Troia

26 years ago - The spell to give 6-year-old Diana a playmate is first cast, inadvertently summoning the soul of Diana's twin from the well of souls.

22 years ago - 6-year-old Donna, sensing that her sister Diana is in danger, abandons her immortality within her mirror to assist her sister in holding the gates of Doom closed. She is welcomed by the Amazons and taken in by Hippolyta as her daughter.

12 years ago - 16-year-old Donna wishes Diana well when she leaves Themyscira, privately longing to see man's world for herself.

11 years ago - 17-year-old Donna leaves Themyscira to visit Diana (now Diana Prince), Taking the name Donna Troy after the goddess Athena's patron city. She meets the Teen Titans and is named Wonder Girl by Dick Grayson, deciding to become a student in Gateway University. She stays with Helena Sandsmark, becoming an adopted big sister to her daughter Cassie Sandsmark. Hippolyta shows her approval of her daughter's journey by granting her a magically enhanced lasso of her own.

10 years ago - 18-year-old Donna Troy is recruited by Raven into her new Teen Titans. She begins working as a professional photographer, becoming room mates with Koriand'r. She is manipulated by her therapist Ira Billings hypnosis technology, and works with Diana Prince to stop him when he controls people into stealing for him, as Spellbinder.

8 years ago - 20-year-old Donna Troy semi-retires after the Teen Titans are infiltrated and destroyed.

7 years ago - 21-year-old Donna Troy assists the Teen Titans West in following the abducted Lilith Clay to New Cronos, where the Titans of Myth attempt to recall their lost children. She has a romance with the Titan Hyperion, and takes on newfound power, allowing her to free Lilith from the Titans and return to Earth, where she takes the name Troia.

6 years ago - 22-year-old Donna Troy aids Diana Prince as she undertakes the labors of the Gods to overcome the barriers of Themyscira. She is victimized again by Ira Bilings who makes her believe her past was a lie and that she was merely a delusional young woman. She is saved from his illusion by Lilith Clay, but Ira escapes.

5 years ago - 23-year-old Donna Troy joins Arsenal's Titans where she meets Kyle Rayner.

4 years ago - 24-year-old Donna Troy joins the reformed original Titans. She is attacked by Ira Billings new hypnosis technology, trapped in an endless cycle of torment. She is able to overcome the illusion with the help of Kyle Rayner and Roy Harper, and together they are able to capture him.

3 years ago - 25-year-old Donna Troy dies in battle against an army of Brianiac drones.

1 year ago - 27-year-old Donna Troy's soul is sought out in Hades by Hyperion, the Titan of the Light. Diana Prince, Artemis & Nubia venture into the underworld to save her but they are cheated and forbidden from trying to restore her. The Titans go into space to save her. venture to New Cronos to save her, where they undo the magic binding her. New Cronos itself begins collapsing, and Donna reaches out to Diana through space, letting her be born again through Diana's mirror on Themyscera, restored to the people that love her and saving the Titans.

now - 28-year-old Donna Troy joins Nightwing's Watchtower.

Sometimes a character comes into existence without anyone creating her at all. In Donna Troy's case, she was originally created by mistake, and somehow her mysterious origins have become her most defining quality. Every attempt to explain her or fit her into a narrative box seems to fail. Instead, she's simply a fantastic character in her own right that has carved out her niche as a linchpin character in the history of the Teen Titans, and has somehow proven herself to be a character beloved by fans, even if no one has ever been able to figure out where she came from.

Troia's Comic History

You'd think the concept of 'Wonder Girl, the teenage sidekick to Wonder Woman' would be a pretty straightforward one, but in fact that was never her role. Wonder Girl's earliest comic appearances were similar to the earliest versions of Superboy; they were stories about Wonder Woman when she was young. The creator of the original Teen Titans has actually come forward and said that he simply didn't know that. He saw a teenage version of Wonder Woman, assumed it was a different character, and pulled her into the Titans. They scrambled and created a name and backstory for her, but NONE of those backstories have really stuck for very long.

Here's what's actually important about Donna; She was one of the original Teen Titans. She has been a recurring character in the Wonder Woman mythos, but her real place is among her fellow Titans, where she was a supportive older sister and teenage crush, depending on who's writing her at the time. We watched her grow up in the Perez/Wolfman era, where she was one of the most mature depictions of young women coming into their own that DC had ever depicted given us.

In her later years she moved through a variety of heroic personas, even taking over as Wonder Woman for a brief moment, but she always seems at her best when she's just allowed to be herself.

Our Troia Story

This is one of the roughest character backstories in comics so it becomes incredibly important that we begin by isolating exactly what we want to do with it. First, she clearly needs to be from Themyscira, and have a very unique bond to Diana. All Amazons consider each other 'sisters' so this actually requires something even more unique. Also, there's the small concern that Diana is actually formed from clay... how do we give her a younger sibling?

The answer can be found in the Well of Souls... the place where the souls of women wrongfully killed across history were kept by the goddesses to eventually become the Amazons. it's understood that Diana's soul was the soul of Hippolyta's unborn daughter... So we invented the idea that Diana and Donna were originally twins. This gives them that deeper bond that these two characters need. To explain the age difference, we used one of Donna's really bizarre attempts at an origin; that she was created in a magical mirror as a playmate for young Diana. We introduced the idea that the spell used the soul of Diana's twin, who was then able to reject her immortality to save her sisters life and become an amazon in her own right. They only wind up about four years apart in age, but Donna has always been more about being a sister than a sidekick.

From there, we actually put most of our effort into just giving her a life. She attends college, she becomes a photographer. The elements of her life where she is a superhero actually come pretty naturally.

Troia's Costume

Because Donna has always been Donna Troy first and whatever heroic identity she's currently rocking second, her costumes have varied widely. She wore a darkstars uniform when she joined that team of budget green lanterns. She's also worn a few armored outfits over the years, from her yellow-shoulder-pads-and-armored-skirt look in the late eighties to her current DC Rebirth costume (which admittedly looks pretty badass in a I-always-have-a-sword way).

But of all her looks, the one that is probably the most iconically HERS is the original red full-length Wonder Girl jumpsuit. it wasn't her first costume, but it was the first one that was unabashedly Donna. This is why, of all the various modern looks, Her black starcloth costume is the clear choice for her modern incarnation as Troia. It has the same silhouette as her classic outfit, but evolves it by bringing in the star-field motif that appeared in a lot of her later costumes. It proudly makes her stand out as an Amazon and celebrates her history as a Titan, but also is unmistakably about HER. Donna is a character that completely defies expectations; she was never just Wonder Woman's sidekick, never just a Titan. She's a character that deserves to stand out as something special.

Troia's Future

Donna's death was a major turning point in the lives of so many characters and teams. We want to use this story, and we don't want it to be cheapened by a usual comic book "she wasn't really dead" twist. Unlike with so many other characters, Donna's ties to greek mythology mean that we can actually tell a story about venturing into the underworld for her soul. More importantly, we can bring together the entire lineup of the Titans to rescue her and bring her back. We ended that story with a moment of Donna and Diana being reunited back in Diana's childhood bedroom... embracing tearfully, with the Titans surrounding them. This is what Donna should be, she should be a character just surrounded by people that love her.

Of course following this, we've made her a member of Nightwing's new Watchtower, a team meant to represent the future of the DC universe. If there is one thing that has kept Donna from the limelight, from being one of the premiere characters in the DC pantheon, it's been the fact that she's never really been allowed to simply be herself. Hopefully, with a single backstory, a solid history, and the space to just be her own hero, she'll finally get the chance.

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