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 not one of the five examples that I chose.

Today, we look at times that Wildcat trained a superhero (mostly future superhero) in how to fight!

BLACK CANARY

Here's the big one, as this is the bit that really set up all of the other bits. In Secret Origins #50, Alan Brennert, Joe Staton and Dick Giordano delivered the new Post-Crisis origin for Black Canary. We had already learned that she was now the daughter of the original Black Canary (from the 1940s), but now we got the specifics of how her career began. As it turned out, her mother wanted her to not become a superhero, so Dinah had to turn to her "Uncle Ted," Wildcat, to train her...

He also gave her a nice speech about the perils of being a superhero, but she was determined to become one, so he continued to train her. When her mother and father found out, they freaked out and we learned that young Dinah had super powers...

BATMAN

In Robin #31 (by Chuck Dixon, Mike Wieringo and Stan Woch), Robin meets Ted Grant and Robin knows a secret about Ted that Ted doesn't even know, that years earlier, Ted had trained a young man named Bruce Wayne on how to fight and, well, we all know how that went...

CATWOMAN

It turned out that Ted must have given out LOTS of anonymous lessons, as he also turned out to have been the trainer for Catwoman (under an assumed name) when she was younger, as we discovered in Catwoman/Wildcat #3 (by Chuck Dixon, Beau Smith, Sergio Cariello and Tom Palmer)...

STARMAN

The only superhero on this list who was a superhero BEFORE he started training with Ted was Jack Knight, Starman, who realized he needed to have skills other than his cosmic power rod in battle, so when Jack joined the Justice Society, he had his new teammate, Wildcat, train him in this awesome short story from All-Star Comics 80-Page Giant #1 (by James Robinson, David Goyer, David Ross and Andrew Hennessey)...

CATWOMAN II

Finally, Catwoman decided to have Ted train her young protege, Holly Robinson, in Catwoman #20 (by Ed Brubaker and Cameron Stewart). Holly eventually took over as Catwoman...

If anyone else has a suggestion for a future Drawing Crazy Patterns, drop me a line at brianc@cbr.com!