Who is Donna Troy?

     There was a time the answer to that question was important to me.  Then
DC changed her origin story so many times that I lost track and simply didn't
care any more.  You'll find her first origin story summarized at the top of
the first picture on this page.  It's from Wonder Woman 266 (April 1980) as
Donna Troy aka Wonder Girl attends the funeral of the original Teen Titans
mentor, Mr. Jupiter, only to find that the reports of his death are somewhat
premature.














     It seems Donna pulled the old switcheroo which is perhaps why the fake
golden lasso looks so brown in one of those panels.  Still if it was a fake
where's the real lasso?





     While Mr. Jupiter survived his secretary's plot he didn't survive the
Crisis on Infinite Earths.  In the rewritten Teen Titans continuity detailed
in the 1989 Secret Origins Annual they never had a mentor and to my knowledge
Mr. Jupiter has not been seen in any post Crisis comics.
     Incidentally while Donna Troy (a name presumably invented by the Amazons
so that didn't just have to call her, "Hey, You!") was raised on Paradise
Island her powers were the result of experimentation by their Chief Scientist
Paula with the Purple Ray.  Back in the Golden Age (or Earth 2 as it was then
known) the Amazons could train any woman to reach their physical peak.  Indeed
Paula had started out as Wonder Woman's worst enemy, the Baroness Paula Von
Gunther before reforming and becoming an Amazon but they became a breed apart
from humanity on Earth One.  Presumably their Paula had always been an Amazon
but later developments rendered this a moot point.
     Anyway shortly after the story above Wonder Girl again returned to center
stage in the DC Universe when the Teen Titans reformed.  Unlike their last
incarnation this new version under the title The New Teen Titans struck a
chord and the first issue (November 1980) flew off the shelves.  This assured
the title a long life and gave the co-creators, writer Marv Wolfman and artist
George Perez, plenty of issues to run their young heroes through all sorts of
fiendish gauntlets.  Starfire got the most solo scenes but Donna got to show
grace under pressure in plenty of group scenes.  Well maybe not in this one
but it's a purely symbolic cover as they were actually hit by a mind control
beam from an obscure supervillain known as the Puppeter who didn't survive to
trouble the group again.






If you're interested Donna featured in other group perils scenes



But she also got a solo scene when the Titans teamed up with her "Sister"








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