Batman’s 10 Craziest Mentors

5. Shao-La/H€™Sien-Tan (China/Tibet Border)

€œTo follow the Tao is to empty your mind. Each day, know a little less €“ Until in the end, you are one with the way. As you were all along!€ €“ Shao-La
Shao-La was an eccentric old Woman who lived in a temple atop a mountain (what is it with these people and mountains!?). She taught Taoism to Bruce Wayne, albeit a peculiar brand of Taoism that involved attaching Bruce to a rickety kite-type thing and pushing him off the edge of a cliff! She then steered the kite (which was reminiscent of Batman€™s cape-glider apparatus) as he soared above the mountain range and contemplated his future. Later, eager to learn what his future actually held, Bruce joined the adjoining temple of the dark H€™sien-Tan, Shao-La€™s opposite number. Tan foretold that Bruce would kill his student, Little Dragon and then read a fortune for him that basically said €˜YOU WILL BECOME BATMAN€™ in not so many words. He then went outside for a bit of a deranged laugh and was promptly struck by lightening. Of course, many years later, in Gotham City€™s Chinatown district, Dragon and Batman did indeed square off and, without even a single punch being thrown (but a remarkable splash page nonetheless), Dragon knew that he was beaten and thus committed suicide. Both mentors appeared in the two-part Legends of The Dark Knight story Tao, by Alan Grant and Arthur Ranson (October 1993). This story is well worth tracking down if you haven€™t yet read it.
In this post: 
Batman
 
Posted On: 
Contributor
Contributor

I am a professional author and lifelong comic books/pro wrestling fan. I also work as a journalist as well as writing comic books (I also draw), screenplays, stage plays, songs and prose fiction. I don't generally read or reply to comments here on What Culture (too many trolls!), but if you follow my Twitter (@heyquicksilver), I'll talk to you all day long! If you are interested in reading more of my stuff, you can find it on http://quicksilverstories.weebly.com/ (my personal site, which has other wrestling/comics/pop culture stuff on it). I also write for FLiCK http://www.flickonline.co.uk/flicktion, which is the best place to read my fiction work. Oh yeah - I'm about to become a Dad for the first time, so if my stuff seems more sentimental than usual - blame it on that! Finally, I sincerely appreciate every single read I get. So if you're reading this, thank you, you've made me feel like Shakespeare for a day! (see what I mean?) Latcho Drom, - CQ