison is in danger. A biologist brings a dog in whose blood he's incubated antibodies to Gotham, but the dog is stolen by the Joker, then it escapes from the Joker, and so Batman, Wildcat, and the Joker are all searching Gotham for a dog who has the key to hundreds of lives. So wacky you've got to love it! I even didn't mind the obligatory Batman/Wildcat slugfest, because it's really just an opportunity for the Joker to infect them with the disease too.

Like, a page later, Batman admits that he has no idea if this is true or not.
from The Brave and the Bold vol. 1 #118 (script by Bob Haney, art by Jim Aparo)

Bob Haney is certainly a wacky writer. In "May the Best Man Die!", Batman goes to the Gotham pound to pick up the dog, but is told someone claiming to be the dog's owner already picked it up... a weird guy with green hair! Like, how could you live in Gotham and see a guy with green hair and not think, "Hmmm... is that the Joker!?" In "Dead Man's Quadrangle," Batman travels to the Caribbean via a commercial flight... in costume! There he is just chilling in first class; the guy seated next to him just casually chatting him up. In the 1970s was airport security so lax? Or does Batman get an exemption? And is a Batsuit really comfortable clothing for a long flight?

Batman has the same annoyances on a flight as us regular folks.
from The Brave and the Bold vol. 1 #127 (script by Bob Haney, art by Jim Aparo)

Some continuity notes: When these stories came out they were evidently controversial, because they feature the "regular" Batman of DC, i.e., the Earth-One Batman, but Wildcat is from Earth-Two! The explanation (given in letter columns, I guess, because it never appears in the stories themselves) was that this was the Wildcat of Earth-One, a character who only appeared in these five issues of The Brave and the Bold and one issue of Super-Team Family. Thus, we are left to infer most of his history: an older superhero, seemingly not active anymore... but in this world there was no JSA. Post-Crisis, I think we can just imagine that these events did happen (approximately) as depicted here, with the new post-Crisis Batman and the new post-Crisis Wildcat. By publication sequence these would go in the period after the JSA kind of came out of retirement for its JLA team-ups, before the JSA was revived full-time in the 1970s issues of All Star Comics, and I think this depiction of Wildcat fits well with that.

Lastly, there's a weird bit in "Dead Man's Quadrangle," where Ted thinks that on his second comeback tour he accidentally killed a man ("Kid O'Hare") in the ring, and thus gave up throwing punches ever again. He gets over it, of course, but this was never mentioned before and thus must have happened in the year since his previous Brave and the Bold appearance yet is just kind of tossed in as if we already know about it! As far as I know, it never comes up again either.

This post is forty-third in an ever-expanding series about the Justice Society and Earth-Two. The next installment covers volume 3 of Justice Society of America. Previous installments are listed below:

All Star Comics: Only Legends Live Forever (1976-79)

The Huntress: Origins (1977-82)

All-Star Squadron (1981-87)

Infinity, Inc.: The Generations Saga, Volume One (1983-84)

Infinity, Inc.: The Generations Saga, Volume Two (1984-85)

Showcase Presents... Power Girl (1978)

America vs. the Justice Society (1985)

Jonni Thunder, a.k.a. Thunderbolt (1985)

Crisis on Multiple Earths, Volume 7 (1983-85)

Infinity, Inc. #11-53 (1985-88) [reading order]

Last Days of the Justice Society of America (1986-88)

All-Star Comics 80-Page Giant (1999)