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.)