DC Special: The Return of Donna Troy #4

Our cover by Phil Jimenez shows Donna Troy heroically leading the Teen Titans and Outsiders into battle. Right beside her is Wonder Woman, who has been inexplicably absent this entire story. And don't let this cover fool you. Diana will make an appearance in this issue, but not until well after the battle at hand is finished. But other than that complaint (and the six Beast Boys for some reason), this is a pretty decent cover, announcing to the world that Donna Troy is back, once and for all.

Our story begins with Donna Troy and her superhero friends leading the forces of Minosyss against the titan gods and their army of thousands. The first three pages of my digital copy are silent, and I only point this out because it doesn't feel like an intentional choice. It looks like room was left on the art for text bubbles, and characters' mouth are open like they're talking and pointing at each other. And when they do start talking on page 4, it feels like we're jumping into the middle of the conversation.

Anyway, Donna flies ahead of the other to take on the titan gods directly. Her "husband" Coeus is torn up by this, but Donna merely tells him she wants a divorce after this war is over. Nightwing loses  track of Donna with his binoculars, so he has Raven start searching for her, while the rest of them engage the ground troops. But Cyborg is horrified to see the mass of opposing forces goes two miles deep. Arsenal breaks ranks to go look for Donna on the back of a horse-like creature, and Raven is attacked psychically by the titan god Crius. Nightwing sees Raven fall and has Kid Flash save her, while Cassie nearly falls into a trance, saying being in the presence of the titan gods feels like looking into a mirror.

Donna is easily overpowered by the titan gods and knocked unconscious. Our heroes on the ground are having an equally tough time, especially when the ocean-based titan gods create a massive tsunami that drowns most of the natives. Cassie eventually makes her way to Coeus, wraps her lasso around him, and tells him they don't need the sun-eater. Coeus admits the sun-eater was never their goal — they just needed Donna. And sure enough, we see Hyperion and his wife, Thia, taking off away from the battle with Donna in tow.

Arsenal follows them underground to the sun-eater factory, which you think our heroes would have made a priority to protect. Coeus begs Cassie to release him, saying he needs to ask Donna for her forgiveness before the titan gods' plan is enacted. The fighting on the planet's surface grows worse, with Nightwing noting that there aren't many Minosyssans left to protect. Kid Flash passionately cries out at the ocean titan, demanding to know why they have to kill all these people.

At the factory, Hyperion explains to Donna that they don't care about the sun-eater, but are actually more interested in the device built to teleport the sun-eater to any targeted galaxy — the nexus point. Hyperion says this nexus point can take them outside of the universe, to what was once the multiverse (before Crisis on Infinite Earths), and Donna is the key to operating this device. To help Donna understand fully, Hyperion restores all of her memories from all of her thousand previous lifetimes on the different worlds of the now extinct multiverse.

In a dense two-page spread, Donna narrates her entire history in perhaps the most clear way possible. On Earth-1, she was an orphaned infant, saved from a burning building by Wonder Woman and raised on Paradise Island to become Wonder Girl. But on Earth-7, Donna was saved by the Anti-Monitor and raised to become his harbinger of doom, Dark Angel. When the multiverse was collapsed into one world in the fight against the Anti-Monitor, Donna's very nature was altered in a most complicated manner. As she explains, "This new universe didn't quite know what to do with some of the more complicated holdovers from the multiverse. So it improvised." Substitute the word "universe" for "DC creators" and you get exactly what happened.

In this new universe, Donna was created as Diana's twin sister from a magic mirror. But Dark Angel managed to escape the compression of worlds and subjected Donna to an endless cycle of torture. Eventually, Donna was reincarnated as an orphaned infant once again, but this time, she was saved by Rhea, the queen of the titans of myth. Rhea knew that Donna was the sum total of all her past lives — Donna Troy, Wonder Girl, Troia, Darkstar, Dark Angel and even Harbinger. This makes Donna a unique connection to every universe that had ever existed, and the only being capable of sending the titan gods to a new universe.

Once Donna understands this truth, Hyperion summons all the titan gods to him, putting an abrupt and stunning end to the war. Coeus congratulates Donna on saving them all, but she asks if all the death was necessary for this. Coeus regretfully explains that the titan gods derive their power from the worship or fear of mortal beings, and they staged this interplanetary war to gain as much power as possible before journeying to a new universe. Donna tearfully asks Coeus how long he knew she was the key to this plan, and Coeus says that Rhea died before she could tell the titan gods the truth about Donna. They didn't realize she was the one until she was killed by the Superman robot back in Graduation Day. The titan gods "called out" to Donna's soul, and she responded and was reborn. Thia interjects, saying Donna's memories of her past lives impeded their mission, which was why they tampered with her mind. Hyperion is impatient, though, and he commands Donna to open the stargate.

Donna complies, creating a large portal of light that the titan gods excitedly leap through, salivating at the planets and galaxies they will control. Coeus asks Donna to join them, but she refuses. One of the titans manages to stick his head back out of the portal long enough to warn Coeus, Hyperion and Thia not to enter. Donna had tricked them, opening the portal to Tartarus, a place of eternal torment designed for the vilest of deities. Hyperion orders Donna to bring the titan gods back, but she says she knows they will never stop conquering and killing, which is why they deserve eternal punishment.

Hyperion and Thia attack Donna, prompting Arsenal to leap out of the shadows in a foolish, yet valiant attempt to save his former girlfriend. But while Arsenal fails to damage the titan gods, he does manage to turn the heart of one of them — Coeus. Inspired by Roy's love and willingness to sacrifice himself, Coeus turns on Hyperion and Thia by unleashing the sun-eater on them. Since they are living embodiments of the sun, this monster is one of the few creatures in existence that can harm them. The sun-eater begins consuming Hyperion and Thia, who try to escape through the portal, but have their bodies torn to pieces instead.

All this fighting causes the cavern to begin to collapse. Coeus willingly journeys to Tartarus, vowing to make sure the other titan gods never leave. Wonder Girl and Athyns fly down to save Donna and Arsenal, as the landslide becomes the perfect prison for the sun-eater, which is unable to penetrate the unique ore of Minosyss (which is why it became the site of the sun-eater factory in the first place).

Donna kisses Roy, embraces Cassie and reunites with all our heroes. Beast Boy comments on the sexiness of the two Wonder Girls in a stupid Jar-Jar Binks voice. Bart is the only one who calls Gar out on his inappropriate timing. Donna remembers how she always thought Bart was immature, but now she sees him as the new heart of the Teen Titans. The remaining soldiers of the titans' army surrender to the Minosyssans and vow to help them make sure the sun-eater never escapes, working under the leadership of Athyns. The travelsphere then takes the Teen Titans and Outsiders back to Earth, but Donna chooses to remain behind. To my surprise, nobody even asks her to consider coming home with them.

Donna returns to New Cronus, the now abandoned home of the titan gods. Wonder Woman visits Donna here and presents her with a glowing red sphere from the priestesses of Themyscira. Donna instantly recognizes it as Harbinger's History of the Universe Orb, realizing it is now her destiny to be the keeper of all these mysteries and knowledge. After Diana leaves, Donna activates the orb and tells it to show her everything. She watches the past, the creation of the multiverse and the ensuing crisis. She watches the present and the future, but the future horrifies her. Donna finally understands why the titan gods were so desperate to leave this universe. Donna realizes this impending catastrophe is going to be too big and she needs help.



Well, I think that actually makes sense now. It's still convoluted, but I think I understand the basics of who Donna Troy is. Even more importantly, I understand now how her history became so complicated. The creators at DC just couldn't decide what to do with her and kept making things more complicated. What Phil Jimenez did here feels almost like salvaging the character — turning her weakness into a strength. But is this new position ideal for Donna Troy? Basically removed from everyone and everything, watching the history of existence unfold around her? Seems like a waste of her skills and strength.

As a whole, this story was a grand, sweeping epic. It was a little frustrating working through it, though, as so much crucial information was withheld until the very end. All this fighting was caused by the titan gods' fear of the upcoming Infinite Crisis. But we didn't find that out until literally the last page. And to learn that truth, we had to learn about five other things first, with each bit of essential information pointlessly being delayed as long as possible. Like the sun-eater factory. Kid Flash saw it, but we the readers didn't. He then went back and told the others about it, but we didn't hear what he said. We had to wait like four or five pages before we finally knew what Bart knew. And that's how it went with everything in this story.

The pacing was also problematic. So much of the first three issues felt like scenes were being unnecessarily prolonged and drawn out. Fights that could have and should have been resolved quicker were stretched out. We were given scene after scene of the titan gods sitting around saying the exact same things over and over again. And when we get to the final issue, we suddenly have too much to do and not enough room to do it. The climax with the sun-eater and Hyperion was almost entirely relegated to caption boxes, as the art simply didn't have enough pages to actually show what was happening. And I still can't believe we didn't get a scene of the heroes saying goodbye to Donna and/or asking her to come home with them. They were quickly pushed away so the precious amount of limited space left could be devoted to setting up Donna's role as Harbinger. She didn't even have time to say more than two words to Wonder Woman.

I actually really liked Bart's arc in this story. He forged a strong bond with these aliens, and it strongly effected him to see them senselessly being slaughtered. This was a great way to show that not only has Bart matured, but he really is the heart of the Teen Titans.

Next time, we're going to take a break from the world of Donna Troy and tackle something completely different with Gotham Central #34.

DC Special: The Return of Donna Troy #3

Our cover by Phil Jimenez shows the brainwashed Donna Troy pinning down and trying to strangle Wonder Girl with her own lasso. It's actually a rather frightening image. If Cassie hadn't managed to get her left hand around the lasso on her neck, she probably would be dead. This cover also draws attention to Cassie's star-shaped belly ring, which was also present last issue, but I totally missed it. Cassie hasn't had this ring in any issues of Teen Titans yet, and I actually think it's a ridiculously stupid accessary to her superhero uniform. Setting aside the impracticality of charging into battle wearing a belly shirt, putting such a large piece of jewelry on her belly button is sure to get caught on something — strength of Zeus or not.

Our story begins with several of the titan gods celebrating Donna Troy being freed from her cage, even though they had warned Coeus not to interfere. Hyperion is especially excited, exclaiming that Troia will now destroy her former companions and lead the titan gods into their new existence beyond this universe. And sure enough, the second Donna is free, she immediately attacks Athyns. Kid Flash panics and turns to Cyborg, just as he has been doing all day. Cyborg tries to tell Bart to get behind him, but he's hit hard by Donna, as well.

Donna quickly knocks down Jade before taking on Starfire. Nightwing notes that she's going for their strongest members first, and Raven says they need to reach her mind, but she hesitates for some reason. (I will never understand the powers and limitations of Raven.) Cassie recognizes Donna's moves as a lethal Amazon attack pattern, and she begs Raven to stop her before she kills Starfire. Several native aliens begin to grab Bart's attention and Raven tells him to follow the aliens, saying she senses they have the secret to ending Donna's madness.

One of the titan gods, Mnemosyne, begins to have doubts about killing these heroes, who actually have helped them in the past. But she's shot down by Crius. Nightwing tells Cassie that with Athyns and Cyborg down, she's the only one strong enough to stop Donna, but Cassie's still reluctant to fight her. Arsenal fires seven arrows at Donna, but she catches them all and throws six of them back at Roy. The seventh arrow was actually Shift in disguise, and he immediately wraps himself around Donna's arm. Cassie blocks five of the arrows from hitting Roy, but one of them does land in his shoulder.

Shift blinds Donna with a blast of phosphorus, which gives Jade enough time to create some metal bands around Donna. At Cyborg's urging, Cassie wraps her lasso around Donna, but she immediately breaks free of both the lasso and Jade's construct. Cassie charges in for a direct attack, saying the Donna she knows would never act this way. But Troia insists that the Donna Cassie knew was merely a figment of her imagination.

Meanwhile, Bart is led to an underground cavern and shown something very shocking. Raven and Athyns have followed Bart down there (instead of trying to get into Donna's head), and Bart says they need to hurry back and tell the others. Cassie's fight with Donna becomes even more intense, and Cassie again tries to show her old friend the photo of them with Wonder Woman. But it has no effect. Bart, Athyns and Raven return to the battle, and Nightwing orders Raven to enter Donna's head, which she finally — finally! — does.

Raven forces Donna to see the truth of all the suffering she has caused by waging this war on Minosyss, while Bart and Athyns fill in the rest on what they saw. Nightwing has everyone create a tunnel to the underground cavern, and after Raven becomes ... exhausted? ... after entering Donna's mind, Cassie shoves Donna down the tunnel. Everyone follows them to the cavern, which contains a lot of ominous machinery. With her senses restored to her, Donna recognizes the machinery as a sun-eater factory. And to her horror, she remembers the truth — the titan gods aren't trying to destroy the sun-eater factory, but seek to use it.

Now that Donna is back to normal, everybody can lick their wounds, tend to the struggling Minosyssans and prepare to battle the titan gods and their army. As Donna checks on Cassie, we learn something that has not been mentioned in Teen Titans yet — Cassie is the daughter of Zeus. But we don't have time to dwell on what that means, as Cyborg has detected thousands of shocktroopers heading straight toward them. As our heroes set up defenses for the Minosyssans, Donna is impressed by how Kid Flash has connected so well with the younger Minosyssans, and Wonder Girl's resolve to stop the carnage around her.

As the battle edges even closer, Nightwing naturally falls into the leadership role. Kid Flash tells him these people are scared, and he asks if Donna is ready. But first, Donna and Athyns must attend to the funeral of their "sister" Sparta, who had also been brainwashed by the titan gods and was killed at the beginning of this war. Donna vows to avenge Sparta's death and bring the titan gods to justice. Right on cue, the titan gods themselves descend to Minosyss, leading their army of thousands. To the dismay of Coeus, his beloved Troia has flown up to meet them in battle.




The story is starting to come together. We have a clear villain with a clear purpose, so I can focus on that. I'm still really hazy on the nature of these titan gods and exactly how they brought Donna back to life, but that's not really important now. I saw what a sun-eater can do back in Final Night, and I'm excited for an upcoming battle to keep this machine out of the hands of insane, devious deities. The path to get to this point, however, was a bit of a chore. As fun as the fight against Donna was, it felt stretched out, especially considering how Raven might have been able to end it before it even began. Right? I mean, why didn't she just enter Donna's mind right from the start, before Donna was even freed from her cage? I don't know. Raven is even more mysterious to me than Donna Troy is, so I'm pretty helpless here.

But I do know Bart Allen. And I found it interesting that he has bonded with these aliens. As I said last time, Bart really doesn't have any friends with him on this adventure, leading him to want to spend more time with these people. And even though all our heroes are moved by the plight of the Minosyssans, Bart seems to be the hardest hit. He and Cassie have the least amount of experience dealing with actual war, but Cassie is completely wrapped up with the business of Donna, leaving Bart alone to wonder how these supposedly benevolent beings could be responsible for such a tragedy.

Next time, we'll conclude this four-part special.

DC Special: The Return of Donna Troy #2

My digital copy of this comic doesn't have a credits page, but it was written by Phil Jimenez, drawn by Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez and inked by George Perez. I can't think of a better team to bring Donna Troy back to life, as they've all had extensive experience with Donna and the Teen Titans. One might call their style old-fashioned, but in this case, I prefer to call it classic.

Our cover shows Donna Troy in silver armor and seemingly charged with electricity. And this is more or less a direct scene from the story inside. Surrounding her are the Teen Titans (Bart's in the bottom left corner) and select members of the Outsiders. Superboy is absent, as he's still working out his identity in Smallville. Robin is also missing, presumably sitting at home with his broken arm. Nightwing, however, is present, even though he technically quit the Outsiders fairly recently. But in all honesty, the story of Donna Troy's return simply could not be told without Dick Grayson.

Our story begins at Outsiders headquarters, where the sudden appearance of a small glowing sphere has spooked Shift. Believing this to be connected to Brainiac, he tries to destroy the sphere before Starfire and Nightwing stop him. Shift is surprised to see Nightwing back in Brooklyn, but Dick doesn't have time to explain his appearance. Arsenal bursts in with his daughter, Lian, and Jade, and Roy immediately draws an arrow on the sphere. But Nightwing stops him, too, as both he and Starfire recognize the sphere and believe it's a sign that Dona Troy is alive.

On the other side of the country at Titans Tower, Cassie is looking at photos of her with Conner, wishing he'd come back to the team. She then pulls up a photo of her with Wonder Woman and Donna, wishing she could talk to Donna about the recent reveal of her father's identity. Beast Boy comes running by as a gazelle, telling Cassie to follow him. They meet up with Cyborg and Raven, standing in front of Donna's statue. The same glowing sphere from earlier is floating in front of the statue's face, and all the older members of the Titans seem to recognize this.

Bart comes running in, saying he saw the sentry alarm go off, and he asks if Brainiac, Luthor or even Superboy have returned. Suddenly, the sphere opens up into a bright portal of light. Arsenal pops out of the portal, asking the Titans if they're coming or not. Bart asks Cassie what's going on, but she's just as perplexed as he is. Beast Boy, Cyborg and Raven, however, are just as excited as they can be. So they all get inside the sphere, which is much larger on the inside, and seems to resemble a giant heart with large, red arteries going off in all directions. The sphere itself is hurtling through space, much faster than the speed of light.

As they travel through space, Raven learns of a horrible war being waged between Rann, Thanagar, Colu and Throneworld. The old Teen Titans reminisce of their first adventure to space, and Cassie is having a hard time believing Donna might be alive. Ever the detective, Dick begins to wonder why Donna sent the sphere to them instead of coming to them herself. Bart spends his time exploring the sphere, noting it must be some sort of tesseract (something he's had experience with), but he can't quite figure it out.

The talk about Donna turns to the titan gods and Donna's past association with them. And by titan gods, we're talking about the actual titans that battled Zeus and everything in Greek mythology. Everyone seems to agree that these gods are responsible for Donna's resurrection. Bart confirms with Cyborg that he's met these gods before, and he asks if they're anything like Orion and Darkseid. Vic confesses ignorance on the nature of deity, but one thing he can say for certain is that being a god doesn't automatically make one good. Both Raven and Cassie somehow sense that Donna is in terrible trouble, and before long, our heroes land on an alien planet called Minosyss.

As they all get their bearings straight, Wonder Girl spots a city up ahead and Kid Flash takes off to check it out and look for Donna. Bart quickly returns, but before he can report on what he saw, all the rocks around our heroes are revealed to be soldiers in disguise. Bother Cyborg and Bart are shocked they missed this, and Nightwing orders everyone not to hurt the natives, since they are technically trespassing on their land. Our heroes retreat to the city, but fall right into an ambush. As they try to defend themselves without causing too much damage, Bart asks Cassie if she thinks these aliens did something to Donna. But once again, Cassie is just as clueless as Bart.

The fighting is suddenly put to an end by a large male alien named Athyns (which Bart thinks sounds like Athens). Athyns is able to speak the other aliens' language and convince them the Teen Titans and Outsiders mean them no harm. The older Titans have a past history with Athyns and are on friendly terms with him. Cassie realizes that he must be a titan seed like Donna, and asks him to take them to her. So Athyns reluctantly leads our heroes to Donna, and we're treated to basically the same image we saw on the cover. Except we realize that the electricity around Donna is actually a cage.

All this is being watched from afar by the titans. They have essentially brainwashed Donna and sent her into the middle of this war. While the titans ultimately believe their cause is just, they are worried that if Donna is shown the truth, then their plan will be imperiled. One of them, Coeus, struggles with this act of dishonesty.

Back on Minosyss, Beast Boy has turned into a bat to quickly survey the surrounding area, reporting back there's only smoke and dead bodies for miles, presumably caused by Donna and her "pals." Bart says he saw lots of kids hunched over their parents' bodies or fighting over scraps of food. He's read about places like this, but seeing it firsthand is a completely different experience. Bart asks Cyborg why the gods — the people with all the power — do this to people without power. Shift says the nature of life is big people spitting on little people, and that will never change. Cyborg responds by saying if he believed that, he would give up being a hero.

Athyns explains to our heroes that he sent the travelsphere to them in hopes that they would be able to snap Donna out of the insanity caused by the titans. Arsenal tries reasoning with Donna, saying he knows she would never allow anything to happen to all the innocent children around them. Cassie shows her a picture of the two of them with Wonder Woman, begging Donna to remember who she is. During all this Donna has been ranting and raving about the justification of this war. But her old friends do make a compelling argument, causing Donna to become confused. She cries out to her "husband" Coeus, who defies the other titans and interferes by freeing Donna from her cage.



This is the second of a four-part story. It is dense, deep stuff, calling back characters, places and ideas from old stories I've never read. So I feel exactly like Bart in this situation — armed only with a slight knowledge of who Donna Troy is, and otherwise completely out of his element. Bart does feel rather isolated in this issue, with both Superboy and Robin sitting this adventure out. He's never really had that strong of a relationship with Cassie, so he invariably finds himself turning to Cyborg with all his questions. However, Cyborg is unable to make this story any less overwhelming for Bart or me.

Next time: Part Three of Donna Troy's return.