Okay, I'll Bite...Who IS Donna Troy?

I geeked out a little more than usual today at the comic shop, picking up some stuff beyond this week's stack.
One of those extras was the trade "Who Is Donna Troy?" which collects the many attempts that were made to fit the character of Donna Troy into continuity.
That was no easy task, given the way the character came about, and the retroactive changes to the history of the DC Universe that occurred afterwards.
For anyone reading this who isn't Scott - though I'm not sure why anyone other than Scott would be reading this - Donna Troy is the alter ego of the super heroine who, for most of her career, was known as Wonder Girl.
(Or, as her male teammates frequently referred to her in her earliest adventures in the swinging 60s, "Wonder Chick," or "Wonder Gal.")
Donna was first introduced in 1965 as a member of the youthful super-group the Teen Titans, a team that consisted of the kid sidekicks of heroes like Batman and the Flash.
In putting together the team of teen heroes, writer Bob Haney clearly felt that they needed a female presence, and since all of the male members were teen counterparts to established heroes, he decided to go with the teen counterpart to Wonder Woman, who had made several appearances in old Wonder Woman comics.
There was just one problem.
Unlike, say, Kid Flash, or Aqualad, who were actually individual characters who were distinct from their mentors, the Wonder Girl who'd appeared in Wonder Woman comics was, as with Superboy and Superman, actually Wonder Woman as a teenager.
Oops.
But you can't really blame Haney for being confused. After all, there had been stories that had featured Wonder Woman and Wonder Girl in action together. Hell, those adventures often included Wonder Tot.
(Sadly, I'm not kidding. Yes, Wonder Tot was Wonder Woman as a little kid, much like Superbaby.)
So how could this be, if Wonder Woman, Wonder Girl, and (*sigh*) Wonder Tot were all the same person? Clearly it couldn't. That would be impossible.
Which is why the stories that featured the three different versions of the same character were referred to as "Impossible Stories."
Literally, that's what they were called. Superman had "Imaginary Stories," which told of things that could never happen in the real continuity (Superman marries Lois! Lana Lang marries Lex Luthor! Perry White insists that everyone call him "Chief!" Superman gives Brainiac a reacharound!), and Wonder Woman had "Impossible Stories."
So yeah, the character who would eventually be known as Donna Troy was nothing but trouble right from the start.
Eventually a backstory was created for Donna.
It turns out that, as an infant, she was rescued from a burning building by Wonder Woman. As she was an apparent orphan, Wonder Woman decided to bring her home with her to Paradise Island to be raised as an Amazon. Using their advanced technology to impart it to her, each Amazon donated a portion of her strength to the infant, giving her all of the powers of Wonder Woman. Donna was raised by Queen Hyppolyta - Wonder Woman's mother - and WW considered Donna to be her little sister.
There was still a problem with this, in that this would mean that Wonder Woman had been active in "Man's World" for much longer than what had been established as current continuity, but that objection was generally greeted with some dismissive hand-waving, and everyone was happy.
In the early 1980s, there was an issue of New Teen Titans entitled "Who Is Donna Troy?" in which Dick Grayson - who was, at the time, between identities, having given up the role of Robin, but not yet having taken on the role of Nightwing - was tasked by a soon-to-be married Donna to find out who she really was and to determine if she had any blood relatives.
It was a great story - and was selected, justifiably, as one of "The Greatest Marv Wolfman Stories Ever Told" 0ver at Comics Should Be Good - and, having been trained by the World's Greatest Detective, Dick managed to track down Donna's identity and a surviving family member.
Then Crisis on Infinite Earths happened. This was an event that completely rewrote the history of the DC Universe. It took a couple of years for things to completely shake out and for that new history to be written, but there was a major problem. In the new timeline, Wonder Woman had only recently started her career as a super heroine, and, indeed, was only a couple of years older than Donna.
So the question was asked, yet again, "Who is Donna Troy?" Yet another answer was put forth, but it wasn't exactly satisfactory, since the new history completely severed her ties with WW, and also made it seem strange that someone would show up calling herself Wonder Girl a few years before a completely unrelated person with the same powers and wearing a very similar costume shows up and is called Wonder Woman.
So then they changed some more stuff, and then still more, and then...well, and then I bought the trade that collects all of that stuff.
I also picked up some bags and boards and a couple of drawer boxes, as the stacks of unsorted and unarchived comics are piling up once again.
And finally I picked up Essential X-Men Volume 2, which reprints the classic Claremont/Byrne run, including "The Dark Phoenix Saga" and "Days of Future Past."
While the pure value of being able to get reprints of a huge number of comics for a low price makes up for it, most of the time I do lament the lack of color in the Marvel Essential line (and DC's Showcase Presents line), but honestly, in the case of the X-Men collection I picked up today, the lack of color is a feature, not a bug. I don't mean any disrepect to the colorist(s) on the original, and I would really like to see some Absolute Edition style collection of "The Dark Phoenix Saga." In fact, if Marvel put out something comparable to that reprint of The Rocketeer that I bought last year - a book that is so beautiful that I asked it to marry me; it said that it was flattered, but that things are getting kind of series between it and my Absolute Edition of Watchmen - I would buy the hell out of it.
But honestly, the lack of color in that Essential collection just drives home the mind-blowing beauty of the art. In stark black and white, Byrne's pencils complement by Terry Austin's inks are just...wow.

Jon's Impotent Rage: Free Sample!

I hate when stores give free samples.
Why is that? Here's a list:

1. Doing so encourages - and even requires - store employees to try to talk to me. Further, many of the people giving out free samples seem to think that they missed their calling and were meant to be carnival barkers. Honestly, do I look like someone whose day is going to be brightend by your cheerful attempts at engaging me in conversation?
2. They encourage customers to stand around. People stop dead in their tracks and get in my way enough as it is; they don't need an excuse.
3. While I'm not as creeped out in a borderline-autistic way by it as some people I know, the sight and sound of people eating as they walk around the store is pretty unappealing. I could do without all of the chewing and slobbering.
4. Free samples are one of the main reasons I can't seem to grab a shopping cart that hasn't been used as a previous customer's personal landfill. They're all full of little sample cups and greasy, crumpled up napkins. I'm surprised I don't have to fight off Sea Gulls to get to the cart sometimes.

A Small Request

No offense intended to Aaron Lopresti, but after reading the last couple of issues of Secret Six, I have a small request:

I can haz Nicola Scott as pensuller on Wonder Woman? kthxbai

Here's That Rant You Ordered

I woke up a little later than usual this morning at around 9:45. I got up, did the usual sitting around for what felt like about a half an hour, then happened to look at the time on my computer.
11:15.
The hell? No way was that an hour and a half.
Then I remembered the stupid time change and I went from being puzzled to being annoyed, as I’d already lost an hour of the day. It’s not like I was going to do anything with that hour, but even so, I didn’t appreciate having it taken away from me.
In any case I suppose I should get around to my delayed ranting.
I was getting ready to leave work on Wednesday. The computer was in the process of shutting down, and Iwas preparing to remove the computer from its docking station and lock it in my cabinet for the night.
Naturally that’s when my phone rang.
It was only a minor delay, but at that point in the day a delay of five minutes at work can result in the addition of ten minutes to my drive home. There are very limited windows of opportunity to avoid some of the more hellacious traffic levels, so every second counts.
After getting off of the phone , I was prepared to just head out the door, but I figured I should talk to my boss about the call. It wasn’t anything terribly important, but it was something that I figured I should ask/tell her about.
Total delay? Ten minutes. Fortunately the time added to the drive doesn’t continue to double as the delay increases, but a ten minute delay in leaving at that point still means about an additional fifteen minutes on the road.
The first big annoyance was some jackass who didn’t have a Smart Tag/EZ Pass, yet decided to ignore the sign saying “Right Lane Smart Tag/EZ Pass Only,” and then got penned in right at the toll booths, unable to move over to one of the exact change/full service lanes, causing me to be at a dead stop behind six other cars, which is especially annoying given that the whole point of having a Smart Tag is to not have to stop at the damn toll booths.
Once I got past that point some woman was merging onto 28 without considering the possibility that there might be oncoming traffic to merge with, and, without looking and while right alongside me, she started moving into my lane.
I didn’t have time to do anything but speed up and swerve into the other lane – hoping that I wouldn’t hit anyone – and when I pulled back into the lane ahead of her the bitch had the nerve to honk her horn at me.
Five minutes later someone else pulled more or less the same maneuver, but this time I didn’t have another lane to swerve into, so I had to slam on my brakes. I didn’t honk my horn because a. it’s so wimpy sounding and b. if the jackass didn’t hear the sound of my tires screeching it’s unlikely he would have heard the horn.
Then I was stuck behind a line of cars on Sycolin. Sycolin is a narrow, winding, rutted, partially-unpaved road that’s really not suitable to be driven on by the faint of heart, especially since most people – like me – tend to drive like maniacs on it.
After all, the road inspires a kind of mania, and that’s what makes it so irritating when some timid people who are actually concerned about the safety of themselves and others – and who don’t want to get their precious SUVs, luxury cars, and minivans all dusty – get on the road. Stay the hell off, sane people! Let the lunatics run that particular asylum.
In any case, the big hold up there was a student driver.
I can appreciate the idea; take a student driver out onto a dangerous and poorly-maintained road as something of a trial by fire. Makes sense to me. But at or around rush hour? Screw the opportunity for a student to gain some experience; at that point, you’re just being a dick to everyone else.
I was set to meet Scott at Target so that I could pick up the Wonder Woman animated movie and then we could figure out where to eat. At the stoplight at the entrance to Target – at a red light – some idiot behind me honked his horn at me. The light is red, jackass. Admittedly, he might have been honking about something else, but at that point I was pretty well on edge and a hair’s breadth away from succumbing to road rage.
Once I got into Target things didn’t improve much, as they didn’t have the Wonder Woman movie on Blu-ray. WTF?
We decided to check out the Wal-Mart – the ghetto one that I generally avoid – across the street. They had a space for the Blu-ray, but it was empty, and when we finally tracked down an Associate we were informed that it was “in transit.”
Scott was going to wait to buy the DVD until the next week, so I decided that I’d just buy it on DVD so that we could watch it and then he could keep it and pay me back later.
(He ended up paying for my ticket to Watchmen in trade.)
After that we went to eat at IHOP, hoping that they wouldn’t have the soul-destroyingly bad bacon that they did last time. I actually played it safe and ordered something sans bacon (ham steak and eggs), but Scott took his chances. Luckily the bacon was much improved this time.
As an aside, our waitress was kind of cute, but her cuteness was ruined by her atrocious Southern accent. Gah, it was like nails on a chalkboard.
Anyway, that’s my big rant. In starting to relay my rant to Scott when I finally arrived at Target I had said, “The Universe has run out of ideas; it’s resorted to just throwing cars at me.”
I didn’t do much yesterday – or today, for that matter – beyond hitting the comic shop, where one of the employees informed me, angrily, that one reviewer had likened Watchmen to the Catwoman movie. Besides being an incredibly inaccurate claim, that just seems cruel. Even if Watchmen had been bad, there’s no reason to ever make that comparison.
I did pick up Wonder Woman on Blu-ray as well – it came with a little weirdly-articulared Wonder Woman action figure – and I also bought some fancy air purifier. It cleans the air three ways!
I figure I had to something, at least in my bedroom, as there’s always something floating around that irritates my allergies.
Anyway, that’ll do it for this entry.

Too Tired...Too Lazy...Take Your Pick

I've got a huge rant waiting inside of me about my post-work commute yesterday, but I just don't have the energy to write it up just now.
Not sure when I will write it; tomorrow night I'll be off to see Watchmen in IMAX. Depending on how that goes, I might just have another rant. Hopefully not.
On some positive notes, for Riff Trax night Scott and I watched no Riff Trax, but rather the Futurama movie Bender's Game, which was hilarious, and the new DC Animated movie Wonder Woman. The acquisition of said movie contains a rant in itself, but the movie was awesome. Astonishingly so, actually. I'd read that it was good, and based on other DC Animated projects, I expected that it would be, but I was unprepared for it to be so full of, well, wonder.
Very good stuff, and the preview for the next feature - a Green Lantern movie - while containing no footage, made it look very promising.
And finally, let me just say, "Money money money money....money!"
(Tax refunds + bonus = a happy Jon*)

*For a Jon-specific value of "happy."