Wonder Girl is a superhero from DC Comics. Introduced alternately as the younger sibling, or ward, of Wonder Woman, in both instances she is played as a protegé to the older, more experienced heroine.
Her relationship with Wonder Woman is roughly analogous to that of Batman and Robin, or Aquaman and Aqualad. The hero/protege relationship is a common theme in comic book lore.
In comic books
Donna Troy
The character of Wonder Girl was originally introduced in the Wonder Woman comic as a teen-aged version of Wonder Woman, that is, a teen-aged Princess Diana of the Amazons. (A third incarnation, Wonder Tot, Wonder Woman as an infant, had also been featured.)
As a character in her own right, she made her first appearance in The Brave and the Bold #54 (July 1964), and was portrayed as a member of a junior Justice League consisting of Robin, Kid Flash and Aqualad, joining together as had their mentors (respectively, Batman, The Flash and Aquaman).
Together, they were known as the Teen Titans.
The relationship between this Wonder Girl and the younger version of Wonder Woman was not fully explained at the time. (The mystery of Wonder Girl's background would linger in the series until finally resolved in the 1980s.)
It was revealed, four years after her introduction, that Wonder Girl had been orphaned by a fire which killed her parents. Saved by Wonder Woman, she had been taken to Paradise Island, where she was given Amazon powers by the mysterious Purple Ray. She later took the alias of Donna Troy and remained on Earth.
These revelations were published in Teen Titans [first series] #22.
Since the Crisis on Infinite Earths, Donna Troy's origin has been rewritten several times. The first rewrite came about when it was noticed that, in post-Crisis continuity, she had made her heroic debut before Wonder Woman. Her history was changed so that she had now been saved by the Titans of Myth, who also granted her powers. At around the same time, she adopted the name Troia, much as Dick Grayson "graduated" from Robin to Nightwing.
Donna got married and had a son. She sacrificed her powers for this, and she and her husband later divorced. She joined the Darkstars , and rejoined the Titans with her Darkstar suit. She briefly dated Kyle Rayner while he was in the Titans, but they broke up following the death of her son and ex-husband. The Darkstars also broke up, leaving her powerless once more.
Her origin was then rewritten again. The latest version has it that she was originally a magically-created duplicate of the young Princess Diana of Themiscira (a nod to the original Wonder Girl), cursed by the Dark Angel (a World War II villainess) to live endless variants on a life characterised by suffering. With the help of her mother and the third Flash (her former Titans teammate Kid Flash) (the only two people who remembered the previous version), Donna was restored. Somehow, she also regained her powers.
She was apparently killed by a rogue Superman robot in the Titans/Young Justice crossover "Graduation Day." However, in June 2005, DC Comics will release "The Return of Donna Troy," a four-issue miniseries written by Phil Jimenez with art by José García-López and George Pérez. This series will mark the resurrection of Donna Troy, with an apparent connection to the Titans of Myth.
Cassandra Sandsmark
Cassie Sandsmark is the daughter of Dr Helena Sandsmark, a noted archeologist, with whom Wonder Woman was working. She created a costume and used magical acoutrements (the sandals of Hermes and a gauntlet of strength) to help Wonder Woman, much to her mother's horror.
Cassie later had the opportunity to ask Zeus for a boon, and requested real superpowers. Zeus granted her request, but gave Dr Sandsmark the ability to deactivate them. Dr Sandsmark, however, has reluctantly accepted her daughter's wish to be a superheroine.
As the new Wonder Girl, Cassie joined Young Justice due to her crush on Superboy, where she became close friends with Arrowette, Empress and Secret, and eventually became leader of that group and eventually entered a relationship with Kon.
She was one of the YJ members to later become a Teen Titan, after that team disbanded. She has been trained with Artemis , the former "stand-in" Wonder Woman. She has recently been given a lasso, similar in appearance to Wonder Woman's Lariat of Truth, by the god Ares.
On television
A version of Wonder Girl also appeared in the Wonder Woman TV series of the mid-1970s, and was played by Debra Winger in one of her first film roles.
Although the pilot episode of that series had made specific reference to the fact that Wonder Woman's alter-ego, Princess Diana of Paradise Island, was Queen Hippolyte's only child, three later episodes featured a younger sibling named Drusilla.
The first appearance of Drusilla was in the two-part episode "The Feminum Mystique". In that episode, Queen Hippolyte (Carolyn Jones) sends Drusilla to America in order to bring her sister home to Paradise Island.
Drusilla is consequently caught up in a Nazi plot to discover the secret of Wonder Woman's magical bracelets. In the process, she masters the spinning transformation her older sister does to become Wonder Woman and in the process creates the persona of Wonder Girl (though the distinction is lost on her Nazi abductors; they abduct Wonder Girl believing her to be Wonder Woman). Wonder Girl's costume is a scaled down version of Wonder Woman's, but it also has similarities to the comic book version.
Drusilla appeared again in the final episode of the first season, "Wonder Woman in Hollywood".
When the series returned for subsequent seasons, with its storyline updated to modern day, the character of Drusilla/Wonder Girl did not re-appear. Reportedly the producers had hoped to bring the popular character back, but Debra Winger, not wanting to be typecast, bought out her contract.
External links
