Greetings comic lovers and welcome back to casually comics the channel where we chat
all things comics from reviews of comics new and old to history to anecdotes to really
wherever our whims take us.
I’m Sasha and today it’s histories confusing histories some characters backstories, creations,
both are just a mess.
Donna Troy Wonder Girl is one such character.
Special shoutout to McReese who really wanted this and watched another vid on my other channel
fade into the background well not on this channel mcreese thanks for always being awesome.
Donna Troy a.k.a Wonder Girls owes her creation as well as the confusion around it to seduction
of the innocent by Fredric Wertham a book we talked about in our video detailing the
dawn of the silver age this book will come up a lot.
It had a huge impact and ripple effect for years.
If you love uncovering messy histories hit that like button.
Let’s get messy.
Before we can talk about donna troy we have to talk about the creation of wonder girl
because at first they are not the same person.
In 1954 Fredric Wertham would release seduction of the innocent a book that called out Wonder
Woman for promoting a deviant lifestyle several times over by clearly having bdsm overtones
not even undertones though the creator had admitted this so its not like he was announcing
brand new information there and that wasn’t what galvanised people no it was the claims
that she was a lesbian and hence a poor role model for girls and something to be avoided
by boys.
I have receipts I will never pass up on the chance to dramatically read a wertham quote.
I’ll give you a different one from the silver age vid just more of a reason to go check
that one out.
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Wonder Woman is physically very powerful, tortures men, has her own female following
, is the cruel'phallic' woman.
While she is a freightening figure for boys, she is an undesirable ideal for girls, being
the exact opposite of what girls are supposed to be.
Now wertham wasn ‘t the only one postulating lesbian vibes from wonder woman but his accusations
came around at a time when concern about comics was rampant.
So after helping to start the silver age the second dawn of heroes some changes happened
to wonder Woman as a result of all this, nott wanting to run into trouble because of all
the scrutiny on wonder woman’s character DC decided to make her comic more family friendly
less bondage more sidekicks and hanging out with her mom.
So Wonder Girl first appeared in Wonder Woman (vol. 1) #105 in 1958 in a story called the
secret origin of wonder woman which would retcon her as not being made out of a clay
but she would be re retconned to clay in 1966.
However here it was established that wonder girl was a teenaged version of Diana she was
wonder girl just like how clark used to be superboy back in the day.
Through some silver age magic Wonder Woman would find herself going on adventures with
the teenage version of herself and sometimes also the toddler version who was called wonder
tot.
From Wonder Woman (vol. 1) #124 in 1961 onwards these characters would appear frequently,
but here’s the thing in issue 123 Wonder Girl was referred to as if she was her own
character separate from Diana and this would happen more than once.
And she would also call hippolyta mother so the assumption that could be made by someone
say just picking up the book was that wonder girl was diana’s sister.
This was what happened when Bob haney and the rest of the creative staff working on
the brave and the bold a team up book dc was running ft all kinds of superhero team ups
decided to create an all sidekick team to connect with the youths.
Greetings fellow youths.
They wanted some of that sweet teen market that they saw was accessible thanks to Marvel's
success with spider-man.
So when they were looking for sidekicks to put on the team they just went and grabbed
all the sidekicks from the popular heroes, robin, kid flash, aqualad and oh look wonder
woman had a sidekick too great they could get the girls interested too add her to the
team.
So they wrote their entire story on the assumption that wonder girl was her own character and
not just an extension of Diana.
She would debut in The Brave and The Bold #60 in 1965.
The Teen Titans were popular so much so that they would be spun off into their own book
in 1966 so now Wonder Girl had to be a separate character she couldn’t be a young diana
so suddenly wonder girl needed an origin.
Enter writer Marv Wolfman and artist gil kane who would give her an origin in Teen Titans#22
(July–Aug. 1969) so four years after she had begun operating as an independent character.
The origin was simple enough she was a human orphan baby who had been rescued from a burning
apartment by wonder woman and taken to paradise island where she was given her powers with
the purple ray a magic device on the island first used to heal steve trevor.
Also they gave her first breakout costume the red and gold one.
Problem solved only not at all her origin or lack there of would always cause there
to be some confusion around her on a company level and a reader one on a company level
there;s always a bit on unease around sidekicks for in a world where their mentors will never
really be gone what do you do with them.
For me the answer is just give them their own plots but I digress and will keep my salt
to myself.
Donna Troy would have more than one plot titled who is Donna Troy a variation thereof and
her origin would have to be tied to wonder womans so when crisis on infinite earths happened
on 1985 and retconned wonder woman it by proxy retconned Donna.
This happened in the tale who is wonder girl different than the first who is donna which
had happened a year before crisis.
Now she no longer had direct ties to the amazons and is instead linked to the titan’s of
myth it was a titan who saved her from the fire not wonder woman and she was raised on
new chronos where she had been named after a greek city and given super powers but then
been stripped of her memories and put back on earth to await destiny.
At the end of this arc in 1989 Wonder Girl would change her name to troia.
Cause with this new origin there was no reason for her to call herself wonder girl.
But we weren’t done the late 90s would see her become a magical duplicate of a young
princess diana this to pay homage to her first ever creation before she was a separate character.
Now she had been created to be a playmate for diana who was the only kid on the island
but she was kidnapped and cursed to live out various versions of her life at one point
she would be erased from the earth’s memory...who green lit this why is this happening.
She would be restored largely through the memories of wally west who would create a
version of her out of how he remembered her which would be a source of great angst cause
she would be like am I me or am I how wally remembers me.
She would then be accepted as diana’s sister then killed then resurrected in a mini series
The Return of Donna Troy, that tried to clean up all her origins.
So now Donna was the repository for all the alternate versions of herself in the multiverse
so all of the origins valid she ‘s compressed into a single person hence she was a living
key to the lost multiverse and would play a role in infinite crisis which would see
the rebirth of the multiverse.
But it’s not over they would keep tweaking it eventually all the being erased from existence
never happened and she had instead been a magical duplicate kidnapped and placed in
suspended animation, where she would be freed by diana and taken by to themyscira the renamed
paradise island so now no titans.
Then DC rebooted it’s entire universe with the new 52 in 2011 and
at first she didn’t even exist here then when she did she was an Amazon created by,
Derinoe created to usurp Diana but the new 52 was also a mess continuity wise so she
would go from not existing to having been a member of the Titans but everyone just forgot
cause their memories were erased.
So where are we now well as of rebirth the relaunch to get out of the new 52 which most
people didn’t like though it had it;s moments.
Donna is a magical duplicate made of clay to battle diana but the amazon’s after taking
her in gave her false memories of being saved from a fire by wonder woman.
What a journey just leave it don’t change anything yes it’s a mess but trying to fix
it makes it worse.
Believe it or not people count that as 5 origins.
It felt like so much more On all these retcons marv wolfman of her first official non accidental
origin would say I wrote the original Donna Troy origin story back in the first Titans
run.
She had never had one and was, in fact, not a "real" character (if you can call any of
them real).
She was a computer simulation of Wonder Woman as a girl.
That story also named her Donna Troy and set up everything that followed.
Unfortunately, after Crisis on Infinite Earths and the Wonder Womanrevamp, we had to go back
and redo it again as a brand new Wonder Woman being born on Earth could not have rescued
the girl from the burning building.
I wish we had been able to keep it as I think it's gone insane now.
I just wanted a simple origin story.
I came up with the original, and then [in "Who is Donna Troy?"]
George [Pérez] and I simply elaborated on what had been done, giving her real knowledge
of who she was.
I would love to say that everything after "Who is Donna Troy?" should be forgotten,
but that's not the way continuity works, sadly.
I feel that.
I feel that way about so many retcons.
Donna feels like one of those characters where we should have just accepted it was messy
and laughed it off focusing more on her character than her origin.
Personally I’ve always liked Donna and have never been too caught up in how she became
wonder girl and was more interested in her dynamics with the team.
Yeah her origin was a mistake but a happy one in my opinion anyway.
Donna Troy is a perfect example of how sometimes by trying to force canon to make sense you
just make it even more convoluted, and sometimes the simpler explanations are better.
That Donna is confusing has become a joke at this point but let’s leave it like that
and stop trying to fix it, it’s done she’s here let’s let her do cool things.