Tropes Media Browse Indexes Forums Videos Ask The Tropers Trope Finder Media Finder Trope Launch Pad Tech Wishlist Reviews Tools
Cut List New Edits Edit Reasons Launches Images List Crowner Activity Un-typed Pages Recent Page Type Changes Changelog
Tips
Creating New Redirects Cross Wicking Tips for Editing Text Formatting Rules Glossary Edit Reasons Handling Spoilers Word Cruft Administrivia FAQ
Tropes HQ
About Us Contact Us Advertise DMCA Notice Privacy Policy Report Bug
Go Ad-Free Changelog
  • Show Spoilers
  • Night Vision
  • Sticky Header
  • Highlight Links
 

Follow TV Tropes

Following

Comic Book / Wonder Girl

Go To

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/All_three_wonder_women_8288.jpg
The first three Wonder Girls from left to right: Donna Troy, Diana Prince, and Cassandra Sandsmark.

"Wonder Girl" is a title passed down through four characters in The DCU: Princess Diana of Themyscira/Diana Prince, Donna Troy, Cassandra Sandsmark, and Yara Flor.

The first appearance of Wonder Girl was in Wonder Woman #105 of April 1958 where the title belonged to a young Diana. This Wonder Girl wore a very similar costume to the grown Wonder Woman: a red tank top with a golden eagle on the chest and golden crests on the edges, blue shorts with white stars, red ballet slippers to match Wonder Woman's boots, she wore her hair up in a ponytail, and wore Amazonian silver bracelets. The adventures of Wonder Girl seemed to capture the imagination of writers as her adventures on Themyscira (with a companion only dubbed Mer-boy) were often displayed in the Wonder Woman serial and she even starred next to Wonder Woman herself in some issues labeled Impossible Tales (which sometimes also featured an even younger Diana named Wonder Tot) that were composed by Queen Hippolyta as a sort of home movie spliced together from different periods of her daughter's life. While the impossible tales were not in continuity with the rest of the Wonder Woman series, Bob Haney brought Wonder Girl to the modern age of 1961 to fight alongside Wonder Woman and her friends the Teen Titans even though she was still canonically a young Diana.

Enter Donna Troy. The Teen Titans had received their own series with Wonder Girl still in the line-up even though her own creator, Robert Kanigher, had declared her Retgonned in Wonder Woman #158 in 1965 (although in a very tongue-in-cheek way). So what was Wonder Girl? A time-displaced Diana or another being all together? Marv Wolfman and Gil Kane sought to answer these questions in Teen Titans #22. This new Wonder Girl was not a young Princess Diana, she wasn't even of Amazon descent! She was a baby saved from a fire by Wonder Woman who was not able to save the child's parents and not being able to find new ones for her, Diana brought the young orphan to Themyscira to be raised as an Amazon. Given the same powers as Wonder Woman by a Purple Ray crafted by her Amazonian sisters, Donna Troy becomes Wonder Girl and dons an entirely new costume composing of a red full-body (sans sleeves) leotard adorned with stars, a belt with the Wonder Woman 'W' as its crest, black boots, wore her hair down to a past-the-shoulder style, and kept her bracelets.

Here's where things get messy. As events such as Crisis on Infinite Earths and Infinite Crisis rewrote continuities and histories of heroes, Donna was a victim of multiple Superhero Origin story syndrome:

  • First came the origin given to her by the Teen Titans: an orphan rescued from a fire by Wonder Woman and raised by Amazons. This was expanded upon in the "Who Is Donna Troy?" arc in New Teen Titans, in which Donna learns the couple that died in the fire weren't her birth parents (and weren't very loving at all), and that her actual mother had died of cancer after giving her up to another couple who weren't able to keep her. It also turns out that her birth name is actually Donna (Hinckley), which she had coincidentally taken as part of her "Donna Troy" alias due to not knowing her birth name.
  • Then came Who Is Wonder Girl?: Donna was saved from the fire that killed her assumed parents not by Wonder Woman, but by a Titan named Rhea. She was raised among 12 orphans from all over the universe, on a planet named New Cronus by the other Titans, as "Titan Seeds" that the Titans believed would one day save them. All the orphans were given superhuman powers and names of ancient cities, Donna being dubbed "Troy." The orphans were eventually stripped of their memories and placed back into their original places in the universe to await their destinies, with Donna believing she grew up in an orphanage for the first 13 years of her life (until her memories were restored). In this version Donna has no connections to Wonder Woman or the Amazons, and simply coincidentally took on the "Wonder Girl" name and modeled her uniform after the American flag.
  • The Infinite Lives of Donna Troy: While trying to tie Donna back to her Amazonian roots but also keep the established continuity of the Titan Seeds, Donna became a literal mirror image of Diana. The magician Magala had taken a mirror's reflection of young Princess Diana and animated it as a playmate for the Princess, but the villain Dark Angel mistakes the new playmate for Diana herself and kidnaps her. Dark Angel dispersed her spirit across the multiverse, so that she may live multiple lives that all end with Dark Angel killing her at a moment of extreme tragedy. In at least one of the timelines, Donna becomes a super hero and encounters her sister Wonder Woman and Queen Hippolyta without being able to recall how she was related to them or even who they were. The timeline was ended with the death of Donna's son and Dark Angel came for her, but Wonder Woman and Queen Hippolyta intervened, saving Donna's life and destroying Dark Angel. With the destruction of Dark Angel, Donna returns to her original reality with her Amazonian powers intact and continues her life from that point.
  • Amalgamation: Wonder Woman Annual #1 of volume 3 gives Donna a new origin based on elements of her last three origin stories. Donna was given life by Magala from Diana's reflection and kidnapped by Dark Angel under the mistaken identity of her sister. Dark Angel puts Donna in suspended animation and years pass until she is rescued. She is trained by the Amazons and the Titans of Myth and is raised as the second Princess of Themyscira. After a couple more years, she would follow her older sister into Man's World and adopt the name Wonder Girl and help create the Teen Titans.

Post-Crisis Titan Seed Donna eventually adopts a new super hero identity, Troia, to honor her Titan brethren. She also adopts a new costume: it is a black full-body leotard, much like her old costume, that is very sparkly, a silver belt with a simple circle crest, silver boots, and the traditional Amazonian silver bracelets.

With the Wonder Girl slot needing to be filled, John Byrne introduced Cassandra "Cassie" Sandsmark in 1996 Wonder Woman volume 2 #105. Cassie is the daughter of Archaeologist Helena Sandsmark and Wonder Woman fanatic. She is granted powers by the mythical objects of Hermes' sandals and Atlas' gauntlets. It is later revealed that she is a daughter of Zeus and asks for real powers be granted to her to fight the evil of man. She is granted them with the exception that her mother is given the choice to take them away if she feels it is necessary. Dr. Sandsmark, although initially alarmed by her daughters crime fighting, has never used this power as she respects her daughter's wish to be a super hero. Notably the only Wonder Girl to have her own comic series, Cassandra was given a six issue limited series titled Wonder Girl: Champion written by J. Torres. Cassandra has been a member of both Young Justice and the Teen Titans. As Wonder Girl Cassandra has worn many outfits, with these two being the best known: an ensemble including a black t-shirt with the Wonder Woman 'W' crest, a black leather jacket, gloves, red shorts, goggles, and a black wig to hide her identity. In her most recent outfit (pre-New 52), she wore a red shirt with varying sleeve length with the Wonder Woman 'W', jeans, and Amazonian bracelets.

The New 52 rebooted Wonder Woman's continuity and started off fresh. In the beginning, Cassie is the first Wonder Girl, although has been drastically altered. Cassandra is a thief with magical bracelets that dislikes being called Wonder Girl and wears Star-Spangled Spandex created by her bracelets. She is a member of the Teen Titans. It's eventually revealed that her father is Lennox, one of Diana's supporting character and her half-brother. This makes her Wonder Woman's niece and the granddaughter of Zeus. Meanwhile, Donna Troy was brought back as a villain in the DC You run of Wonder Woman — she's an evil, man-hating clay version of Diana. She died at the end of that run, but later appeared in Titans Hunt (2015), with no memory of her past. Titans (Rebirth) stars her alongside Dick Grayson, Wally West, Roy Harper, Garth and Lilith Clay. There, she remembers being an orphan raised by the Amazons... and it turns out that's not true, and instead she's the New 52 version who was given false memories by the Amazons ...maybe.

Post-Dark Nights: Death Metal, a new Wonder Girl was introduced. In fact, she was originally introduced as a new Wonder Woman in DC Future State, but a younger version was added to regular continuity immediately afterwards. While little has been revealed about her so far, Yara Flor is a young Indigenous woman of Brazilian descent whose ancestors may be an offshoot of the Amazons who settled in, yes, the Amazon.

In comics, Cassandra Sandsmark has been featured in a 2007 mini and a couple of one-shots. Donna and Cassie also both also make appearances in Tiny Titans -where they are cousins- and DC Comics Bombshells.

Versions of Wonder Girl have also appeared in other media. The Donna Troy version co-stars alongside Supergirl and Batgirl in Lauren Faust's Super Best Friends Forever, while Cassie Sandsmark joined the cast of Young Justice (2010) season 2. Donna later became the first Wonder Girl to make her debut in live-action (not counting Canon Foreigner Drusilla), as portrayed by Conor Leslie in Titans. In November 2020, it was announced that a Wonder Girl series was being developed for The CW, featuring Yara Flor, but it ultimately never made it to air when The CW passed on it in February 2021.

Volumes of Wonder Girl:

Notable Appearances:

    Notable Appearances: Donna Troy 
Notable Comic Books

Elseworlds and Alternate Continuities

Film — Animated

Live-Action TV

  • Titans played by Conor Leslie

Video Games

Western Animation

    Notable Appearances: Cassie Sandsmark 
Notable Comic Books

Elseworlds and Alternate Continuities

Video Games

Western Animation

     Notable Appearances: Yara Flor 

Alternate continuities

    Other Versions 
Drusilla

Stephanie Trevor

Emily Sung

Yuki Katsura

Yuri Katsura

Tropes:

  • Action Girl: Whether we are talking about THE Trope Codifier in comics or her successors, any of the Wonder Girls are powerful and highly-trained warriors.
  • Adaptation Relationship Overhaul
    • On the Wonder Woman television show, "Drusilla" was basically what Donna Troy may have been if raised by the amazons from the start rather than adopted by Diana and Hippolyta. In the Post Crisis comic books "Drusilla" is instead an alias of Cassie Sandsmark, who is merely a close associate of the two amazons tribes due being close to their champions, Diana and Artemis.
    • Cassie Sandsmark and Artemis of Bana-Mighdall aren't as close in DC Infinite Frontier as they were in the Post Crisis continuity. Cassie repeatedly tries to form a positive relationship with Artemis Infinite Frontier and onward comic books, but despite claiming to view Cassie as a friend Artemis clearly doesn't and mostly tolerate's Cassies presence, or at least restrains herself from assaulting Cassie due to circumstance.
    • Emily Sung and The Katsura Twins have no connections to each other in the "main" comic books, not even operating in the same countries, nor do they have anything to do with Wonder Woman or Wonder Girl, being a late recruit to the Doom Patrol and a pair of Batman\Batgirl villains, respectively. DC Comics Bombshells changes all three to friends of Donna Troy's who serve alongside her as Wonder Girls. It also changes Donna Troy from Cassie Sandsmark's adopted grand niece to Sandsmark's cousin.
  • Adaptational Personality Change
  • Atrocious Alias: "New 52" Cassie Sandsmark hates being called "Wonder Girl". In Rebirth Sandsmark once again takes pride in the title but Flor now hates it. Flor at least appreciates the sentiment behind it, but has been taking anyone calling her "girl" as an Immaturity Insult up to this point and doesn't like the fact that there are two other people already using the name on top of that. This ended up turning what was supposed to be an Awesome Moment of Crowning into an awkward blunder between her and Diana when the former tried to formally bequeath her the title.
    Yara: Wonder Girl? Girl? You know I'm in my twenties, right?
    Diana: No, I know, it is meant to be—
    Yara: It's just a little insulting to be called a girl…
    Diana: Well, symbolism aside, when you have lived as long as I have—
    Yara: I'm not saying I don't appreciate—
    Diana: The title girl—
    Yara: It's just like, wow! Really?
    Diana: You have to understand—
    Yara: Seems like you would have your hands full with two Wonder Girls already.
    Diana: Well Cassie and Donna…
    Yara: Is this a Batman thing, like with the Robins? Should I be worried?
  • Baby Of The Bunch: Diana was initially this among the other Amazons, and could outperform them even as a child. Cassie Sandsmark is usually in this role among the succeeding Wonder "Girls", as she tends to show up after Donna has already grown up and Yara Flor doesn't get the title until she's an adult already, but this gets confusing in the continuities where Donna is Born as an Adult and technically the youngest in age even while Cassie is the youngest in physical maturity.
  • Bash Brothers:
    • Donna and Diana are this, and the two of them built a similar relationship with Cassie Sandsmark. All three have also fought alongside Yara at some point.
    • Donna and Dick Grayson are often written this way in the pages of Teen Titans.
  • Beneath the Earth: The Esquecida built their city, Akahim, underground in an attempt to hide from the world after suffering their first massacre. Donna Troy manages to find it anyway while on a mission from Hippolyta to retrieve Cassie Sandsmark, who had been accosted with a stick by an Esquecida but not brought "home" yet due that Esquecida being accosted with a dagger by Artemis.
  • Big Brother Mentor: Diana to Donna, although it's been a while since Donna's actually been mentored by Diana. Donna also serves as an older sister to Cassie.
  • Big Damn Heroes: When Caipora and Cuca fail to save Yara Flor from the Olympians The Esquecida Amazons enlist Donna Troy and Cassie Sandsmark to help them storm Olympus themselves. While Donna's confident, Cassie knows it's going to be a losing battle and instead flies directly to Zeus the first chance she gets and tells him to give Yara Flor a pass since it's not Flor's fault her mother had a child with another pantheon's god.
  • "Blind Idiot" Translation: Most comics Yara Flor appears in seem to be writing Portuguese as if it was Spanish, Mexican Spanish in particular. This leads not only to grammatical errors, but cultural confusion as Flor uses words in ways that would have no meaning to a Brazilian, and occasionally the words themselves are conjugated or accented incorrectly.
  • Blonde, Brunette, Redhead: The original Supergirl -Kara Zor-El, blonde- Wonder Girl -Donna Troy, brunette- and Batgirl -Barbara Gordon, redhead- are this in the original DC Golden Age universe and Super Best Friends Forever.
  • Brazilian Folklore: Featured heavy in the 2021 storyline protagonized by Yara Flor. Along with the usual Greek mythology, of course.
  • Broad Strokes: One of the approaches attempted by DC prior to Infinite Crisis to reconcile Donna Troy's backstory was every origin story is true.
  • Clark Kenting: Diana didn't have a secret identity until she grew up and began a mission in "Man's World". Donna Troy initially lacked one even after returning to "man's world", and what she does have tend to be temporary. Originally Cassie had the ingenuity to wear a black wig and goggles, though even then her costume was mainly thrown together from what was already in her closet. She ditched them after a situation where she had to chose between maintaining disguise and saving the day. In the version of Teen Titans starting in 2003, Cassie does not have a secret identity, which caused problems finding a school that would take her. At two points in two different continuities Cassie tries creating new secret identities to make her student life easier only for super villains to see through it and expose her as Wonder Girl. Yara Flor initially had no secret identity in the "Future State" continuity but developed one over time, though we never learn what it actually is.
  • Color-Coded for Your Convenience
    • The lasso of persuasion and the lasso of truth were originally both golden ropes that glowed even more golden when their powers were active. Out of the blue, the lasso of persuasion was turned silver and began glowing blue when it's powers were active, just in case people were having too much trouble telling the ropes apart or Diana from Donna.
    • Donna and Diana used to both wear red white and blue but Donna increasingly became associated with just red, and then black, post crisis. Cassie Sandsmark was also strongly associated with black, but when Donna was brought Back from the Dead Cassie became increasingly associated with red. Yara Flor wears several colors, but green is emphasized when distinguishing her from the rest.
  • Continuity Snarl: Donna Troy's origin is infamously convoluted, it even gets it own page.
  • Darker and Edgier: All of the Wonder Girls are this to young Diana's initial stories that were specifically geared to DC's younger fans than Wonder Woman, which was already aimed primarily at girls with just a few nods to boys. Donna Troy in particular was this to Diana even as Wonder Woman, as Teen Titans was indeed written with teenagers in mind. Cassie just barely qualified compared to the Golden Age young Diana Wonder, but then New 52 fixed that by turning Cassie into a bombshell criminal. Yara Flor makes it clear this trend will continue when her story starts with most of her tribe being murdered in a raid.
  • Defeat Means Friendship: Kara and Cassandra became friends after the former defeated the latter in 2005 story arc "Girl Power".
  • Divine Parentage: In the Golden Age Diana is the "daughter" of the semi mortal Hippolyte and immortal goddess Aphrodite when their combined love caused a clay statue to spring to life as an ideal daughter. Silver Age Diana may be the daughter of Heracles, though this would have been when he was still mortal, giving her a divine grand parent instead(The "Earth One" series makes this officially canon, but despite the name is not the same as the Silver Age continuity) or may be the result of several goddess and one god(Hermes) blessing her statue(which is officially canon, post crisis). Cassie Sandsmark is the daughter of Zeus, which among other things, "gifts" her with the power to cause lightning storms she can't control whenever she gets angry(Cassie is Zeus's granddaughter instead, New 52). Yara Flor is the daughter of an amazon woman and a yet to be revealed Brazilian river god which, among other things, "gifts" her with the power to cause nearby bodies of water to overflow when she gets angry. Like Sandsmark, Flor has no control over this. Ares eventually gives Sandsmark a lasso once owned by Zeus to help keep her storm abilities under control. Flor gets boleadoras when the mermaid Iara takes pity on her, but they do nothing to help her control her powers.
  • Fantasy Pantheon
    • The Roman gods are the avatars of the Greek gods here, with the exception of a few deities who don't have a Roman/Greek counterpart, such as Janus, or who were venerated in extremely different manners by the two cultures, such that Eros is distinct from Cupid. With Phoebe indisposed and apparently lacking an avatar, Donna Troy is made into a substitute moon goddess by The Titans Of Myth. This is despite Phoebe of the moon being a Collective Identity of Artemis, Selene and Hecate in Classical Mythology, with the actual Titan Phoebe having nothing to do with the moon, being a prophecy goddess instead more closely associated with The Sun, Helios and Apollo.
    • Between DC Future State, Wonder Woman Annual, Wonder Girl Volume 3 and Trial Of The Amazons, it's been beaten over the readers' heads that the Esquecida are tied to "the gods of Brazil", but no one has agreed who these "gods of Brazil" are. "Future State Wonder Woman" mentioned Tupa opposite to Zeus and Future State Superman and Wonder Woman had Yara Flor's activities lead to the reemergence of the brother moon and sun gods Iae and Kuat. " Wonder Woman Annual" tied the tribe to Pre-Incan gods of the Andes, moon goddess Ka-Ata-Killa in particular. Trial Of The Amazons makes their main deity Yacy, a moon goddess akin to Jasy Jatere. The only consistencies so far is that gods have to be of some precolumbian South American faith, and that a lunar deity is the tribe's benefactor. Wonder Girl(Vol 3) also portrays Anhangá, who means different things to different tribes, as a death god who prioritizes the forest over people, but might help a person if his spouse Tice pushes him.
  • Fighting Your Friend: Devastation and Genocide have turned Cassie and Donna against Diana, though their combined efforts fail to turn Donna against Diana in the Rebirth continuity... because Donna had been manipulated into fighting Diana several times already by the time they showed up in it. Still, Donna in particular tends to be victim to misdirection or mind control. When she's first brought back to life in the post crisis continuity it is to attack her former team, The Teen Titans, which included Cassie. Trial of the Amazons puts Diana, all three Wonder Girls and most Amazons in general through some degree of this thanks to Chaos having a misplaced grudge against Diana.
  • Fire-Forged Friends: Infinite Frontier Cassie bonds a bit with Artemis Of Bana-Mighdall while they are hunting for Yara. Yara is initially hostile to both but softens towards Cassie after Cassie joins an invasion of Olympus to save Yara. Yara's arrogance still rubs Donna Troy the wrong way even after fighting alongside her twice, but they get a little closer after ending up fighting for their lives together for the third.
  • Flying Brick: Wonder Girls have the top tier Amazonian Pack: Super-Strength, Super-Speed, Super-Toughness and Flight. Except Yara Flor, who is a grounded brick. Initially Wonder Girl was just younger Golden Age Diana, so she couldn't fly at all, but in the Silver Age young Diana could at least glide. Donna usually starts off "only" able to glide before getting "true" flight some way. Yara eventually becomes able to fly, somehow, in Future State Justice League, but she's Wonder Woman there.
  • For Your Own Good: During the Dawn Of DC version of Amazons Attack Nubia concludes that something is wrong with Diana, so Donna Troy, Cassie Sandsmark and Yara Flor decide they are going to bind her in the Lasso of Truth until it solves whatever Diana's problem is. They let her know it's out of love before they try.
  • Fountain of Youth: The Post Crisis Diana technically has her own stint as "Wonder Girl" when she's reverted to pre puberty in the "Sins Of Youth" arc, while Cassie is aged up to adulthood.
  • Gambit Pile Up: When word gets out that there is a powerful demigoddess on Earth that Hera means to turn into a weapon of war it causes the three Amazon tribes of Themyscira, Bana-Mighdall and Esquecida, the sorceress Cuca, the enchanted forest guardian Caipora and a yet to be identified sixth party to all try to "secure" this "Yara Flor" before Hera can get to her. They all fail, as Hera's seekers Zephyrus and Eros are able to outmaneuver them all, with even Cuca and Caipora unable to do anything about Eros's arrows turning Yara to his side.
  • Heterosexual Life-Partners:
    • Donna Troy and Starfire, through Commonality Connection at both being warrior royalty and or having their lives displaced by off world conquerors, a friendly rivalry over who was the better fighter, and Donna's use of gliding often being rail roaded by Starfire's disruptive form of flight.
    • In the Post Crisis continuity Kara Zor-El and Cassie Sandsmark started off on the wrong foot, but became close once Kara's blood poisoning was cured and it turned out she was a lot more amicable without the chemical imbalance it was causing in her brain. Cassie suddenly being able to sympathize due to her own experience with mind altering phenomenon helped.
  • Human Weapon: One of four possible plans Hera had for Yara Flor(the other two being torture, death or a combination of the two). The Esquecida claim to already have one that can stop Hera in Donna Troy. She can't.
  • Jumped at the Call
    • Diana's story as an adult already started with being so eager to follow the call of adventure that she hid her identity to take it against her mother and queen's wishes. "Wonder Girl" just showed she's had this attitude for as long as she could walk.
    • Donna Troy, following Diana's example, willingly put herself in harms way for the greater good at the earliest opportunity, but every retelling her "origin story" makes her call less voluntary.
    • Cassie Sandsmark is a Wonder Woman fan girl who really only needed an excuse, than a call to heroics. However, new 52 twists things by making her initial calling theft and vandalism. DC Rebirth parodies this when she eagerly accepts a mission from Queen Hippolyta without asking any details. When told her job is to hide or kill a specific tourist in Brazil Cassie gets upset and asks for more specifics. A beaming Hippolyta tells her to look in South America.
  • Knows the Ropes
    • Both Donna and Cassie use lassos just like Diana, though Donna went a long stretch of the "Post Crisis" continuity without a consistent lasso before the original magic lasso was just recolored silver and declared hers from then on. Cassie didn't originally start with one at all, but was given one by Ares/Zeus to restore her fleeting power/get her Shock and Awe powers under control. Yara Flor can use one as well, but owns boleadoras instead.
    • Downplayed during Trial Of The Amazons, where Faruka II and Atalanta gift Donna Troy with a rope that has several knots tied into it for The Contest. Once out of earshot Donna complains about it being worthless and fellow contestant Philippus decides to undo them for her, though Donna does proceed to use it competently after she gets this help.
  • Lady Land: The Amazons were one before splitting into two known as Themyscira, since no one was using the name anymore, and Bana-Mighdall. The Esquecida were a warrior woman tribe even before an Amazon joined their ranks and seemingly directed their culture from then on. One thing the Esquecida haven't adopted from the DC Amazons is that they actively support ladies going out and finding male partners; they just can't bring men back home with them.
  • Legacy Character: Donna and Cassie are Diana's successors. Donna was Wonder Woman for one year after Infinite Crisis, while Cassie is just this to Donna as Wonder Girl in this particular continuity, but in publication is still Diana's successor as Wonder Girl, Cosmic Retcon ignored. Acknowledging the retcon, Diana was chronologically the third Wonder Girl and Cassie's successor when Diana is forcibly aged down and Cassie is forcibly aged up in the "Sins Of Youth" arc of Post Crisis DC, technically meaning Cassie was Wonder Woman for a little while too. Yara Flor has mixed feelings, appreciating the sentiment but not the title. She didn't like being called girl even from a guy calling himself "boy". Yara Flor was Wonder Woman from the start in Future State.
  • One-Steve Limit: In addition to this being inherent to the Classical Mythology Wonder Woman so heavily borrows from, Circe and Cassie Sandsmark both fall back on "Donna" when crafting secret identities for themselves.
  • Platonic Life-Partners
    • Donna Troy and Dick Grayson (Robin/Nightwing). They have been childhood friends and partners in the Teen Titans and the Justice League of America, but Donna is one of the few DC females who is not romantically interested in Dick.
    • Cassandra Sandsmark was originally besties with Tim Drake and Bart Allen without any romantic entanglements, though a later writer very briefly tried to change that with Tim it didn't even last an entire page.
  • Poor Communication Kills: All three Amazonian Tribes want Yara Flor once they realize Hera has her sights set on Flor but assume that they each have a different reasons for getting to her before Hera and attack each other while searching, with two Amazons from Themyscira even attacking Cassie Sandsmark because they didn't know Hippolyta sent Cassie to help them and assumed she was an Amazon from an unfamiliar tribe. It turns out the only difference in their goals is that The Esquecida don't consider killing Yara a valid solution to the Hera problem.
  • Rogues' Gallery Transplant: Doctor Cyber was Wonder Woman's foe in the late Silver Age and totality of the DC's Bronze Age, but had been relegated to Donna Troy's and Cassie Sandsmark's foe in the Post Crisis stories, only fighting Diana once during them. Hercules and Devastation started primarily as menaces Diana dealt with but ended up regulated to being dealt with by Cassie Sandsmark. Hera ends up causing even more grief to Yara Flor in DC Rebirth than she did to Diana in New 52. Hera directs her ire back at Diana after Diana gives Yara her approval, howeverand when Diana ends up with more worshipers than Hera during Lazarus Planet.
  • Series Continuity Error: During Diana's de powered mod phase, Wonder Girl stories were periodically reprinted to remind readers that yes, Diana was Wonder Woman and had been wonderfully powerful all of her life until just recently. The problem was that many of these reprints were not the stories of young Diana, but those of the completely different individual Donna Troy.
  • Side Kick: The Wonder Girls have all been Diana's sidekick in some way at some point, including Diana herself due to time travel or manipulative film editing on Hippolyta's part. Only Cassie has openly acknowledged and internally accepted this status, and in the New 52 continuity Cassie rejects the idea as well.
  • Squishy Wizard
    • DC Circe, as always, is not the immortal goddess Homer described but a surprisingly squishy spell caster, should one catch her off guard without anything to reinforce her by default human frailties. At one point she tries to use her witchery to take the powers of all the Wonder Girls who existed at the time, to circumvent this.
    • Downplayed with Cuca, who is as tough as a crocodile, and learned how much tougher a crocodile's hide is than a human's by having her human skin forcibly "shed" off of her. However a crocodile is still squishy to Yara Flor, and Cuca needs to use magic to even the odds. Unfortunately for Yara, Cuca has the spell book of underworld goddess Tice at her disposal, so she can more than even those odds.
  • Strong Family Resemblance: Diana and her mother Hippolyta, although the continuities where Hippolyta has black hair like her daughter tend to be the ones where Diana never went by Wonder Girl. Subverted or exaggerated with Donna Troy, Depending on the Writer. Initially Donna Troy was an adopted girl who looked a lot like Diana at a similar age but looked less and less like her adopted sister and mother as she grew up. Then Post Crisis Donna Troy was retconned to be a mirror image clone of Diana. Most artists ignored this and continued to draw Donna with a different face and or straighter hair than Diana, but there were a handful of times the two were basically identical before that was also retconned. New 52 villain Cassandra looks like a taller version of Cassie Sandsmark, and as a daughter of Zeus it lead some to believe she was the Cassie Sandsmark of the New 52 reality until Cassie Sandsmark then showed up and was confirmed to be Cassandra's niece.
  • Stylistic Suck: The large majority of Cassie Sandsmark's superhero disguises are supposed to look embarrassingly dorky. Her civilian disguises as "Drusilla Priam" and "Donna Prince" even more so. Eros also tells Yara Flor that she has a piss poor fashion sense, and the second outfit he makes for her is one of the few things she appreciates from the Greek pantheon.
  • Tag Along Kid: Diana was initially this to herself, in time travel stories that were explicitly outside of continuity. Granted, young Diana proved more capable than any adults on her side that weren't her own grown up self. Donna Troy was next, but only in flashbacks that explained how she was before getting super powers. Cassandra Sandsmark then fulfilled this role as a rookie fan girl, though while she continued to be portrayed as less competent or more vulnerable than Diana/Donna she eventually got her own stories independent of them. Bobby Barnes remained this, as the civilian nephew of a man Diana was dating, except in Gender Flipped elseworlds, that tend to combine his story with Donna Troy's and make him her male counterpart.
  • The Call Knows Where You Live
    • The call to adventure was so alluring for Donna Troy that even when she voluntarily gave up her super powers to spend live a mundane domestic life with her husband, daughter and son Donna still found herself far from the Earth in harms way in outer space. She finally called it quits for real when her family died in a vehicular accident while she was away, but that still didn't stop the call for her return, and it knew where she died! The Titans Of Myth brought Donna Back from the Dead and brainwashing her into returning to space, to conquer planets as a moon goddess.
    • In direct contrast to her Post Crisis self New 52 Cassie Sandsmark rejects the call of adventure from Zeus and resents that she has been thrust into a far grander adventure than she wanted despite it. Diana actually gets concerned when it turns out the other New 52 Cassandra, a murderer with a compelling voice responsible for the death of Cassie's dad Lennox, has tracked Sandsmark down and Cassie is accepting Cassandra's offer.
    • Yara Flor had a bit of Chronic Hero Syndrome when it came to putting herself at risk to help people, but she had limits, having a particular aversion to fighting monsters and gods. Unfortunately the call didn't just know where she lived but knew where she was on vacation to, and one of the callers wasn't above using a love charm to compel her into complying.
  • Unusual Pets for Unusual People: In the golden age, Diana had a "Saddle Rabbit" named "Long Ears". Later, seven year old Diana would defeat the alien Sky Riders when they invaded Paradise Island, then take one of their "Sky Kangas" as a pet she named "Jumpa". Long Ears and Jumpa are back following the end of New 52 and start of DC Rebirth. You can tell how usual Donna and Yara are by comparison when they "merely" have winged horses named "Discordia" and "Jerry", though Faruka II still thinks Jerry's a mutant freak.
  • Unwilling Suspension
    • Donna Troy is chained up and hung around the neck of Giganta, who was out to show the world Donna was an inadequate successor to Wonder Woman while trying to draw out the real thing.
    • Diana, Donna and Cassie are all suspended over a boiling cauldron by Circe while she makes the necessary preparations to steal their powers.
  • Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: In "Infinite Frontier" both Donna Troy and Yara Flor have an aversion to "bugs". This is a real problem for the latter, since she spends most of her time underneath a rain forest. Giant bugs really make their skin crawl.
  • You Are Better Than You Think You Are: Diana has been repeatedly told during the DC Rebirth that's she's been doing a pretty terrible job at mentoring Donna and Cassie. Philippus and Hippoltya were subtle in their efforts to get Diana to do more for them but Green Snake told her flat out. Donna and Cassie surprise Diana during Amazons Attack(volume 2) by letting her know they think Diana did just fine. Yara, who has been all too happy to insult Diana to her face during the event, also says Diana has been a fine mentor to Yara. It is something Yara is not proud to admit but feels Diana needs to hear.

Previous

Index

Next

  • Show Spoilers
  • Night Vision
  • Sticky Header
  • Wide Load

Important Links

Ask The Tropers Trope Finder Media Finder Trope Launch Pad Tech Wishlist Reviews Go Ad Free!
Crucial Browsing
Resources
Top