Who is Donna Troy?

There's really no easy answer to that question, which has been asked time

and time

and time again.

Donna Troy has an impressive comic book resume: Wonder Woman, Justice Leaguer, Teen Titan, Amazon, Titan of Myth, Black Lantern, White Lantern, Dark Angel, Challenger from Beyond, Darkstar, and so on. At just a glance it appears writers don't know what the heck to do with her. Has it always been this way? How did it get this way?


Donna Troy has about as much of convoluted history as it gets so I will try to make what follows as simple as her original (Golden Age) origin. As a girl whose parents were killed in a fire, Donna was taken by Wonder Woman to Paradise Island to be trained by the Amazons and given powers by the Purple Ray. Amber Alert creepiness aside, this is a walk in the park compare to the updated (Post Crisis) version which goes something like this.


Donna was indeed rescued from a fire but by the dying energy of one of the Titans of Myth, who were banished into deep space by the Olympian gods (cementing a connection with the Amazons). Donna is a imbued as a "seed" of power and is transported to the Titans pimped out moon headquarters where she learns to use her powers and is sent back to earth an amnesiac, a fate many readers wished on this storyline.

Those reader's wishes came true with the Post-Post-Crisis origin, which I'll get to in a minute.


But first, I'd be remiss if I didn't bring up the whole "Team Titans" arc, which featured groups of Teen Titans (with iconic members like Prestor John and Kilowat!) from the future traveling to the past to kill Donna Troy before she could give birth to her son,


a human baby born with the omnipotence which drives him mad to the point where he ages himself to adulthood calls himself Lord Chaos and throws the biggest tantrum of all time.

To prevent this Donna willingly forgoes her powers and becomes a normal human so that her baby is also normal, which is a shame when the baby, and the father die in a crash a short time later (off panle no less!). This event leaves Donna powerless and alone, and she eventually hooks up with Green Lantern (Kyle Rayner)


and joins the Darkstars (an intergalactic police force like the Green Lanterns). For about 3 years Darkstar Donna Troy policed the galaxy as an officer of the peace. Before the Darkstars got their butts handed to them by Darkseid's son, and disbanded. Somehow she got her original powers back...

As it was revealed in the Post-Post-Crisis origin where things get even weirder. Donna Troy is no longer human but a simulacrum of a golem, as she was created by sorceress using a magic mirror to create an reflective identical image of Wonder Woman intended to be a playmate for young Diana on Themysciria.


There's more to it than that - but involves even more time travel, space travel, the cosmic multiverse, and whole bunch of headache inducing plot devices. What you really need to know are these highlights. Donna rejoins the Titans,

only to be killed by a Superman robot

and then when brought back to life by the Titans of Myth where she learned she was also once the Anti-Monitor's version of Harbinger (as Dark Angel).

Later she became Wonder Woman for a short time during 52...

and was killed (again) in Blackest Night by Nekron...

and brought back to life (again) with a White Lantern ring,

Joined the Justice League

and is now likely to get another layer added with the DC Universe Flashpoint reboot.

She's like Marvel's Phoenix, a character that keeps dying and combing back new to the point of parody. Hopefully the reboot will get her origin right and drop the humdrum Space Opera origin for one as streamlined as this costume.