Man I hate dbl posts more then typos. I’ll leave u poor folks alone b4 I destroy this beautiful thread.
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@djd187.81432 Haha, that happens! We read so many comics, it’s inevitable. Jump in during the discussion whenever you’d like. We’d still love to hear your thoughts 
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@nu52 That beautiful Liam Sharp art from last week and my desire to examine it in detail made me tardy. I’ll chime in soon
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@Vroom I get it! Good art grabs us all. Don’t worry about being late. As long as you have a good time, that’s all that matters.
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I read it and don’t much remember it other than that it did a terrible job explaining why the “Gods” or whoever they were pretending to be gods, were travelling through space. Seems like the kind of story that needs a primer, and that’s saying something for me to want that since I’ve read thousands of DC books many of them being Teen Titans related.
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Very complicated and not to the point
Angry Donna again.
I wish that her origin would be tied to wonder woman
Do we know how many years ago Wonder Woman came to America? So she could rescue Donna in Fire?
If Donna grew up in Thymescaria, she should speak like Donna Troy in DC Shorts Best Friends Forever. With an accent.
But in Titans she speaks like an American.
So need
Origin associated with DIana
Yet American?
And with Super Powers and Lasso?
So Diana rescues baby Donna from fire.
Diana somehow gives Donna some of her powers.
Or Donna another kid of Zeus?
Donna Spends half time in America with Diana, with school. Summers in Themyscira
Get Lasso somehow. Cant fly, just leap like in WW movie.
Anybody come up with something less complex?
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I have read this soooo many times. I can’t even count how many at this point. I absolutely adore it, but for someone that doesn’t know the Titans of Myth or the events occurring around this special it can be very confusing. I definitely will be participating in the discussion for this one.
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@TurokSonOfStone1950 They should tie her and Cassie’s origins to Diana. The Robins all have ties to Batman.
@PrincessAmethyst Yay! I can’t wait to get your thoughts on it. If you like it a lot, I have a feeling I will too. Gotta get home and start reading
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@djd187.81432 I am glad you’re here. I responded to you in that netflix He-Man thread.
https://www.dcuniverse.com/community/boards/othermedia/new-h-man-series-on-netfli
let me know what you think of She-Ra should you watch it
to get back on topic, finished the first of the four. And the sparkle outfit makes me think of Star Boy from JL v Fatal 5. “Star. Boy. Star Boy”
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@AntLeon – Heh, I hadn’t thought of that with her and Star Boy. I wonder who wore it first? Well, I suppose Donna by default, if only because Star Boy is always a thousand years into the future…
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@AntLeon I actually thought of Donna when I first watched JL v Fatal 5! I never really liked that costume, but seeing it in motion in that movie made me appreciate it. It looks much better in animation.
Anyway, finished it this morning! Honestly, it was less because I couldn’t put it down and more because I wanted to get it over with. There’s some good moments, but…yeah, this is a bit of a confusing read even for someone pretty well versed in DC Lore.
First, good things out of the way: the art for this is stellar. I mean, Phil Jimenez doing the layouts, Jose Luis Garcia Lopez doing the pencils, and George Perez on inks, this is a group of titans on art duties, ironically. It does the big blowout action and spectacle and the smaller, intimate character moments with equal amounts of poise and skill.
Outside of that, it’s kind of a mess of a story. Like, I think I remember seeing the Titans from the Wolfman/Perez New Teen Titans, but it took a bit to really get what was going on, and even then, the overall plot is kind of “eh.” I just didn’t really care about anything that happened here. Even the status quo they attempt to give Donna at the end, while interesting in theory, doesn’t translate well here, especially since this takes place immediately before Infinite Crisis where that status quo is going to be null and void anyway.
“Did you like the involvement of the Outsiders and the Teen Titans?”
I did – really, for this being in the Wonder Woman book club, this really felt more like a Teen Titans story before anything else. In this loads of characters got a chance ot shine, especially Nightwing, Starfire, Arsenal, Wonder Girl and Kid Flash.
“How do you feel about Donna’s place among Wonder Woman’s cast of characters?”
When she’s there, she’s pretty cool, but due to how editorial has handled Donna over the years, she really feels like a Wonder Woman cast member in theory more than in practice. To use an example from the other company, it feels reminiscent of Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver: they’re mutants and have had ties with the X-Men in some respect plenty of times over the years, but when you get right down to it, they’re Avengers through and through. In the same sense, Donna is more a Teen Titan to me than an Amazon or Wonder Woman’s sister.
“What are your opinions on the Titans of Myth in this story?”
They feel like a watered down version of the Greek pantheon from Perez’s Wonder Woman – and those guys were pretty watered-down to begin with. Maybe it’s because they don’t quite have the same name-power as the likes of Zeus and Ares, but I honestly had difficulty remembering who was who or even caring about individual characters. Like, there was the guy who loved Donna because she was a reincarnated spirit(?) of his dead sister-wife(?!?), and then there was everyone else.
I will say that the big war scene at the end with them fighting Donna/TT/Outsiders had some pretty sweet spreads, though.
“If you could choose Donna’s origin, what would you go with?”
Maybe it’s because it’s the one I saw and was able to be on the ground floor with first, but I think her New 52 origin was honestly the best. Crafted from clay carved from the statue of Hera, created as a secret weapon to wrest control of Diana’s rule and defeat her, but Diana’s compassion sways Donna to join in her fight instead. Simple, clean, direct. The only downside is that it’s hard to do that one and still keep the history she had with the Teen Titans.
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Jay Kay,
I read it last year, but you pretty well nail my feelings on it.
I didn’t read Donna’s New 52 origin. I’m not sure which version it is, but I think of her as having been a sister to Diana who was abducted by some witch and cursed to die painfully over and over again explaining her multiple character histories.
Pretty convoluted. Think I got that from a wiki. Not sure if I read it in a comic.
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I kind of go into it, but if you want to read it yourself, it’s in the first arc by Meridith and David Finch, in issues #36-40 and Annual #1.
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DC SPECIAL: THE RETURN OF DONNA TROY (2005-) #1-4
- What are your thoughts on Donna and her complicated origins?
I think it’s hard to keep track of when you read summaries of all of her origins, but the way it was presented in this story felt pretty simple. I wasn’t as lost as I thought I’d be. The most shocking thing to me was that she had been married before and that someone (Cassie?) referred to her as a mother. I don’t know if she has children.
- Did you like the involvement of the Outsiders and the Teen Titans?
When they first started showing up, no. I thought they distracted from the Donna story. I would have preferred to see Wonder Woman there in place of the Outsiders. Roy could have shown up some other way. It didn’t feel like Shift or Jade were really needed. The Teen Titans are a huge part of Donna, which is why I did like their inclusion. They were needed for that personal connection that would break through Troia’s altered memories and bring Donna Troy back.
- How do you feel about Donna’s place among Wonder Woman’s cast of characters?
I feel like she’s very distant from the Wonder Woman stories. The time Cassie was looking at Donna’s picture with her and Diana, I thought, “Can we get more of that?” Wonder Woman coming in at the very end was nice, but I don’t see why she couldn’t have been there the entire time. If that sphere was supposed to find those closest to Donna and it didn’t track down Diana, that says a lot. I fee like Lois and Jimmy interact with Supergirl. Jim Gordon and Batman’s villains interact with the Robins. Donna and Cassie don’t really interact with Diana, Steve, much of the Wonder Woman cast of supporting characters or villains from what I’ve read.
- What are your opinions on the Titans of Myth in this story?
I actually liked them as villains. They were creepy and selfish. They would use people as pawns, willingly letting them die when they could step in and end things rather quickly. It was in character. The whole brother-husband mentions and allusions to rape, I could have done without. I get that it’s true to their lore though. I did like their designs. Coeus and Donna having their black suits with stars made sense. I like that the Titans of Myth ended up going to Tartarus. It’s what they deserve. Had they just gotten their hands dirty earlier when Donna asked them to, they would have gotten what they wanted. I don’t really understand their motivations. I get they wanted to open up the multiverse to find new homes, but why could’t they just conquer this world? They were already starting to get more followers and clearly held a lot of power still. If the multiverse had been combined into 1, where exactly were they going? Empty worlds?
- If you could choose Donna’s origin, what would you go with?
I would say, the one where she was saved from a fire by Diana. It’s simple. To the point. She then trains as an Amazon and is raised as a sister to Diana. It ties her origins to Wonder Woman. It folds her nicely into the Wonder Woman supporting cast and it gives her a reason to want to return to Man’s World (find her biological parents).
I did enjoy this story. The art was nice, nothing extraordinary. I found it pretty straight forward and easy to understand. I don’t know much about Donna, the Teen Titans, or the Outsiders, and yet I felt like I could follow it just from what I know from animation and other media. It was nice seeing a lot of Donna’s past history and her past looks. It felt like a big epic at times, but also very personal and small. It was contained to the farthest parts of the universe, so it could be a big story and yet not have big ripples that would impact other books. I’m not sure where the story goes from here, but they were clearly going into something else going off of the last page. I don’t really get what Donna was going to do alone there. I’m unsure of where her character actually fits. Wonder Woman and Wonder Girl are already taken. What is her place? I feel like she’s just stuck in a spot of needing her version of a Nightwing persona, but not getting it.
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In case you’re curious, the stuff with Donna being married was pretty early on in Wolfman/Perez’s New Teen Titans, I believe the actual marriage was at around issue #50, to writer/professor Terry Long. What’s funny about it is that he in both look and personally seems to have a LOT in common with Marv Wolfman. Dude was writing self-insert fan fiction before it was cool, and got paid for it! Gotta respect the hustle.
He died a while back, sometime in the 90s, I think. The only other time he really showed up after that was Blackest Night, which, considering what that event was about, you can kind of imagine that it wasn’t exactly a happy time for anyone involved.
Jade is definitely not as close, but I can kind of see why a writer might choose to bring her along, not just because of the whole romantic triangle thing that her and Donna had with Kyle Rayner, but since she’s not as close with Donna and Donna is being manipulated to do some messed up things, she gives some good dramatic potential with being the only one to ask “is she even able to be saved?”
As for why the Titans of Myth couldn’t just conquer the world they were in, if I recall right, this was immediately before the events of Infinite Crisis, so I’m guessing that they were more just looking for a local pocket dimension to hide while that goes on.
The saving in the fire by Diana is probably the most simple, but I think the problem with that is that it greatly extends the timeline. To keep things within a 10-15 year timeline of the DCU, Donna would have to be a pre-teen at least to make that work.
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- What are your thoughts on Donna and her complicated origins?
In a word?
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!
In all seriousness, I think I’ve read most of the revisions starting with “Who is Wonder Girl?” from New Teen Titans (I might’ve missed one or two from the '90s, though), and aside from that initial story, I’ve found every version more of a plodding, confusing slog than the last. This ended up being no exception, frankly.
- Did you like the involvement of the Outsiders and the Teen Titans?
I mean… I guess? I like most of those characters (Well, I’m not big on Beast Boy or Starfire, and I don’t know much of anything about Shift or Jade, and Bart and Cassie were basically unrecognizable compared to Young Justice, which is where I know them from…), and their interactions were at least an admirable attempt at humanizing the story’s cosmic blandness.
- How do you feel about Donna’s place among Wonder Woman’s cast of characters?
Honestly, Donna’s a Titans character and always has been. It’d be nice if she were to show up in the Wonder Woman books more often, though. Nightwing was entirely a Titans construct, and he successfully reintegrated with the Bat-Family without losing his Titans connections, so there’s no reason Donna can’t do the same, but every Donna story is just some even-more-complicated revision of her origin and Wonder Woman writers never seem to want to use her.
- What are your opinions on the Titans of Myth in this story?
While Phil Jiminez made a valiant attempt at giving them more distinct characterization than Marv Wolfman did, I still didn’t find myself caring much about them as individuals.
- If you could choose Donna’s origin, what would you go with?
They really should’ve let well enough alone after “Who is Wonder Girl?” (i.e. the expanded version of the saved-from-a-burning-building origin). But it is a little weird that Wonder Woman’s been running around long enough for someone she saved as a baby to grow to adulthood, so my second choice to resolve that discrepancy would be the created-from-Diana’s-reflection origin, though I don’t really care that much about all the Dark Angel stuff.
- Of all of the Looney Tunes, was Tasmanian Devil the one you would have paired Wonder Woman with? If not, which Looney Tunes character would you have chosen?
I’d have gone with Tweety Bird. Then they could team up against the Cheetah and made “putty tat” jokes.
- Which WB/DC character team-up would be your dream? Which character from Warner Bros. would be your dream team specifically with Wonder Woman? *Doesn’t have to be Looney Tunes, just WB.
If it’s any WB/DC teamup, then I have to go with the classic one: Scooby-Doo meets Batman. It just speaks to my soul.
With Wonder Woman… still Scooby. Always Scooby.
- What was your favorite part of Wonder Woman and the Tasmanian Devil’s interactions?
I did like Taz’s pictoral speech bubbles and the fact that only Diana could understand them. I can’t actually remember watching any of the Tasmanian Devil Loony Toons episodes, so I don’t know if that’s supposed to be a representation of something from the show or if it’s original to the book.
I have to say, for some reason I found this issue utterly baffling. It couldn’t seem to decide whether it wanted to put the Tasmanian Devil into a story with Wonder Woman’s tone, or if it wanted to put Wonder Woman into a Loony Toons episode. Even the art style changed its mind toward the end with the Trojan War stuff. And honestly, the funniest thing in the entire issue was Wonder Woman’s sixth-grader-tier song lyrics. I can’t even decide if those were intentional or not.
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