I’ve always kind of had a thing for Wonder Girl ever since seeing her in the old 25¢ “Teen Titans” comics with her in that famous red jumpsuit of hers. Back then I didn’t know too much about her, but something about her made me think (for a long time in my childhood) that she was Italian! I remember asking my friend Jas (who was a DC collector) what her “alter-ego’ name was, and he replied “Ummm… Donna Troy”.
Donna Troy! To this day it still sounds like hearing the name of that cute girl in your 5th grade class for the first time!
The Titans would get a lot more famous in the 80’s when they revamped the title with new characters, and while I did enjoy that run quite a bit, in the end, it was the 1970’s stories that I remembered and wanted, and I spent a pretty penny acquiring those back issues!
First Appearance: Hard To pinpoint.
You see, the Donna Troy Wonder Girl character was created by mistake. Some writer was creating a team comprised of DC hero sidekicks, and looking at a current issue of Wonder Woman, saw a “wonder girl”, and cast her in the group that was to become TEEN TITANS. What he didn’t realize was that the “wonder girl” in the WW comic was none other than Wonder Woman herself at a younger age, teamed up with her “older self" in one of those wacky early DC parallels.
In Teen Titans #22 they sought to establish the girl in the Titans strip as an individual character not to be confused with the "Young Wonder Woman", and gave her the name of DONNA TROY.
They created an origin for her as well (it was revealed that she was an orphaned girl rescued by Wonder Woman, adopted by the Amazons and given the same powers as Wonder Woman.) To celebrate giving her a proper origin, they went even further to separate her from the Wonder Woman strip by discarding the Wonder Woman-ish tights she had been wearing and giving her the red jumpsuit costume (wonderfully rendered by NICK CARDY) that I will always consider THE Wonder-Girl outfit!
Favorite Artists:
•Nick Cardy, the master! Teen Titans #22-43 (sporadically)
and
•George Perez, the only guy who properly drew Donna in a Bikini! (New Teen Titans run)
