Donna Troy
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Donna Troy is a superheroine in the DC Universe. As Wonder Girl, she was one of the founding members of the Titans. Over the years, her origin story has been changed several times and she has fought crime under various different identities. However, in recent comics, her ability to remember all different versions of herself has been shown to define her as a living link to the destroyed DC Multiverse. She has also recently served as Wonder Woman, having taken up the mantle during the absence of her sister Diana.
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[edit] Character history
As a character in her own right, she made her first appearance in The Brave and the Bold #60 (July 1965), and was portrayed as a member of a junior Justice League consisting of Robin, Kid Flash and Aqualad, joining together as had their mentors (respectively, Batman, The Flash and Aquaman). Together, they were known as the Teen Titans.
[edit] Origins
The relationship between this Wonder Girl and the younger version of Wonder Woman was not fully explained at the time. The mystery of Wonder Girl's background would linger in the series until finally resolved in the 1980s.
It was revealed, four years after her introduction, that Wonder Girl had been orphaned by a fire which killed her parents. Saved by Wonder Woman, she had been taken to Paradise Island, where she was given Amazon powers by the mysterious Purple Ray. She later took the alias of Donna Troy and remained on Earth (it is interesting to note that, before she made the decision to take the name "Donna Troy" after becoming a member of the Teen Titans, she apparently had no name other than "Wonder Girl"). These revelations were published in Teen Titans (1st series) #22 (July-August 1969).
Since the Crisis on Infinite Earths, Donna Troy's origin has been rewritten several times. The first rewrite came about when it was noticed that, in post-Crisis continuity, she had made her heroic debut before Wonder Woman. Her history was changed so that she had now been saved by the Titans of Myth, who also granted her powers. Donna was one of twelve children who were either orphans or had otherwise been cast off by their respective societies and brought together by Rhea in order to be reared as their eventual saviors. The children lived among the Titans of Myth on the ancient moon of New Cronus for years, given superhuman powers, were trained as warriors, and educated in various arts and sciences. Each one was also named after a city in ancient Greece. At the age of 13, each of the children were sent back to their respective worlds to live as normal beings in order to teach them humility and given false memories by the Titan of Memory, Mnemosyne.
[edit] Titans of Myth
However, this mental conditioning failed in one of the seeds, namely Sparta of Synriannaq. She alone remembered her time on New Cronus, and the knowledge eventually drove her mad. She conquered her home planet of Synriannaq and hunted down and destroyed the other Titan Seeds, adding their power to her own, until only herself and three others remained: Donna, Athyns of Karakkan, and Xanthi of Ozyron. Phoebe, the Titan of the Moon, sought out Donna and saved her from Sparta's agents on Earth when they attacked Titans Tower. However, because of Sparta's acqusitions of the other Seed's powers, she and the other Titans of Myth were now severely aged and weakened. Although Phoebe did regain, at least in appearance, some of her power and agelessness while in Donna's presence, it was not enough to sustain her life and she died shortly after, but not before giving Donna and the Titans the means to reach New Cronus.
After clashing with Sparta several times, Xanthi was slain saving Athyns' life and in the final conflict, Donna and Athyns succeeded in restoring the stolen power of the other Seeds to the Titans of Myth, leaving Sparta a mindless husk of her former self. In the aftermath and to honor Xanthi's memory, Athyns traveled to Ozyron to serve its citizens and, though he offered to take Sparta with him, the Titans of Myth took her with them, saying she was their responsibility, and she would remain in their care. Donna received special gifts from the restored Titans of Myth and fashioned a new costume from each of them, permanently adopting the new name of Troia.
[edit] Lord Chaos
Prior to discovering her origins, Donna got married to divorced college professor Terry Long and after meeting the Titans of Myth later found out she was pregnant. A group calling themselves the Team Titans appeared, wanting to kill her. They came from a future where her son was born with the full powers of a god and full awareness of them, which drove him mad. He instantly aged himself, killed his mother and he became a dictator known as Lord Chaos. The Team Titans travelled back to the past to kill her before he was born. Donna eventually gave birth to her son, Robert. However, to prevent this future from happening, Donna sacrificed her powers and became a normal human.
Eventually, she rethought her decision and asked the Titans of Myth to grant her powers again, but was rejected. She then joined the Darkstars. During the Zero Hour crisis, her farm in New Jersey was destroyed and all the Team Titans (which she had taken in into her home) were wiped out of existence except for Terra and Mirage, who were revealed to have been from the 20th century and not from the future. Worse still, her marriage fell apart and her now ex-husband was granted sole custody of their young son.
Donna rejoined the Titans for a time, with her Darkstar suit giving her the ability to aid them. She dated Green Lantern Kyle Rayner for awhile, but they broke up immediately following the death of her son and ex-husband in a tragic car accident. Just prior to her break up with Kyle, Donna had retired from the Darkstars, leaving her powerless once more.
[edit] Magical duplicate
Her post-Crisis origin was updated in the late 1990s. This version had it that she was originally created by the Amazon sorceress Magala as a magical duplicate of the young Princess Diana of Themyscira (a nod to the original Wonder Girl) to be a playmate for Diana, who was previously the only child on the island. However, Donna was soon kidnapped by the Dark Angel (a World War II villainess and sworn enemy of Queen Hippolyta, Diana's mother), who thought the girl was Diana.
Dark Angel cursed Donna to live endless variants of a life characterized by suffering, with her life being restarted and erased from the world's memory when Donna was at her lowest. Even Donna would forget her past lives until the moment at which Dark Angel would arrive to restart her life, at which point she would immediately recall all of her past suffering.
With the help of Wonder Woman, Hippolyta, and the third Flash (her former Titans teammate, Wally West), the only people who remembered the previous version, Donna was restored. Somehow, she also regained her powers, presumably because that was how Wally remembered her. Initially, she was concerned that she was not the "same" Donna, but an idealized form based on Wally's memories. She has since accepted that this is not the case.
Shortly afterwards, the Titans gathered together to save their friend Cyborg. They came into conflict with the JLA, but they saved their friend. After that, the original five Titans, including Troia, decided to re-form the team. A subsequent battle with Dark Angel suggested her constant rewriting of Donna's history involved Hypertime. It is not clear how this ties in with later revelations.
Realizing that Donna was created from a portion of Diana's soul, Queen Hippolyta accepted Donna as a blood-related daughter and held a coronation on Themyscira to formally introduce Donna as the second princess of Paradise Island. This aspect brought Donna more in-line with her Pre-Crisis Themysciran origins.
She was apparently killed by a rogue Superman robot in the Titans/Young Justice crossover "Graduation Day." However, in June 2005, DC Comics released The Return of Donna Troy, a four-issue miniseries written by Phil Jimenez with art by José Luis García-López and George Pérez which marked the resurrection of Donna Troy and cleared up her multiple origins.
[edit] Revelations
Donna Troy has now discovered that like every other person after the Crisis on Infinite Earths, she is a merger of every alternate version of Donna Troy in the Multiverse. Unlike everyone else, Donna is the repository of knowledge of every alternate universe version of herself and remembers the original Multiverse. She learned that her counterpart on Earth-Two was saved by a firefighter and was raised in an orphanage, while her Earth-S counterpart died in the fire. She also discovered that her sworn enemy of the past, Dark Angel, was in fact the Donna Troy of Earth-Seven, saved from certain death by the Anti-Monitor, as the Monitor had saved Harbinger, who was yet another alternate counterpart (DC Special: The Return Of Donna Troy #4). When the Multiverse was reconfigured in one single Universe, Dark Angel, who had somehow escaped the compression of every Donna Troy into one single person in the new Earth, sought to kill her (every life she forced her to relive was in fact an aspect of an alternate Donna) as a way to avoid the merging and remain the last one standing. When she was defeated, Donna became the real sum of every Donna Troy that existed on every Earth, a living key to the lost Multiverse.
Her role in Infinite Crisis is, at the end of The Return of Donna Troy, fully stated: Donna had been reborn after her death at the hands of the Superman android. The Titans of Myth, realizing that she was the child who was destined to save them from some impending threat, brought her to New Cronus and implanted false memories within her mind to make her believe she was the original Goddess of the Moon and wife of Coeus. The Titans of Myth incited war between other worlds near New Cronus in order to gain new worshippers. They would then use the combined power of their collective faith to open a passageway into another reality, where they would be safe from destruction. Donna was another means to that end until she was found by the Titans and The Outsiders who restored her true memories.
This was not without casualties, however. Sparta (who was restored to full mental health and stripped of the bulk of her power) had been made an officer in the Titans of Myth's royal military. She was sacrificed by the Titans of Myth in an attempt to lay siege to the planet, Minosyss, which housed a Sun-Eater factory miles beneath its surface. But Sparta's death had inadvertently helped trigger Donna's memory restoration. Athyns had also reappeared by this time, and aided the heroes and the Mynossian resistance in battling the Titans of Myth. It was then that Hyperion, the Titan of the Sun, revealed Donna's true origins to her and ordered her to open a passageway into another reality by means of a dimensional nexus that once served as a gateway to the Multiverse itself, within the Sun-Eater factory's core, which turned out to be the Titans of Myth's real target.
Donna did so, but fearing they would simply continue with their power-mad ambitions, she banished most of them into Tartarus. However, Hyperion and his wife, Thia, were warned of the deception at the last moment. Enraged, they turned on Donna, intending to kill her for the betrayal, but Coeus activated the Sun-Eater to save her and Arsenal. As the Sun-Eater began absorbing their vast solar energies, Hyperion and Thia tried to escape through the Nexus, but they were both torn apart by the combined forces of the Nexus' dimensional pull and the Sun-Eater's power. Coeus, who had learned humility and compassion from Donna, vowed to guard the gateway to make certain the other Titans of Myth remained imprisoned forever.
[edit] Infinite Crisis and 52
Donna returned to the now-barren New Cronus where she shared a joyful reunion with Wonder Woman. Now she is charged with the task of being the new Guardian of the Universe Orb, the Multiverse Chronicles collected by Harbinger. In that role, she has unearthed the startling discovery of an impending doom that is falling on the DC Universe, a doom she cannot avoid alone. Leaving Nightwing behind on Earth, she decided to take with her to New Cronus several heroes including Animal Man, Cyborg, Firestorm III, Herald, Bumblebee, Red Tornado, Shift, Green Lanterns Alan Scott, Kyle Rayner and Kilowog, Jade, Starfire and Supergirl amongst others in a desperate attempt to save her universe from a menace coming from a mysterious rip in space (caused by Alexander Luthor, Jr. as a part of his plan), which was the cause of an intergalatic war. Donna's team managed to aid in ending the conflict, but things took a dangerous turn when Alexander used the previously mentioned rip to re-create Earth-Two and later the Multiverse.
Donna, along with Kyle Rayner (now called Ion), led the team to attack Alexander Luthor through his space rift, giving Nightwing, Superboy and Wonder Girl the time needed to destroy Alexander's device, and save the two Supermen and Wonder Woman from being merged with their Earth-Three counterparts. Though most of the team vanished when they attempted to leave via portal opened by Mal Duncan and Adam Strange, she returned to Earth shortly after the Battle of Metropolis, and provided a "junior red-sun eater" to the Green Lantern Corps in which to imprison Superboy-Prime at the end of the battle on Mogo.
In the series 52, Cyborg, Herald, Alan Scott, Bumblebee, Hawkgirl and Firestorm were all returned to Earth although gravely injured, while other heroes such as Supergirl, Starfire, Animal Man and Adam Strange were lost in space. In the History of the DC Universe backup feature, when Donna and the artificial intelligence in charge of Harbinger's historical records finished her task of reviewing the DC Universe's history, both the artificial intelligence and one of the new Monitors revealed to her that the current timeline has diverged from its rightful path, in which Donna herself, instead of Jade, should have sacrificed herself for Kyle Rayner.
[edit] "One Year Later"
One Year Later, Donna Troy has assumed the mantle of Wonder Woman. Diana stepped down following the Crisis, feeling the need to 'find out who Diana is' (Wonder Woman [3rd Series] #1). Although Diana's pre-Crisis on Infinite Earths Silver Age career has been brought back into continuity after Infinite Crisis, Donna's post-Infinite Crisis origin seems to be essentially the same as her post-Crisis on Infinite Earths one. Wonder Woman #1 opens with Donna stating: "I was born of magic," and the character is present at the time of Diana's departure from Themyscira. Donna is referred to as Diana's biological sister throughout (Donna's original Silver Age backstory depicted her as having been brought to Themyscira later in her life, and not being related to Diana.) In a flashback, Donna wears her star-spangled Titan garments (which she also wears in the History of the DC Universe portions of 52 #2 - #11). In the present timeline of Wonder Woman #1, the only sign of her Titan regalia is a bracelet that forms part of her Wonder Woman armor.
In the midst of a fight with Cheetah and Giganta, Donna is overwhelmed when Doctor Psycho manipulates her into believing that Diana is attacking her with deadly force. At the same time, Diana, posing as a government agent, arrives on the scene. Subsequent issues have shown Diana's attempts to rescue Donna, with the revelation that Circe is behind the attacks and capture.
[edit] Powers and abilities
Donna's superhuman powers have changed several times over the years, but in all of her various incarnations, they have always consisted of considerable superhuman strength, endurance, speed, and the power of flight. In her pre-Crisis origin, Donna was granted those powers by the Amazon's Purple Ray, and these powers increased as she grew older.
The first major redefiniton of Donna's powers came about when she took the name of Troia. She still possessed all the abilities she had before, but now in addition to those, she could wield photonic energy as power blasts and protective force fields.
After Donna petitioned the Titans of Myth to depower her, she became Darkstar, gaining the standard exomantle all members wore, granting her superhuman strength, speed, and agility. The exomantle also possessed a personal force field for protection against physical impact and energy attacks. The main weapons were twin maser units that fired energy blasts with pinpoint accuracy; however, it seems that Donna did not undergo the surgical proceedure to attain the instant mastery of maser control other Darkstars had, rather than the split-second delay in reaction time when wearing the less powerful deputy version of the exo-mantle. A powerful shoulder mounted cannon complemented the maser system of the Darkstars' exo-mantle. With the exo-mantle, one could achieve high speeds during flight, all the while protected from wind friction by the forcefield.
After her post-Crisis origin was revealed, Donna regained the powers she had lost to the Titans of Myth's behest, but now due to the fact that she was a magical replicant of Diana, they were virtually identical to hers.
Shortly after her resurrection as the Goddess of the Moon, during the Return of Donna Troy miniseries, Donna's powers were enhanced and upgraded. She retained all of the abilities she had before, and regained her energy manipulation abilities (which, being cosmic-based, were far more powerful). She also commanded darkness and cold to great effect. Donna has not been shown using those powers since regaining her memories.
Like all Amazons, Donna is well trained to fight with various weapons and in the martial arts, and often practices with a kind of staff which seems to be her personal weapon of choice. She is also a very capable leader and strategist.
[edit] Other media
The first animated appearance of Donna Troy as Wonder Girl was in the Teen Titans segments of 1967's The Superman/Aquaman Hour of Adventure, which have made brief runs in syndication.
In 1976, a version of Wonder Girl (played by Debra Winger) appeared in the Wonder Woman TV series. Although she appeared to be visually based on Donna Troy, she was named Drusilla and was different in both personality and origin. She would later have a brief cameo in Infinite Crisis #6 as the Wonder Girl of Earth-462.
In the fifth season of Teen Titans episodes, "Homecoming Part 2" and "Calling All Titans", a girl bearing a striking resemblance to Donna Troy, complete with star-shaped earrings, was seen briefly, but due to legal ramifications, she couldn't make a full appearance nor be mentioned by name. [1] The 36th issue (Oct. 2006) of its tie-in comic book Teen Titans Go! comic book, features Wonder Girl as part of the team. [2]
[edit] External links
- Newsarama- Phil Jimenez on The Return of Donna Troy
- Brief History of Donna Troy (see also Part 2)
- Return of Donna Troy - detailed study
- Alan Kistler's Profile On Donna Troy
Categories: DC Comics characters with superhuman strength | Fictional characters who can move at superhuman speeds | DC Comics deities | DC Comics superheroes | DC Comics titles | Fictional Amazons | Fictional Greeks | Fictional photographers | Infinite Crisis | Wonder Woman supporting characters | 1964 introductions
