In Drawing Crazy Patterns, I spotlight at least five scenes/moments from within comic book stories that fit under a specific theme (basically, stuff that happens frequently in comics). Note that these lists are inherently not exhaustive. They are a list of five examples (occasionally I'll be nice and toss in a sixth). So no instance is "missing" if it is not listed. It's just one of the five examples that I chose. Today, we look at times that superheroes suddenly reveal that they have sisters that no one has heard of before.

NOTE: I'm think I will cover Spider-Man's sister in a different column in the future, so I figured I'd use a different example for the fifth one instead of her. So don't freak out over her not being mentioned. Refer back to the intro paragraph.

T'Challa's sister, Princess Shuri, debuted in Black Panther #2 by Reginald Hudlin, John Romita Jr. and Klaus Janson. She showed up in a flashback to the annual tournament where Wakanda decides whether the current Black Panther will remain the Black Panther or if a challenger will unseat him or her. We're, of course, not meant to know that it IS a flashback at first...

Until Black Panther is defeated and we discover that the challenger is actually T'Challa and this is how T'Challa got the Black Panther name in the first place!

And yes, that was also the first appearance of T'Challa's UNCLE, as well. Up until this point, T'Challa took the Black Panther title directly from his father, T'Chaka, upon T'Chaka's death. In this retcon, T'Challa's uncle, S'Yan, was an interim Black Panther until T'Challa was old enough to defeat him in battle.

Doctor Strange's sister, Donna, was first talked about in Doctor Strange, Sorcerer Supreme #9 (by Roy and Dann Thomsas and Butch Guice) when Strange's ex-girlfriend, Morganna Blessing, wrote a book about Doctor Strange. Ahead of the book's publication, a preview of the book ran in Now Magazine (the offshot of the Daily Bugle) and we learned of Strange's sister...

In Doctor Strange, Sorcerer Supreme #45 (by Roy Thomas and Geof Isherwood), we saw Donna drown when Stephen was still a teenager...

Similarly to how Donna Strange was introduced after she was already dead, the death of James Rhodes' sister, Jeannette, was what compelled Rhodey to try to solve her murder and inadvertently create the Crew in The Crew #1 (by Christopher Priest, Joe Bennett and Danny Miki)...

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In the start of Grant Morrison's run on New X-Men, he introduced the villainous Cassandra Nova in New X-Men #114 (by Morrison, Frank Quitely and Tim Townsend)...

Nova ended up switching bodies with Xavier. In New X-Men #121, Jean Grey discovered that Charles and Nova were siblings. She tried to kill him in the womb and he instead killer her, but she became a psionic being who survived and slowly got herself her own body...

Hank and Don Hall were the original Hawk and Dove. Then Don was killed and Dawn Granger became the new Dove. Then Dove was seemingly killed and Hawk became the evil Monarch (and then Extant) and then he died, but then Dawn turned out to be alive.

Then, in Teen Titans #22 (by Geoff Johns, Mike McKone and Marlo Alquiza), we learned that Dawn had a sister she never talked about named Holly Granger who became the new Hawk...

Sadly, Holly ended up having the same fate as most Hawk and Dove characters and died, with Hank being brought back from the dead and re-partnered with Dawn.

Feel free to write me at brianc@cbr.com with suggestions for future Drawing Crazy Patterns!