Two Sweethearts of the superhero set, forever dicked around

Wonder Girl/Donna Troy—Marvel Girl/Jean Grey

Apparently, at some convention or other recently, DC Executive Editor Dan DiDio, when asked under what alias Troy should be referred these days, remarked that she’s best known by her given name: “she’s DC’s Jean Grey.”

That’s about right, methinks. Both are the sweethearts of the teams for which they are mainstays. Both have been killed, resurrected and jerked around via ret-cons so many times that I simply can’t keep track of their respective comings and goings.

It is clear that Troy appeared in Teen Titans (1965) after writer Bob Haney failed to notice that the “Wonder Girl” running around in Wonder Woman for some years by that time was merely a magical duplicate (alongside Wonder Tot!) of Princess Diana. In an early instance of ret-conning, Marv Wolfman established that she was an American orphan brought to Paradise Island in a 1969 TT story; he went on explore her origins in a 1983 New Teen Titans story that remains her clearest, most sensible back story.

But the Crisis saw to it that, since Princess Diana was new to Man’s World in “the present” and Donna was not, she needed a new backstory. Since then, her history has been thrown hither and yon, most often incomprehensibly. So I’m going with Wolfman’s story: he’s her definitive scribe, anyway (although it should be noted Wolfman also transparently inserted a surrogate for himself into NTT in the form of Terry Long, Donna’’s husband).

As for Grey: Initially, in Stan Lee and Roy Thomas’ telling, she simply was the X-chick. But her transformation into the Phoenix (1976) and subsequent rampage as the Dark Phoenix and death (1980) basically kicked off the X-mania that set the tone for superhero comics in the 1980s. By 1985, a ret-con established that the “Real Jean Grey” had actually lain dormant in Jamaica Bay while a “Phoenix-Force” assumed her persona for the events of the Dark Phoenix Saga, thus freeing the revived Jean up to rejoin the original X-Men in the X-Factor book.

This occurred at the beginning of endless convolutions in the X-books that continues to this day (apparently Jean and Scott Summers went off into the future for some reason for a time). She’s now dead again…right? It’s too goddamn much for me to fathom.

Commonalities:
Chiefly, this would be that they’re both key to their respective franchises and are both noble, capable gals: homecoming queens in the best sense. Both were subsumed into cosmic entities for a time.

Differences:
Initially, Donna is Wonder Woman the Second: strength, flight and sundry empathic abilities, whereas Jean is telepathic and telekinetic.

Alternate histories:

JG: An orphan's innate telepathic and telekinetic abilities are nurtured in a future society populated by "femizons." She finds her most enduring family with the X-Men, and then goes through the fucking wringer over and over again, discovering her “true” origins numerous times, dying and then being resurrected.

DT: A young girl becomes a mainstay of the Teen Titans, using her immense strength and ability to fly. Her persona is adopted by the Dark Angel entity, while she hibernates. She returns to the Titans and serves with distinction for many years before dying—that is, until editorial PTB sees fit to bring her back.