Donna Troy

The subsequent Crisis on Infinite Earths miniseries (1985–1986) rewrote the history of many DC Comics characters; Wonder Woman's own pre-Crisis history was written out of existence, and the character was reintroduced in Wonder Woman (vol. 2) #1 (February 1987) as a new arrival from Themyscira (the former Paradise Island).

With the character of Donna tied predominantly to the Titans, her origin was retconned to fit into the new continuity created by Wonder Woman's relaunch, one severing her direct ties to the Amazons.

In the storyline "Who Is Wonder Girl?" featured in The New Titans #50-54 (December 1988-March 1989), the Titans of Myth enlist Donna's aid against the murderous Sparta of Synriannaq.

It is revealed that the Titan Rhea had rescued a young Donna from a fire; Donna and Sparta had then been part of a group of 12 orphans from around the universe who had been raised on New Cronus by these Titans as "Titan Seeds," their eventual saviors.

The Seeds had been given superhuman powers, and named after ancient Greek cities. Called "Troy," Donna (like the others) had eventually been stripped of her memories of her time with the Titans of Myth, and reintroduced into humankind to await her destiny; Sparta had retained her memories, and the knowledge had eventually driven her mad.

Killing her fellows Seeds to "collect" their powers and destroy the Titans of Myth, Sparta is ultimately defeated by Donna and the only other Seed left alive, Athyns of Karakkan.

In The New Titans #55 (June 1989), Donna changes her pseudonym from Wonder Girl to Troia and adopts a new costume incorporating mystical gifts from the Titans of Myth.

During the Titans Hunt storyline, Donna discovers she is pregnant; in the New Titans Annual #7 (1991), a group calling themselves the Team Titans appears, intent on killing her.

They come from a future in which Donna's son is born with the full powers of a god and full awareness of them, which drives him mad.

He instantly ages himself, kills his mother, and becomes a dictator known as Lord Chaos.

The Team Titans travel back to the past to kill Donna before her son can be born.

Donna eventually gives birth to Robert; to prevent him from becoming Lord Chaos, she sacrifices her powers and becomes a normal human.

Eventually, Donna rethinks her decision and asks the Titans of Myth to grant her powers again; her request is rejected.

She then joins the Darkstars. During the Zero Hour crisis, her farm in New Jersey is destroyed and all the Team Titans are wiped out of existence except for Terra and Mirage.

Her marriage in ruins, Donna loses custody of her son to her now ex-husband Terry.

Donna rejoins the New Titans for a time, with her Darkstar suit giving her the ability to aid them.

She dates Kyle Rayner for a while and retires from the Darkstars, leaving her powerless.

Donna and Kyle break up immediately following the death of her son, stepdaughter and ex-husband in a car accident

Her post-Crisis origin was updated in the late 1990s.

This version had it that she was originally created by the Amazon sorceress Magala as a magical duplicate of the young Princess Diana of Themyscira (a nod to the original Wonder Girl) to be a playmate for Diana, who was previously the only child on the island.

However, Donna was soon kidnapped by the Dark Angel (a World War II villainess and sworn enemy of Queen Hippolyta, Diana's mother), who thought the girl was Diana.

Dark Angel cursed Donna to live endless variants of a life characterized by suffering, with her life being restarted and erased from the world's memory when Donna was at her lowest.

Even Donna would forget her past lives until the moment at which Dark Angel would arrive to restart her life, at which point she would immediately recall all of her past 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, presumably because that was how Wally remembered her.

Initially, she was concerned that she was not the "same"

Donna, but an idealized form based on Wally's memories. She has since accepted that this is not the case.

Shortly afterwards, the Titans gathered together to save their friend Cyborg.

They came into conflict with the JLA, but they saved their friend.

During this incident Donna was seemingly reunited with her son via virtual reality, but with the aid of Nightwing, realized it was not real.

After that, the original five Teen Titans, including Troia, decided to reform the team.

A subsequent battle with Dark Angel suggested her constant rewriting of Donna's history involved Hypertime.

It is not clear how this ties in with later revelations.

Realizing that Donna was created from a portion of Diana's soul, Queen Hippolyta accepted Donna as a blood-related daughter and held a coronation on Themyscira to formally introduce Donna as the second princess of Paradise Island.

This aspect brought Donna more in-line with her Pre-Crisis Themyscirian origins.

After her coronation, Donna and Diana's bond as sisters grew stronger.

The two Amazons shared a high end apartment in New York City and Donna became more active in life on Themyscira.

While the Amazons of Bana-Mighdall saw Diana as an official moderator between the Themyscirian Amazons and themselves, Donna made strides in becoming an accepted member of both tribes in their eyes.

While aiding the Amazons, Donna also came into contact with the villain Angle Man who immediately became enamored with her.

After their awkward yet flirtatious first meeting, a seriously wounded Angle Man later teleported himself to Donna seeking her help after being attacked by The Cheetah.

In a separate battle, Donna 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 Luis García-López and George Pérez which marked the resurrection of Donna Troy and cleared up her multiple origins.

Donna Troy has now discovered that like every other person after the Crisis on Infinite Earths, she is a merger of every alternate version of Donna Troy in the Multiverse.

Unlike everyone else, Donna is the repository of knowledge of every alternate universe version of herself and remembers the original Multiverse.

She learned that her counterpart on Earth-Two was saved by a firefighter and was raised in an orphanage, while her Earth-S counterpart died in the fire.

She also discovered that her sworn enemy of the past, Dark Angel, was in fact the Donna Troy of Earth-Seven, saved from certain death by the Anti-Monitor, just like the Monitor had saved Harbinger.

When the Multiverse was reconfigured in one single Universe, Dark Angel, who had somehow escaped the compression of every Donna Troy into one single person in the new Earth, sought to kill her (every life she forced her to relive was in fact an aspect of an alternate Donna as a way to avoid the merging and remain the last one standing).

When she was defeated, Donna became the real sum of every Donna Troy that existed on every Earth, a living key to the lost Multiverse.

Her role in Infinite Crisis is, at the end of The Return of Donna Troy, fully stated: Donna had been reborn after her death at the hands of the Superman android.

The Titans of Myth, realizing that she was the child who was destined to save them from some impending threat, brought her to New Cronus and implanted false memories within her mind to make her believe she was the original Goddess of the Moon and wife of Coeus.

The Titans of Myth incited war between other worlds near New Cronus in order to gain new worshippers.

They would then use the combined power of their collective faith to open a passageway into another reality, where they would be safe from destruction.

Donna was another means to that end until she was found by the Titans and The Outsiders who restored her true memories.

This was not without casualties, however.

Sparta (who was restored to full mental health and stripped of the bulk of her power) had been made an officer in the Titans of Myth's royal military.

She was sacrificed by the Titans of Myth in an attempt to lay siege to the planet, Minosyss, which housed a Sun-Eater factory miles beneath its surface.

Sparta's death had inadvertently helped trigger Donna's memory restoration.

Athyns had also reappeared by this time, and aided the heroes and the Mynossian resistance in battling the Titans of Myth.

It was then that Hyperion, the Titan of the Sun, revealed Donna's true origins to her and ordered her to open a passageway into another reality by means of a dimensional nexus that once served as a gateway to the Multiverse itself, within the Sun-Eater factory's core.

This turned out to be the Titans of Myth's real target.

Donna did so, but fearing they would simply continue with their power-mad ambitions, she banished most of them into Tartarus.

However, Hyperion and his wife, Thia, were warned of the deception at the last moment.

Enraged, they turned on Donna, intending to kill her for the betrayal, but Coeus activated the Sun-Eater to save her and Arsenal.

As the Sun-Eater began absorbing their vast solar energies, Hyperion and Thia tried to escape through the Nexus, but they were both torn apart by the combined forces of the Nexus' dimensional pull and the Sun-Eater's power.

Coeus, who had learned humility and compassion from Donna, vowed to guard the gateway to make certain the other Titans of Myth remained imprisoned forever.

Links
Those Who Ride the Lightning
Unofficial Guide to DC U
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DC Comics
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