Teen Titans #38
“Who is Donna Troy?”
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| Classy as hell. |
Taking a break from the tumult and
drama of the various personal issue plaguing the heroes of the Teen
Titans, as well as the revelation that spunky new member Terra is
actually a spy for arch-villain Deathstroke the Terminator, creators
Marv Wolfman and George Perez present a quiet tale about two friends
and the various ways the Titans support each other outside of super heroics.
This story is born from an old
continuity error in the original Teen Titans stories that most
writers and readers were content to ignore. Wonder Girl was
originally introduced in comics in the 1950s as a younger version of
Wonder Woman, similar to Superboy. Not a separate character, but an established character who was featured in
stories explicitly set in the past. In the late 60s, when the Teen
Titans began, the writer and editor were seemingly unaware of this
fact and presented Wonder Girl as Wonder Woman's sidekick, the two
characters existing simultaneously as different people. Essentially,
at this point, Donna Troy is a woman without a past. It had been a
minor sub-plot running through the title that while Donna was rescued
by Wonder Woman from an apartment fire at a young age, she never
knew her past or who her parents were.
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| Dick figuring it out like a pimp. |
With her marriage to Terry Long
(divorced college professor at least 15 years Donna's senior and
possessed of a bitching 'fro and beard) impending, it becomes
increasingly important for Donna to know her past, her family, before
being able to move on to the next stage of her life. Lucky for Donna,
she happens to have a friend who was trained by the world's greatest
detective. Also, Dick Grayson doesn't cite some arbitrary charter as
a reason to not get involved in the personal problems of friends and
teammates but acts like a reasonable human being and agrees to do
what he can. So, with that bit of continuity behind us, Robin and
Wonder Girl skip off onto the greatest of superhero tropes: the
team-up.
Dick and Donna are able to trace their
steps from the landlord of the apartment from which Donna was rescued to the
headmistress of an orphanage, finally finding her real mother. Donna
had been given up for adoption by a scared young mother with no
skills and no money after her husband had died in a work accident.
The mother, believing Donna had died with her adoptive parents in the
apartment fire mourned and moved on with her life. Happy endings all
around and Donna finds the closure she needed.
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| I don't know if what Donna's wearing was ever in style. |
'Who is Donna Troy?' is a simple story,
but I point out the creators, Marv Wolfman and George Perez, above to
highlight not only the work they've done, and will continue to do,
with this series, but this issue in particular. This is a comic
book story with no physical conflict, no colorful villains, no
simmering sub-plots, and no nefarious plot to be unraveled. While not
quite being the anti-comic, the story does tend to get mired in old
continuity and the need to contribute something to the over-arching
shared universe, we can forgive this one typicality for as atypical a
comic it is.
 ' |
| As much as I love the lack of fisticuffs, image choice was kinda boring. |
Dick and Donna are old friends, they
were founding members of the Titans, and on the eve of Dick's
decision to leave the team, he agrees to help his friend with perhaps
the largest problem of her young life. The issue spotlights not just
Dick's prowess as a detective but his loyalty as a friend. In the
same way, Donna as Wonder Girl is not defined by her immense strength
but her compassion towards others as the layers of her past are
peeled back. In eschewing any physical conflict the creators force
the reader to get to know superhero, sidekick or otherwise,
characters as something other than wish fulfillment fantasy. This is
a fantastic issue all around and the creators should be applauded for
it.
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