What To Do With Donna Troy

[Timothy Hunter]

How would you revitalize the character of Donna Troy to make her more successful?

[Agent Z]

Shouldn't this be in the WW forum?

Anyway, her initial origin sounded fine before DC started screwing it up.

[Timothy Hunter]

At this point of time, she is more of a Titans character than a member of Wonder Woman's supporting cast.

[donnafan]

Fix her origin and give her a more sisterly connection to Wonder Woman. Origin: go back to original: Donna was delivered to Themyscira either by Diana herself or, by the Titan goddess Rhea and adopted by Queen Hippolyta. Reason she didn't appear right away for nu52: Dr Manhattan was attempting to stop Teen Titans from forming. It's already been strongly eluded to that Dr Manhattan had a hand in messing with Titans history. Like JSA and Legion, he was attempting to subvert the timeline and teams from forming in this new timeline, Titans included. Pretty simple explanation and fixes a lot of the NTT missing history, ect.

[Timothy Hunter]

Fix her origin and give her a more sisterly connection to Wonder Woman. Origin: go back to original: Donna was delivered to Themyscira either by Diana herself or, by the Titan goddess Rhea and adopted by Queen Hippolyta. Reason she didn't appear right away for nu52: Dr Manhattan was attempting to stop Teen Titans from forming. It's already been strongly eluded to that Dr Manhattan had a hand in messing with Titans history. Like JSA and Legion, he was attempting to subvert the timeline and teams from forming in this new timeline, Titans included. Pretty simple explanation and fixes a lot of the NTT missing history, ect.

I agree with this. I would go further and simply revert the entire Wonder Woman origin story to as it was in Earth One continuity.

[astro@work]

Donna's current (horrible) origin is that she is an artificial gob of clay, animated to fight the Amazons. Then sent to man's world where she joined the Titans as Wonder Girl. We've never seen the revised origin, only had it described (since the nu52 Finch story was bounced out of continuity based on the Rucka rewrites).

Donna's first origin was always the charming one: adopted Amazon, sister to Diana. Rescued as a baby and taken to Themiscyra.

The best thing to do would be to somehow get back (or close to) the first origin.
I say let Donna learn there is more to her origin. Let her find out that she was the baby who (on prime Earth) DIED in the fire. Her soul was then imbued into the clay that now created her, to give her life. The discovery that she has a link to humanity allows her to feel more human again and become the girl-next-door Donna we've loved for all these years.

[kjn]

I think donnafan has it right on the origin (though from a mythological standpoint it makes more sense to have Artemis or Hecate bring Donna to Themyscira; but best is if Diana can do it).

But the trickiest part is how to use the character now. Origin stories can always be elided or fudged until they are truly needed. I do think Donna should get more of a leadership role within the Teen Titans, and that a big part of the interpersonal drama of the title should be the tension between the leadership style and approaches of Donna and Dick Grayson. (Compare with Tynion's Justice League Dark, where the team is defined by the relationship between Diana and Zatanna and their conflicting approaches on how to tackle issues.)

[CRaymond]

Donna Troy needs to have sister heros like Donna Babylon and Donna Camelot.

[Timothy Hunter]

I would remove Troy from the Titans. She has become to dependent on that team as a property. I would have her be inserted into the Wonder Woman solo series, sort of as a Nightwing to Wonder Woman's Batman.

[caj]

Fix her origin and give her a more sisterly connection to Wonder Woman. Origin: go back to original: Donna was delivered to Themyscira either by Diana herself or, by the Titan goddess Rhea and adopted by Queen Hippolyta. Reason she didn't appear right away for nu52: Dr Manhattan was attempting to stop Teen Titans from forming. It's already been strongly eluded to that Dr Manhattan had a hand in messing with Titans history. Like JSA and Legion, he was attempting to subvert the timeline and teams from forming in this new timeline, Titans included. Pretty simple explanation and fixes a lot of the NTT missing history, ect.

I am in complete agreement with this. Great post.

[LordUltimus]

Have her various reboots and redone origins as fake memories inserted by Dark Angel, including the clay weapon one.

[SiegePerilous02]

They need to go back as close to the original origin as possible. It was elegant and simple, and she's never been as good sine. Orphaned infant in a burning building, somebody rescues her from the fire (can't be Diana considering the timeline and no back and forth to Themyscira, so Aphrodite or Hermes or somebody), delivers her to Paradise Island, and Hippolyta adopts her. She leaves the island to become Wonder Girl shortly after Diana leaves. Neither one of them have been back until whatever is going down in the Wilson run. MAYBE throw in a bit of her post-Crisis origin and have Rhea be the one to rescue her, maybe imbuing her with some Titan Seed power to explain where her powers come from, but that's it. Rhea doesn't raise her, she goes straight to Paradise Island.

Donna will never recover until they simplify her origin. She will face the same problems as the rest of her generation of heroes in the struggle for relevance, but she has more of a handicap than most of the others. Fix her past before worrying about her future.

[Timothy Hunter]

They need to go back as close to the original origin as possible. It was elegant and simple, and she's never been as good sine. Orphaned infant in a burning building, somebody rescues her from the fire (can't be Diana considering the timeline and no back and forth to Themyscira, so Aphrodite or Hermes or somebody), delivers her to Paradise Island, and Hippolyta adopts her. She leaves the island to become Wonder Girl shortly after Diana leaves. Neither one of them have been back until whatever is going down in the Wilson run. MAYBE throw in a bit of her post-Crisis origin and have Rhea be the one to rescue her, maybe imbuing her with some Titan Seed power to explain where her powers come from, but that's it. Rhea doesn't raise her, she goes straight to Paradise Island.

Donna will never recover until they simplify her origin. She will face the same problems as the rest of her generation of heroes in the struggle for relevance, but she has more of a handicap than most of the others. Fix her past before worrying about her future.

I agree that her origin needs to be revised, but I don't think that DC should make a big deal of her revision of her origin. One of the reason why her character has historically faced so many problems, is the constant attention towards her origins, thus distracting from the character itself.

[Ascended]

Honestly? I dont know if she's worth the effort of saving.

I'd think there's probably three different ways to use her that could make her interesting again. I mean, obviously there's more than just three, but that's what *I* can think of.....

You could just grab a simple origin (like the burning building) and write off everything else as mental manipulation. That would just get her back on solid ground for a supporting role in Diana's book or a team title.

You could pick up the post-Infinite Crisis idea that her broken history is the result of Dark Angel messing with her across the multiverse, and put Donna back in her Harbinger role. That offers a unique niche in the DCU that you could really build on and work with, maybe with an eye towards developing Donna for a solo title.

Or, if you wanted to *really* get back to basics, return to the idea that Donna/Wonder Girl is really just a younger, time-traveling Diana. That's something you don't see every day. It'd be pretty unique, there's plenty of room for it in Diana's timeline if she'd already lived a long life on the Island before Steve arrived, and you could explain discrepancies in memories and knowledge as Diana having her memories as "Donna" (obviously an alias to keep the mortals from freaking out) erased to ensure the timeline is secure.

[SiegePerilous02]

I agree that her origin needs to be revised, but I don't think that DC should make a big deal of her revision of her origin. One of the reason why her character has historically faced so many problems, is the constant attention towards her origins, thus distracting from the character itself.

Oh yeah definitely. Don't draw this out or put much attention towards it, or trying to reconcile it with previous takes. Bang this crap out in like a page. Have Donna guest star in WW, with a couple of recap panels on how she used to be Wonder Girl in the Teen Titans and how she came to be Hippolyta's adopted child. It would be the first time she's appeared in the current WW volume after all. And then carry on like nothing happened.

Anybody who wants elaborate explanations for how her New 52, Rebirth or earlier origins fit into the new setup just need to shush. They're gone, they sucked anyway, get over it. Unless they do something like and do it soon, I don't think Donna will be worth keeping around. And I like pre-Crisis Donna enough to not want to see her exiled to limbo, but we've had so many shots at this and they keep getting further and further away from the simple, appealing nature of the original character.