Bronze tiger

The bronze tiger is a fictional character owned by the US publisher DC-Comics and the title of a number of comic publications about this character. He is a martial artist who usually wears a mask that is modeled on the face of a tiger and who has increased sensory perception, reflexes, physical strength and endurance.

In terms of genre history, the figure is particularly noteworthy because it is one of the first representatives of the fictional character type of the superhero , who belongs to the ethnic group and minority of African Americans .

Publication history

The figure of the bronze tiger was developed in the early 1970s by the authors Dennis O'Neil and Jim Berry . The draftsman Leo Duanona designed its visual appearance .

It had its first appearance in a comic book story in the magazine Richard Dragon, Kung Fu Fighter # 1, which was released in April / May 1975. The character had previously been featured in the 1974 novel Dragon's Fists .

After the bronze tiger had been a main character in the series Richard Dragon , which revolves around the adventures of a group of adepts of the Far Eastern martial arts that revolved around the kung fu master Richard Dragon , he was one of the protagonists of the series from 1987 to 1991 Suicide Squad , which involves a group of prisoners who, in return for remission, undertake on behalf of the US government to carry out dangerous command missions against hostile states, criminal organizations, terrorists and the like. to participate. Since then he has been used repeatedly as a member of this mercenary team in various reinterpretations of the "Suicide Squad" material.

Fictional character biography

In the standard version of the figure, Bronze Tiger is the code name under which the professional martial artist and adventurer or mercenary Ben Turner hides himself during his missions.

In most of the stories about the character, Turner is portrayed as a thirty-five year old African American from the fictional American city of Central City.

According to his background story, Turner was originally a highly aggressive youth who turned to the Far Eastern martial and meditation arts in order to learn to control his violent outbursts of anger. Hoping to defeat his inner demons, he eventually traveled to East Asia to learn from the best combat masters. There he finally met the enigmatic O-Sensei, whose student he became.

The Richard Dragon series finally begins with Richard Dragon, who has also visited the O-Sensei to learn from him, and Turner meet at his school. Both become friends and are soon recruited by the mysterious Barney Ling as agents for the secret service GOOD (Global Organization of Organized Defense). The orders that the two martial artists fulfill as a team for GOOD form the main storyline of the Kung Fu Fighter series.

Turner and Dragon later move to the CBI (Central Bureau of Intelligence). For this they take on the order to infiltrate the League of Assassins (League of the Killer) - an underground, sect-like association of contract killers - in order to prepare the smashing of this organization. This venture fails: Turner is captured and brainwashed by the League. Under the alias Bronze Tiger he becomes a member of the murderous cult. As a contract killer, he is in the service of the league for a while, hiding his face behind the mask of a tiger during his missions.

After Turner / Bronze Tiger is captured by the agent King Faraday and subjected to psychological deprogramming, he regains his memory and can restore his original identity. A side effect of being brainwashed by the League is that Turner finally finds a way to channel and control the aggression that has plagued him since childhood. To do this, he projects it through intensive meditation onto the tiger mask given to him by the league. As a result, his negative energies are concentrated in the mask in a totemic way, so that when he puts it on he becomes a "raging tiger", while when he takes it off he is a balanced and self-controlled man. Accordingly, he keeps the mask and wears it from now on during his missions and especially when he is involved in fights. To conceal his identity, he also keeps the alias given to him by the killer cult as the bronze tiger, under which he acts from now on during his missions with Dragon for the CBI.

In the 1986 miniseries Legends , the Bronze Tiger is recruited as a mercenary for the US government's special unit Task Force X. This formation is largely composed of imprisoned supervillains who, in exchange for their sentences, undertake to participate in dangerous commando missions for several years. The series Suicide Squad , published from 1987 to 1992 and with 64 issues , is about the adventures that Bronze Tiger has with this special unit . In addition to the officer Rick Flag, the assassin Deadshot and the thief Captain Boomerang as well as the secret service agent Amanda Waller, who gives her orders to Task Force X, the bronze tiger is the main character of the series and of the good three dozen characters that appear in the course of the series In addition to the other three named, the team that takes part in most of the operations of the task force and appears accordingly in most of the series' issues belongs to the various compositions of the team.

In addition to Flag, the Bronze Tiger is one of the few members of the team who stand out from the majority of the members of Task Force X, who are unscrupulous and unrepentant criminals, psychopaths and nihilists, through an honorable and righteous view of life. From a narrative point of view, it serves as a positive counterpoint, the purpose of which is to balance the group dynamic of the Suicide Squad, which is dominated by negative characters.

After the Suicide Squad series was discontinued , the Bronze Tiger occasionally appeared as a guest character in numerous other series, such as B. Justice League. Task Force (1993) or Batgirl (2005), in which he shared adventures alongside the title characters.

Since the complete reboot of the fictional DC universe in 2011, Bronze Tiger has been featured repeatedly in various series as a member of a mysterious underground cult called the League of Assassins.

Adaptations in other media

The figure of the bronze tiger has been used in numerous television series, computer and console games based on material from DC comics and, more recently, in movies.

In the animated series Batman: The Brave and the Bold , in which Batman forms teams with alternating characters from one episode to the next and has shared adventures, the bronze tiger is the main character in the episode "Return of the Fearsome Fangs!" (Original US dubbing voice Gary Anthony Sturgis ). In this, the two team up to bring down the murderers of the martial arts master Wong Fei, who had once instructed both in the Far Eastern martial arts.

In the television series Arrow , Ben Turner / Bronze Tiger appears as a recurring figure from the episode "Identity". He is embodied by the actor Michael Jai White . When he first appeared, the tiger, who in addition to excellent martial arts skills also had deadly metallic blades mounted on his wrists, worked with the Chinese triads in raids on transport vehicles from which they stole valuable medical goods. As Turner's secret motive to join the triads and participate in these ventures, his ambition is finally revealed to compete with the title hero of the series, the vigilante Hood (= Green Arrow ), to determine which of them is the best Fighter is. Hood succeeds in eliminating the tiger with an electrically charged trick arrow, which electrifies its metallic blades - with which he could otherwise repel arrow attacks from his opponent armed with a bow - and makes him go down. In the episode "Tremors" Turner manages to escape from prison, while trying to steal an earthquake-causing device, there is another fight with Hood, in which he is also defeated. At the end of the episode he is recruited into an ominous "unit", which is revealed in the episode "Suicide Squad" to be the probation unit known from the comics for arrested super criminals.

In the computer game Batman: Arkham Origins Blackgate from 2013, the bronze tiger (voiced by Gary Anthony Sturgis ) appears as an inmate of Blackgate prison who takes part in prisoner duels. At the end of the game he is recruited for the Suicide Squad in a cut scene.

literature

• Scott Beatty: The DC Comics Encyclopedia , London 2008.