Donna Troy, the New Wonder Woman!

Part Deux in my series on sidekicks graduating to their mentors roles (though this one sort of ended up being about all Wonder Woman's apprentices):

"Unbeknownst to the public, internationally-known fashion photographer Donna Troy is secretly the inspirational adventuress Wonder Woman!" Or something to that effect. Whatever I don't write taglines for a living.

Anyway, Donna Troy was the Sixties Wonder Girl and she was pretty groovy. She may have in fact been the ginchiest, I am not sure what time period that word comes from though. Any way she was Wonder Girl up through the Eighties and I personally find her career path as a fashion photographer more relatable than any of Diana's jobs. The idea of working for the U.S. Military, the U.N. Crisis Bureau, NASA, or Taco Whiz frankly terrifies me. This is not to say Donna couldn't switch up careers a bit, Diana's certainly done that quite a few times during her run.

I mean, the thing is, Donna Troy could totally carry the title on her own. It even fixes her whole "continuity problem." Someone asks "what's her story?" the reply would be "she was Wonder Woman's sidekick and now she's Wonder Woman."

You want a fuller rundown?

She was an orphan rescued by Wonder Woman from a burning building.

She was adopted by Wonder Woman's mother, Hippolyta, Queen of the Amazons.

She received Amazon training and additional power from the Titans of Myth.

She was Wonder Girl in the Teen Titans and took a couple other heroic identities.

She has a successful career as a fashion photographer.

She was married and had a child but got divorced and the ex and the kid died in a car accident. (Though I'm not sure if this last one is really necessary)

Now, she's Wonder Woman.

Okay, it might not be so uncomplicated, but everyone's got a little history, right?

"One-Year Later" Donna Troy as Wonder Woman, the starfield swimsuit is by Ivan Reis and only ever appeared on a cover and the second image (by Terry Dodson) is her armored appearance as Wonder Woman though the boots are different from what I recall in the actual issues she wore the outfit.

Anyway I think just using Wonder Woman's current suit but replacing the red, white, and blue with Donna's starfield pattern she wears a lot is maybe too simple. I kind of like the regality of the Dodson-designed armor but I think ultimately I'd prefer something like the fan-creation below:

A great, "formal" costume design/illustration by Mina Rho. It looks Promethea-esque but not in a copycat way. Though I think it could use a "W" or an eagle, or at least a few stars of some kind somewhere or other in order to be a proper Wonder Woman costume. Which isn't a complaint, as I'm pretty sure this was just meant to be a "Donna Troy" costume. Also I think she would not take her iPod with her on missions, as I can hardly take mine into a parking lot without dropping it and putting in a few dents. I guess Amazons can probably make indestructible anything so there's that...

Speaking of fan art, here is a representation of potential Arch-Enemy Dark Angel. I could see her as Donna's "Night Queen." Now she has sort of weirdly complicated history related to Donna but I think that could be easily pared down to "she gave Donna's adopted mom Hippolyta lots of trouble, kidnapped Donna when she was little and has basically been plaguing her ever since." That isn't exactly giving her any motivation for her villainy but I'm pretty sure she was an evil spirit summoned by Nazis in her first story so there's that. Also you can always just give them an opposing set of core values to the heroine and that pretty much takes care of that.

The older, wiser though considerably less vivacious Etta Candy from Grant Morrison's Seven Soldiers series who was retired from adventuring and working as a counselor for the superhero community could be a great, inherited secondary character for a Donna Troy Wonder Woman series.

"The Tongue the Titans taught her," Donna could speak the language of the gods that doesn't translate to any other human language. Having been reared by titans at some point and having also been a goddess herself she might be able to speak to Diana a way the other graduate heroes cannot communicate with their former mentors who have themselves graduated to the fifth world.

And while on the topic of graduation, the sidekicks I'm currently talking about (mainly the original Teen Titans) all eventually graduated to their own IDs rather than their mentors. Robin became Nightwing, Aqualad became Tempest, Wonder Girl became Troia and so on. So with these people graduating up, this could be chance to graduate the current stock of kids and then introduce yet another, if anyone were so inclined.

The current Wonder Girl, Cassie Sandsmark, got her powers as a boon from Zeus, who was later revealed to be her real father. She's been through several sort of personas really, from gawky kid sidekick in a bad outfit, to a sassy but still nerdy leader of her fellow sidekicks, and then to a sort of "hot angry blond chick" who I'm not sure anyone is all that interested in. She's grown up fairly quickly for a comic book sidekick and could easily get away with, and probably benefit from, coming up with her own new ID. I'd probably suggest "Olympia" or something like that, given her somewhat more specific ties to Olympus.

Her lasso's powers have changed but I think the lightning suits her as the daughter of Zeus. Also even though she can fly, I think she could do with a flying horse. Maybe named Bellerophon, if that seems appropriate to anyone at all ever... I've got no idea what she should wear in this identity but I can say I'm not real impressed by her running around in jeans all the time these days. Honestly, I guess leather is worse if anything, but have you ever ended up having a really active physically exerting day while wearing jeans? There's a reason people do not wear jeans to the gym. I'm not advocating superheroes run around in sweatpants or anything, but come on.

Oh, now that I think of it this is definitely the best illustration/interpretation of Cassandra Sandsmark that I've ever seen:

(took again from Daniel Krall)

As far as her arch-enemy, I'm sort of fond of Devastation in that role. I believe she considered her battle with Devastation her first real test as an Amazon (is she an Amazon? I don't know for some reason). Also with Deva being the daughter of Chronos and Cassie being the daughter of Zeus, there is sort of the recurring Titanomachy-vengeance theme running through them.

So this frees up the spot for a new Wonder Girl. It's possible I'm just getting into fanfic territory at this point, but who cares? Now this is all from silly source material but bear with me if you can. My Wonder Girl comes from two primary sources: Wonder Tot from the Silver Age Wonder Family stories, and Princess Drusilla/Dru Prince/Wonder Girl played by Debra Winger on first season of the Lynda Carter Wonder Woman series. It might be a case of reading too much into things, but I got the idea of a trickster Wonder Girl from both characters. Though they are both VERY apocryphal characters at this point.

Permit me to explain myself: Wonder Tot, in her first storied adventure, comes across a treasure chest with a genie trapped inside. It looks silly, yes, but a little modernization could do it wonders. Genies generally being tricksters themselves, he trapped her as quick as he could. The Tot used ventriloquism or threw her voice or something, which she claimed was her specialty and tricked him into freeing her. After this, he was impressed at her besting him and they became fast friends. So a girl superhero with her own genie ("Mister Genie") can work in it's own unique way I think. (See also the aforementioned "Seven Soldiers: Zatanna" miniseries when Zatanna the magician used a tiny genie/humunculous to act as her magical will in battle in absense of her usual powers which were at the time on the fritz due to guilt and low self-confidence).

Also, interesting, or at least to me, is that traditional folklore surrounding genies says that while humans are made from earth (like the Amazons were made from clay), genies are made from the element of fire. So there's gotta be something there, right?

The Drusilla Wonder Girl from the television series was also depicted as a very capable princess who was nonetheless quite bored of spending all her time on the island and seemed to be frequently in trouble for playing pranks on the other Amazons. See? Trickster.

This could even make for a Wonder Family controversy since the traditional Greek trickster goddess is Eris, who is normally a villain in the Wonder Woman comics.

I've gone pretty far into this graduation idea now, huh? At least short of writing an actual story... But I think this gives a pretty good idea of the kind of stuff that sidelining the classic heroes frees up. Not that this couldn't all be done now but it makes it a little simpler when one member of the tribe leaves to allow for a new birth.

(Believe it or not, I could have used more pictures in this post. Or maybe just different ones, but I am currently sans scanner, so apologies if I've stolen someone's images for my own use.)

Graduation/Promotion

"The Old Gods Died!"

So a while back, before Final Crisis came out there were rumors of a thrown-out plan for the Fifth World (see Wiki). The idea basically being that Jack Kirby's New Gods would be replaced by DC's primary heroes (Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Flash, etc.), who would in turn be replaced by their proteges (Dick Grayson, Donna Troy, Wally West, etc. or who knows?).

Now Grant Morrison is actually writing a Batman who is former Robin Dick Grayson. Donna Troy was Wonder Woman during the One Year Later story by Allan Heinberg. Roy Harper was Red Arrow for a minute in the Justice League. And Wally West, well he was the Flash from like 1985 until 2009 when his old mentor Barry Allen came racing back. He is still a Flash, which is cool. There are several Earth-based Green Lanterns now. But replacement isn't really what it used to be.

Maybe it worked better with the old Earth-One/Earth-Two scheme where after concepts were redone with different characters as the lead, the old one could still exist simultaneously in a different reality. Though some characters were still the same person, if somewhat varied. This is how they'd decided to have it both ways.

But even though we (I) love our classic characters, it really doesn't sound like a bad thing to just move on, even if it would only be for a little while.

The old characters could still loom large, as god-heroes of a bygone age:

Here are some lovely statues of the old. Let's get on to reviewing the new, shall we?

Batman II & the new Robin

Ah, whatever happened to comic book covers that gave a verbal synopsis of exactly what this issue is about? Also, how do two dark-haired parents have a little red headed boy?

It's been said a few times now "As long as Gotham needs them, Batman and Robin can never die."

The first example above is of Dick Grayson as Batman II and the son of Bruce Wayne and Kathy Kane (the original Batwoman) as Robin.

The next example is of Tim Drake (Robin III) as Batman and the son of Bruce Wayne and Selina Kyle (Catwoman) as Robin. Oddly enough this one also has red-hair.

Something Grant Morrison said in an interview about Tim Drake technically deserving the Batman spot more than anyone... found it, here's what he said:

"Ultimately, Tim Drake deserves it, but it’s not necessarily the way that it is going to work out,” Morrison said of the DCU’s Robin since 1991. “Of all the characters, he’s the one that actually deserves to be Batman, because he has put so much effort into it. And it wasn’t an accident for him. It’s something he actually chose to do. Tim would be very much like the original. He would try really hard to live up to Batman in a way that would actually suit his own personality but I think he‘d wind up being quite grim and determined.

"Dick Grayson would be a very different Batman,” Morrison continued, speaking of the original Boy Wonder, who now protects Gotham City as Nightwing. “The way I always compare the two of them is that Bruce Wayne was a little rich kid who was quite weak and sickly until the moment his parents were killed and then he decided to become strong. But Dick Grayson is a tough little circus kid. He was born tough. And he was probably quite poor. He was a carny. He spoke strangely. He didn’t sound like a rich person. I like playing with those things that people don’t think of all of the time, the class aspects of it all. So Dick Grayson would be kind of a circus Batman. He’d smile a lot more. He’d be really fun."

Anyway, I think the fun in this sort of concept is the idea that Batman and Robin are basically two Robins. The fun sidekick as two different people playing two different roles at once, if that makes any sense.

Anyway, the current Batman is the original Robin, Dick Grayson. The current Robin is Damian Wayne, the son of Bruce Wayne and Talia al Ghul, daughter of mastermind villain Ra's al Ghul and heiress to her father's vast criminal empire. Damian was raised by his mother as an assassin and is pretty much just plain a little bastard.

So the fun circus acrobat kid is now Batman and Robin is rather grim and violent. It's a deliberate, simple role-reversal but it comes off really genius. This is the sort of fresh take on an old idea that makes me think these replacements would work really well across the board.

Apparently Morrison had originally wanted a sort of inverted yellow bat-symbol for the new Batman and a modernized version of the Earth-2 Robin's costume from when he first took over for Batman on the Justice Society.

Though as far as the grown-up Robin costumes I think prefer the Neal Adams design below with the yellow tights and attached glider-cape. But I have a taste for the garish and ridiculous.

But this Dick Grayson never became a grown-up Robin, instead he broke out on his own, took a new name, Nightwing, got himself his own town, Bludhaven. The name Nightwing is currently in use over in the Superman family, which is where the name came from to begin with. Based on him being the third character for years in the "World's Finest" duo of Batman and Superman, when he chose a new identity, Dick chose one that he felt would honor both his mentors.

Similarly, in her current incarnation, Supergirl has been under the tutelage of Wonder Woman in addition to Superman and to a lesser degree Batman. Depending on who is drawing her, she even appears to be wearing somewhat Amazonian gold bracelets. So who knows what variant incarnations are in her future?

Back to Dick Grayson as Nightwing, the idea maybe a little more Batman meets Spiderman. Except Dick is generally portrayed as pretty and quite popular, unlike perpetual underdog Peter Parker.

See a lovely, scarred and balletic Nightwing courtesy of Ming Doyle:

It makes a great use of the dichotomy between beautiful and creepy. If anyone reads this, they may notice I use a lot of pictures. Most of which are not in any way mine other than the fact that I found them. If anyone has a problem with me using their work let me know, I mean no disrespect.

"He's got a more suspicious nature." Maybe we CAN go back to Earth-1/Earth-2 shenanigans. I mean, paranoid, always-ready for everything, poor little rich boy Bruce Wayne Batman is great and so is tough, doesn't like to be tied down, "first thing I lost was the cape", carnival kid Dick Grayson Batman. Can't we have it both ways?

... Name is Wonder Woman.

The thing is, I have an awful lot to say about Wonder Woman. If by some chance I keep this blog up, it would hopefully be about many things, not just comics, but I am the first to admit in recent years too much of my idle time is spent thinking about, drawing, or reading Wonder Woman. So it only seems appropriate to finally get some of it out. I've included a few images, visual aids for me as much as any readers, to keep me on a few specific subjects to touch on for this post. This first attempt at a post on my thoughts on her may seem a bit unfocused or uneven but I will work on that...

I also happen to be a big fan of the work of comics writer Grant Morrison. He has had several very successful runs with the most iconic superheroes out there was well as with his own creations and is also known to have a few controversial opinions about Wonder Woman specifically. I don't have a link handy but perhaps whoever reads this will already be aware.

I will say that I like most things about his portrayal of Wonder Woman, down to minutiae. For example, he tends to give her full name as Diana of Amazonia, which is to my mind a lot more accessible and less pretentious than the typical "Diana of Themyscira" with it's misplaced letter "y" and tricky pronunciation. I realize this is sort of pedantic, but it is named for the titaness Themis (Themiscyra) and that was the name of the Amazons' home on the Thermodon River, which Wonder Woman's creator, William Moulton Marston, simply referred to as Amazonia. They moved to Paradise Island, which if anything I guess would be New Themiscyra. Also this brings to light another nerdy pet peeve, something I've also heard writer/artist Ben Caldwell (who has SO many amazing thoughts on Wonder Woman) address: the Amazons weren't Greek. A little more creativity and a little less generic Greco-Roman rehashing is something I am very in favor of.

Anyway, about Paradise Island: pictured above is my favorite visual version, the floating isles with grandiose, translucent architecture used by writer/artist Phil Jimenez during his run. A wonderful, fluid place for creative, fluid ideas. The Amazons should be nothing if not progressive. Paradise Island should be bountiful, with new arts and sciences. It was much more than just a "lost civilization" as envisioned by Marston.

And here we have something from the original Marston comics. One of those bits commonly sited as controversial, wacky, or just silly. But really, read that first part again and think about the primary complaint people have these days against fictions like Twilight. If you aren't familiar, the common criticism I tend to hear is that in this vampire romance novel, the female protagonist Bella is a bland and somewhat self-loathing person who not only allows but encourages cruel and stalkerish behavior from her romantic interest/the-real-protagonist Edward (the vampire, for anyone living in a cave these days). In any case, the point being that girls are ready and raring to project themselves into this character, Bella, and the first panel above presents a fairly strong point about that in my eyes. As Gloria Steinem pointed out in her intro for the Wonder Woman collection printed by Ms. Magazine, (and more recently reprinted by Caleb over at Every Day Is Like Wednesday):

"If we had all read more about Wonder Woman and less about Dick and Jane, the new wave of the feminist revolution might have happened less painfully and sooner."

Things could do for a little updating and editing, sure, but Marston's Wonder Woman could do the world some good yet. She's a good fiction, and if you ask me the bondage stuff wasn't as dark as people make it out to be, I've read most if not all of his Wonder Woman stories and haven't seen anything less than benign in it.

Above is an image of Diana referring to herself as an "anima meta." Which is an interesting categorization. I believe in the same story Green Lantern (Kyle Rayner) is also under interrogation and is identified as an "energy-based meta." This is certainly something which links her to Alan Moore's Promethea, the main character in which was named Sophia, Greek for Wisdom, and the name of the most complete state of development for one's spiritual feminine side in Jungian psychology. It could be argued that anima is a bad descriptor since it is determined as being originated by a man, but she was technically created by a man (metatextually if not at all textually), and really that's probably a more literal interpretation than was ever meant.

And being categorized as an anima meta gives more interesting terms. Say if you were playing that old game and trying to replace her on a Justice League lineup, a fair equivalent would not be just "a girl" (i.e. Black Canary) or someone superstrong who can fly (Superman and Power Girl are surely solar heroes, right?), it would have to be some other superhero with specific goddess-traits, both physical and psychological, like Isis or Barda, maybe Mary Marvel once she gets herself cleaned up. The other obvious choice would have to be someone else from the Wonder Family (Hippolyta, Donna, Artemis, etc.) though I would argue that Cassie, the current Wonder Girl, certainly doesn't seem to possess any goddess-traits that aren't physical... that girl could use a little help in the psychological/philosophical department if they want to keep her in the family. I feel like when giving superhero characters simple descriptive categories this sort of more thoughtful titling should be encouraged. So many characters like her are much more than their basic power sets or even their modus operandi would imply.

Something I'm surprised is never really brought up in relation to Grant Morrison's Wonder Woman is her part at the end of World War III, the final arc of his JLA run. It may be that Animal Man provides the idea, or that other scientists help to build the machine or that Flash's giant god-friend powers the machine, but she is rarely crediting with the Anti-War Ray, the device which empowers everyone on Earth to combat the war machine Mageddon. The device is clearly Wonder Woman's; it has a very simple, Golden-Age Marstonian name, and using Purple Ray tubes. The Purple Ray was originally what gave Donna Troy her powers as Wonder Girl, so using it not just to heal but to empower is nothing new to the mythos, if perhaps underused.

Using the big monolithic human head statues on Easter Island to fire the rays across the globe was just a brilliant concept. Something very Wonder Woman, something very technologically advanced out of something which just seems ancient, obtuse and maybe a little silly.

A common critique of Morrison's Wonder Woman is that she is not presented with "big moments" or impressive feats comparable to his portrayals of Superman and Batman. Which is in some cases a valid concern, but I think his Wonder Woman delivers things people don't expect from her these days. Greg Rucka described his own Wonder Woman as a warrior/priest, and Gail Simone called her a strategist/tactician. Grant Morrison's Wonder Woman is often attempting negotiations or administering healing treatments to the injured, I would call his version more a doctor/diplomat. And I will say that his Superman and particularly his Batman don't spend nearly as much time interacting with the people of the world the way his Wonder Woman does. In World War III it's she that empowers the people of Earth and leads them into space to take their stand, in JLA: Earth 2 it's she who spreads the news to the world that things have changed for them, and even in Final Crisis, this is subverted and it is she that carries the evil god Darkseid's plague to the people. In the end, after Darkseid has become every thing and everyone, she might not get the final victory but it is her holding the lasso over her head and holding the planet (universe?) under her thrall so that no one is hurt. I think I'll touch more on that later, though. Too much to say about too much of this.

I remember recently re-watching a little of the old Wonder Woman television series. In the episode "The Nazi Wonder Woman," she ends up helping strong and brilliant Fausta Grables, the titular villain, to reform and end up working against the Nazi party. When Fausta announces she will not go back to America with Wonder Woman and Steve Trevor, but instead stay behind in Germany to join the resistance, Wonder Woman holds her hands and looks her in the eye to tell her how brave she is. She does the same for Steve, telling him he is wonderful. Hokey as it all sounds, I like this vision of Princess Diana, warm and complimentary, holding hands and smiling a lot. The prettiest and strongest girl in the world who is there telling them how great they are. I feel like there may be one too many images out there in comics of a Wonder Woman who is condescending or admonishing, not that she could never be that way, but she's often portrayed that way in situations or with people who don't merit that sort of treatment. And that ain't so wonderful.

Wonder Woman at her best is not someone above the rest of us, or if so, is only above waiting for everyone to join her.

Secret Origin

I feel compelled to begin a blog.  I will not say who is necessarily responsible for this.  Suffice it to say in the future there will be some more content.  Apparently I have something to say.  You'll have to excuse me for a minute while I figure out what it is.

This post may have to be deleted later if I figure out something clever to say instead...