When I was a kid, I read
Phoenix: The Untold Story, and found Jean Grey to be an important, tragic heroine who perished (perhaps needfully) in an epic conflict. Then I continued to read X-Men comics throughout the '80s, where they never shut up about her. Her boyfriend married a lookalike, and then Phoenix turned out to be an evil duplicate, and the real Jean was alive inside a cocoon, and then Scott abandoned his lookalike wife and their son, and then the lookalike turned out to be a clone who became possessed by evil magics, and then Jean and Scott finally married, and the clone kept dying and reviving, and Scott kept screwing around with other telepaths, and then Jean died some more.
Suffice to say, I now hate Jean Grey. She's an irrelevant joke. And Donna Troy is the Jean Grey of the DC Universe, so it's amazing that I still like her at all.
Donna Troy was created by accident when Teen Titans writer Bob Haney was given permission to use Wonder Girl, the time-traveling teenage version of Princess Diana, without understanding that premise. Unlike Superman and Batman, Wonder Woman was a narcissist who teamed up with versions of herself (including Wonder Tot) and sometimes her mother. The Titans needed a girl to break up the sausage factory, so a separate Wonder Girl came into being, "Donna Troy," to serve that basic function. She became more than token eye candy in the 1980s, but she was still kind of the generic nice girl with a totally gross boyfriend/husband who was outshone by Starfire and Raven on through to Pantha and Mirage. Every major attempt to upgrade Donna just made her story more convoluted and distasteful. Where there was much hullabaloo about former sidekicks like Wally West and Dick Grayson growing out of the shadow of their mentors, Donna managed to recede further into the darkness after being replaced as Wonder Girl by Cassie Sandsmark, not helped by the atrocious codename "Troia" and a series of boring-to-ugly costumes.
The first thing I did when trying to fan cast Troy was to look at people suggested to play Wonder Woman in fan circles, set aside all the strong contenders, and focus on the pretty, likable, middling options I didn't feel needed to be saved for better developed heroines. Minka Kelly would look amazing in spandex with leather boots, could probably pull off some light martial arts, can serve as a totally agreeable screen presence, and would not threaten to take the spotlight from the actual Wonder Woman.
Diabolic Movie Fan Casting
"I head the team that goes to Cheetah's city. Superman should not have put me in charge of this. I don't know how long I have left. How long before the Centaur's Poison undoes the blessing of the gods?" Hawkgirl, Hawkman, Batgirl, the Flash and Plastic Man went with Wonder Woman to the African-style plain, but she sent them away to evacuate. Diana sensed that they were being hunted, and wished to draw out and distract the Cheetah while the others did good.
The former Priscilla Rich lunged at the former Amazing Amazon, tearing her armor. Diana removed her helmet to show the poison's handiwork, giving her cracked obsidian "skin" like molten rock and a wicked case of alopecia. "You can't hurt me anymore, Priscilla... Did you really think I would be patient forever? Did you really think I would let you take away the very people I left Paradise Island to serve? Did you... Cheetah?"
See what she did there? See, Brainiac was going to turn everyone in the cities into Coluan organic robot thingees and Diana had all this compassion for Priscilla's mental breakdown but then the villainess crossed the line and Diana called her by her evil name and ooo sick burn! Also, Diana blocked one swipe of Cheetah's claws with her bracelets, then headbutted her unconscious, implying that Cheetah was a wimp who had only succeeded in the initial poisoning through Diana's misplaced grace. Way to neuter the kitty cat.
The Flash helped Wonder Woman walk across a Plastic Man bridge as they led the exodus from Cheetah's city. "We'll stop this curse, Diana. We always do. We'll figure out a way. You don't have to die."
"They're safe, Flash. Don't worry about me. They're safe."
Nine pages later, Wonder Woman reappeared in a spread located on a Paradise Island beach. Diana had suffered death by reversion to clay #34, so Queen Hippolyte prayed to the gods, who restored Diana as part of a fresh mound of pale clay, leaving a black ol' husk behind. If the subtext is troubling, add to it the fact that Superman had spent the prior two pages reviving a helpless Zatanna through CPR after she nearly died in outer space. Were any male heroes rescued from certain death by heroines? Heck, there weren't even any non-female heroes at the brink of death in the rest of the series. Aquaman had a chunk of his brain carved out and just grew it back while laying on an operating room table. I should also mention that Diana 2 was of course naked, and that neither Steve Trevor nor Donna Troy were present at the revival ceremony, because it's all about maintaining the integrity of the character with these guys.
"Chapter Twelve" was plotted and painted by Alex Ross. The script was provided by Jim Krueger, and the penciled layouts by Doug Braithwaite. I guess the moral of the story was that Diana was naive to think Cheetah's soul was salvageable, so once Diana was willing to give Priscilla up to damnation, the princess could herself be saved. All, she's selfless and stuff and things. Gods, what I'd give to re-segregate the DC Universe and allow creator's concepts to remain true to their intent. Praise Hestia I don't have to read any more of this pretty ugly self-important vacancy.
Continue the story through these character-specific posts:
