Wonder Girl
|
|
Wonder Girl is a superhero from DC Comics. Introduced originally as a younger Wonder Woman, the writer Bob Haney introduced Wonder Girl as a member of the Teen Titans in the present day in an accidental retcon, and leading to the original Wonder Girl being given a series of different origins.
| Contents |
In comic books
Diana
The character of Wonder Girl was originally introduced in the Wonder Woman comic as a teen-aged version of Wonder Woman, that is, a teen-aged Princess Diana of the Amazons. A third incarnation, Wonder Tot, Wonder Woman as an infant, had also been featured.
Donna Troy (Troia)
Template:Superherobox As a character in her own right, she made her first appearance in The Brave and the Bold #54 (July 1964), and was portrayed as a member of a junior Justice League consisting of Robin, Kid Flash and Aqualad, joining together as had their mentors (respectively, Batman, The Flash and Aquaman).
Together, they were known as the Teen Titans.
The relationship between this Wonder Girl and the younger version of Wonder Woman was not fully explained at the time. The mystery of Wonder Girl's background would linger in the series until finally resolved in the 1980s.
It was revealed, four years after her introduction, that Wonder Girl had been orphaned by a fire which killed her parents. Saved by Wonder Woman, she had been taken to Paradise Island, where she was given Amazon powers by the mysterious Purple Ray. She later took the alias of Donna Troy and remained on Earth.
These revelations were published in Teen Titans (volume one) #22.
Since the Crisis on Infinite Earths, Donna Troy's origin has been rewritten several times. The first rewrite came about when it was noticed that, in post-Crisis continuity, she had made her heroic debut before Wonder Woman. Her history was changed so that she had now been saved by the Titans of Myth, who also granted her powers. At around the same time, she adopted the name Troia, much as Dick Grayson "graduated" from Robin to Nightwing.
Donna got married to divorced college professor Terry Long and later found out she was pregnant. A group called themselves the Team Titans appeared, wanting to kill her. They came from a future where her son was born with the full powers of a god and full awareness of them, which drove him mad. He instantly aged himself, killed his mother and he became a dictator known as Lord Chaos. The Team Titans travelled back to the past to kill her before he was born. Donna eventually gave birth to her son, Robert. However, to prevent this future from happening, Donna sacrificed her powers and became a normal human.
Eventually, she rethought her decision and asked the Titans of myth to grant her powers again, but was rejected. She then joined the Darkstars. During the Zero Hour crisis, her farm in New Jersey was destroyed and all the Team Titans (which she had taken in into her home) were wiped out of existence except for Terra and Mirage. Worse still, her marriage broke and her husband was granted sole custody of their young son.
She rejoined the Titans with her Darkstar suit. She briefly dated Kyle Rayner while he was in the Titans, but they broke up following the death of her son and ex-husband. The Darkstars also broke up, leaving her powerless once more.
Her post-Crisis origin was updated in the late 1990s. The latest version has it that she was originally a magically-created duplicate of the young Princess Diana of Themiscira (a nod to the original Wonder Girl), cursed by the Dark Angel (a World War II villainess) to live endless variants on a life characterised by suffering. With the help of Wonder Woman, Hippolyta, and the third Flash (her former Titans teammate Wally West), the only people who remembered the previous version, Donna was restored. Somehow, she also regained her powers.
The Titans gathered together to save their friend Cyborg. They came into conflict with the JLA, but they saved their friend. After that, the original five Titans, including Troia, decided to re-form the team.
She was apparently killed by a rogue Superman robot in the Titans/Young Justice crossover "Graduation Day." However, in June 2005, DC Comics released The Return of Donna Troy, a four-issue miniseries written by Phil Jimenez with art by José García-López and George Pérez. This series marks the resurrection of Donna Troy, with an apparent connection to the Titans of Myth. Template:-
Cassandra Sandsmark
Template:Superherobox Cassie Sandsmark is the daughter of Dr. Helena Sandsmark, a noted archeologist, with whom Wonder Woman was working. She created a costume and used magical acoutrements (the sandals of Hermes and a gauntlet of strength) to help Wonder Woman, much to her mother's horror.
Cassie later had the opportunity to ask Zeus for a boon, and requested real superpowers. Zeus granted her request, but gave Dr Sandsmark the ability to deactivate them. Dr Sandsmark, however, has reluctantly accepted her daughter's wish to be a superheroine.
As the new Wonder Girl, Cassie joined Young Justice due to her crush on Superboy, where she became close friends with Arrowette, Empress and Secret, and eventually became leader of that group and eventually entered a relationship with Kon.
Her secret identity was publicly revealed when Silver Swan attacked her at high school.
She was one of the Young Justice members to later become a Teen Titan, after that team disbanded. She has been trained with Artemis, the former "stand-in" Wonder Woman. She has recently been given a lasso, similar in appearance to Wonder Woman's Lariat of Truth, by the god Ares. Template:-
On television
A version of Wonder Girl also appeared in the Wonder Woman TV series of the mid-1970s, and was played by Debra Winger in one of her first film roles.
Although the pilot episode of that series had made specific reference to the fact that Wonder Woman's alter-ego, Princess Diana of Paradise Island, was Queen Hippolyte's only child, three later episodes featured a younger sibling named Drusilla.
The first appearance of Drusilla was in the two-part episode "The Feminum Mystique". In that episode, Queen Hippolyte (Carolyn Jones) sends Drusilla to America in order to bring her sister home to Paradise Island.
Drusilla is consequently caught up in a Nazi plot to discover the secret of Wonder Woman's magical bracelets. In the process, she masters the spinning transformation her older sister does to become Wonder Woman and in the process creates the persona of Wonder Girl (though the distinction is lost on her Nazi abductors; they abduct Wonder Girl believing her to be Wonder Woman). Wonder Girl's costume is a scaled down version of Wonder Woman's, but it also has similarities to the comic book version.
Drusilla appeared again in the final episode of the first season, "Wonder Woman in Hollywood".
When the series returned for subsequent seasons, with its storyline updated to modern day, the character of Drusilla/Wonder Girl did not re-appear. Reportedly the producers had hoped to bring the popular character back, but Debra Winger, not wanting to be typecast, bought out her contract.
Wonder Girl is rumored to show up in an upcoming season of the Teen Titans animated series. It is unknown whether this Wonder Girl will be based on Donna Troy, Cassie Sandsmark or an original character.
External links
- Debra Winger as Wonder Girl (http://www.freewebs.com/immunology/wonder-girl-1.html)
- Newsarama- Phil Jimenez on The Return of Donna Troy (http://www.newsarama.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=33195)