Donna Troy and Terry Long: A Love Story

[xdoop.insanejournal.com]

In this post I will be showing the classic romance of Donna Troy and Terry Long, by Marv Wolfman and George Perez.

We first meet Terry in The New Teen Titans #8.




Later...




Then in #9...


This scene from #12 takes place after the "Titans of Myth" storyline, where Hyperion entranced Donna and made her fall in love with him.


#13 has Donna taking her anger out on some criminals.




#20 is narrated by Wally West, who's writing a letter to his parents.






In #28...








#29...


#30...




#31...




#34...




#38 is the "Who is Donna Troy?" issue.







Dick helps Donna find out the truth about her past; her mother Dorothy Hinckley gave her up for adoption because she had terminal cancer and was dying. She was adopted by Carl and Fay Stacey. When Carl died in a job-related accident, Fay had little money left and was forced to give Donna up for re-adoption, where she was put into a child-selling operation. The bodies in the fire Donna remembered were of the people who were planning on selling her. Donna is reunited with Elmira Cassiday, the woman who ran the orphanage Dorothy went to, and Fay, who had gotten remarried.

Tales of the Teen Titans #42 takes place during the "Judas Contract" storyline.




In #45, Terry has his bachelor party.










#48...




#49...














In the double-sized #50, Donna and Terry finally get married.




























Later, Diana tells Donna and Terry that they need to come with her.

Comments

[bluejaybirdie.insanejournal.com]

*shudder*

Good God, he's such a creeper...the age difference squicks me too.

[bluefall.insanejournal.com]

BUT HE'S ONLY 29, LOL!

That actually wouldn't weird me out that much - she's pretty old for her age, and nineteen is old enough to take that kind of commitment seriously - if the text weren't so fond of making an issue of it. W&P kind of go out of their way to remind us that Donna's a rebound off Terry's first marriage and her whole social circle is too young for his whole social circle at every possible opportunity. If it really didn't matter, it wouldn't usually come up, y'know?

[scorpiokyle.insanejournal.com]

i can't help but think of Cracked's list of creepiest comic characters whenever I see Terry Long now.

http://www.cracked.com/article_16230_p2.html

[sistermagpie.insanejournal.com]

Terry will just never not be creepy.

[greenmask.insanejournal.com]

Awrite, I'm the only one, but:

AWH THAT WAS SWEET AND TOUCHING.

[sailorlibra.insanejournal.com]

You're not alone, actually. I blame it on the hormones.

[icon_uk.insanejournal.com]

Whilst I abhor the sutdent/teacher part of their relationship, I don't really find Terry as creepy as others do. He'd bore me rigid, but Donna seems to like him well enough.

And there's just SO MUCH pretty Perez art...

[kagome654.insanejournal.com]

Yeah...there's really nothing about Terry to like or miss, is there? I feel a little bad about their kid, mostly because the first time I saw him was when Kyle was babysitting and took him to the zoo. It was kind of cute.

Also, I hate Donna's wedding dress.

[bluefall.insanejournal.com]

I always forget that not only is Terry a creepy douchebag, his friends are creepy douchebags too. COME ON TITANS! YOU KNOW A MAN BY THOSE HE CALLS "FRIEND!" I can maybe see getting snowed by Terry, since you want to believe Donna's happy, but JAYZUS, Dick, was that bachelor party not enough of a warning bell for you?

[shadwing.insanejournal.com]

I think it was a running gag after his intro...every month somebody would ask "Can we kill Terry THIS month?!"

Should have been a clue...EXPECIALLY after the Divorce, he got worse

[volksjager.insanejournal.com]

Ouch, 80's fashion. That Terry long seems like a douche,the sort of guy who steals panties from Laundromats.

I think Donna (I have no idea what handle she uses these days) and Powergirl should date, they could really compare notes on how crap retcons have effected their lives and help one another :)

[fungo_squiggly.insanejournal.com]

I have to say, I don't find the Terry Long in these scans all THAT creepy.

In fact I'm vaguely disappointed. Surely he has creepier moments? Otherwise, his creepiness has been greatly exaggerated.

[freddylloyd.insanejournal.com]

Otherwise, his creepiness has been greatly exaggerated.

That's my opinion of what's happened. I read these issues as they came out, and recall no complaints about Terry being creepy. Being too much of a shlub to win Donna, yes, and being a drag on stories for fans who just wanted to see Titans hit people. But not creepy.

What's with all the fros?

[tacobob.insanejournal.com]

I've always been a big fan of George Perez, but it seems everytime he gets to make a character (or drawns them first) he always gives them those big white guy afros..You have Mister Creepy short pants above, Starfire, Deathstroke's kid..er Jericho. Alexander Luthor, Jr and I'm sure more than few others.

[mullon.insanejournal.com]

Ah, the '80s. When good taste said "Fuck it." and took the decade off.

[colonel_green.insanejournal.com]

Great music, at least.

I often wonder what 00s fashions will be stereotyped as in retrospect (in the way that tye-dyed hippy clothes are for the 60s, and disco for the 70s).

[greenmask.insanejournal.com]

So how does this all go wrong, anyway? I just checked wikipedia, and all it gave me wad the fact that a guy called Terry Long was the leader of some white supremacist group in Canada.

[bluefall.insanejournal.com]

Somebody finally said "hey, maybe we could, like, not have Donna married to Marv Wolfman's creepy self-insert anymore," and they got divorced. Basically.

In-universe, the explanation was mostly to do with her career as a hero; she lost her powers for a while and tried to live normally with him, and when she got sick of that shit and went to try to earn them back, he bailed on her in her absence.

[buttler.insanejournal.com]

Oh man, Terry Long. So disturbing.

In that panel with Donna taking her keys out of the little bowl, I couldn't help thinking, "Get used to the keys-in-a-bowl thing, hon. Something tells me that's Terry's kind of party."

[freddylloyd.insanejournal.com]

In anticipation of the inevitable complaint that Terry Long was Marv Wolfman's self-insert, I'll point out that:

a) Terry looked much more like New Teen Titans editor Len Wein in the early 1980s (http://www.flickr.com/photos/42274165@N00/1118250470).

b) Marv Wolfman is truly inserted into the wedding celebration: penultimate panel on the page numbered 16. (I think Perez might be in the middle of the bottom row of page 20.)

[ozlelila.insanejournal.com]

Okay, I'm convinced. Not that Terry's creepy, but how great the Wolfman/Perez run was. Surely these have been collected? I must get my hands on them....

[freddylloyd.insanejournal.com]

DC has issued four hardcover Archive volumes of the issues in chronological order, and four softcover collections covering significant story arcs which more or less pick up where the hardcovers leave off.

[thebigapricot.insanejournal.com]

What Lyta was thinking:

"Great Hera, Donna Troy. I took you in and gave you grace, wisdom and beauty. You are Wonder Girl! Your sister is frigging Wonder Woman! And of all the men or women you could couple with you choose this older, creepy divorced man? Oh well, he's going to die, so what the hell. Sad about the kid though."

[tahngarth.insanejournal.com]

"Hello, I'm Terry Long, and I'm a badly dressed 80's self-insert"

[book_of_daniel.insanejournal.com]

It was the 80's. How should he have dressed?

[interrobamf.insanejournal.com]

AND THEN HE DROVE OFF A CLIFF AND EVERYBODY WAS HAPPIER.

[bluefall.insanejournal.com]

Can't wait for him to come back as a Black Lantern and get killed again. Onscreen this time. Hopefully bloodily.

[foxhack.insanejournal.com]

So uh, am I the only one that doesn't really mind the guy? At all? He seems pretty much OK to me. But then again, I'm reading this as a complete outsider to the Titans, and to Donna Troy.

Motto.

[nefrekeptah.insanejournal.com]

I'm reading this and going, "what is your guy's problem? He seems like a perfectly decent character to me; he's patient, clearly loves Donna, and is willing to give her space to work out her own issues, so what's the problem?"

His ugly red beard has got to go, but other than that he doesn't seem like a very skeevy person to me.

[kingrockwell]

I was a little leery of the flirting with Starfire, but past that there's nothing really that bad about the guy other than the age difference. He seems like an okay guy who has a douchebag for a brother, really. Definitely doesn't live up to the reputation.

[hyaroo.insanejournal.com]

I agree -- I honestly can't see the sleazy super-creep that most of the rest of the world does, at least not in the Wolfman/Perez run. (I haven't read much of the character beyond that, so it's possible he changed.) Sure, Terry Long isn't a particularly interesting character, and doesn't add much to the comic, but most of the time he comes across as pretty okay bloke.

Sometimes, when I was feeling particularly cynical and fed up with the world, I've suspected that the only reason fans disliked him so much was purely based on looks, because Terry Long doesn't look young or handsome and as such is a creep per definition no matter what he says or does... but then I usually reconsider and conclude that it's mostly the way the character is handled that turns people off:

- The age difference is problematic, especially with Donna not yet out of her teens, and in our society seems much too young to marry. If she had been only a few years older, Terry wouldn't have provoked that "cradle robber" gut-reaction. Personally, I feel that the age difference was a problem not in and of itself, but as a result of the social stigmas surrounding it. It seems to me like Wolfman was going for a "love conquers all" thing, but failed to follow properly up on it (which is one of the problems I have with Wolfman as a writer, by the way; he has lots of interesting ideas but far too often fails to follow up on them).

- The other Teen Titans, and Wolfman and Perez, seem just a little too insistant on pointing out what a great guy he is, praising him endlessly for every little thing. Yes, he comes across as patient and understanding for the most part, but being patient and understanding should honestly be the minimum demand for anyone romantically involved with a superhero. Hence, Terry gets a lot of undue praise, which seems more like the author trying to bash into our heads that we're supposed to love him. Few people like to be told how to feel, so naturally they go the other way and begin hating him instead.

- He doesn't actually seem to have that much of a personality beyond being Donna's love interest, not particularly strong-willed or deep. We don't get to find out very much about him as a person, and his hopes, dreams and fears... and that makes it all the easier to, if you already dislike the character, view his actions in a bad light. The scene where he kisses Starfire's hand, for example, can be interpreted in various ways -- that he's just being old-fashionedly "cavalier"ish, that he's trying to make a good impression on Donna's friend, that he's being a disgusting pervert who hits on her and is one step away from asking for a quickie -- since we don't get to know what his true motivations was there, or if he even had any.

- He does have a wandering eye, and he admits it openly, even to the point of joking about it. While his comments doesn't seem to bother anyone in the story itself, and he claims that looking is not the same as acting, I can easily understand readers who feel he's going out of line with his comments, which could easily be taken as hurtful and uncaring: "Hey, honey, I'm going to ogle this lady who isn't you now." Donna doesn't seem to be the jealous type, but still... not a way to win fans there, Terry. (This is probably the worst aspect of Terry Long -- yes, being surrounded by beautiful women who dress in extremely skimpy clothes, it's understandable that he occasionally look... but you'd think he'd at least have the decency to keep quiet about it.)

I think those are the main reasons... what do you think?

[hollasa.insanejournal.com]

I've never minded Terry Long either. Ten years is not a huge age difference, after all.

I'm trying to remember - I remember reading a post-WW-reboot version of the wedding scene in which Kory is the maid of honor - anyone remember what that was from?

Thanks, OP!

[sailorlibra.insanejournal.com]

Ten years is not a huge age difference, after all.
It is when one of the partners is nineteen. Most nineteen year olds and twenty-nine years old have little in common. Obviously, Donna and Terry could be the exception, but their interests are never really explained.

I'm trying to remember - I remember reading a post-WW-reboot version of the wedding scene in which Kory is the maid of honor - anyone remember what that was from?
The only recent version of the wedding scene I can remember is from JLA #0, but I don't think that's what you're referring to. Kory's not the maid of honor, anyway.

[nevermore999.insanejournal.com]

I never really minded him either when I read the run. He was a guy, he seemed to make Donna happy, so I didn't care.

Then again, I looked at a lot of it through "80's filter". If he was modern character, he'd annoy the snot out of me. And I'm terribly naive about a lot of things.

I really did like the wedding issue though. Mostly for Gar's conniptions and teh fluff.

[hyaroo.insanejournal.com]

Gar was the highlight of that issue. ^_^ Never mind the wedding, let's just see some more of the green guy running around and organizing everything (and doing a surprisingly good job at it, too)!

[schala_kid.insanejournal.com]

Terry Long aside, I like the Dick and Donna as brother and sister relationship, and I like the fact that Donna is the only woman (not counting Bette Kane) that he hasn't sexed up.

I dunno I just think their relationship is more significant and stronger without the romantic involvement and I'm afraid some future comic editor/writer will probably screw that up.

[magus_69.insanejournal.com]

Well, the thing with Bette was almost completely one-sided, so...

[sandoz_iscariot.insanejournal.com]

There are probably characters creepier than Terry Long, but he's so ill-conceived that he gives off bad vibes. Like, the age difference might not have seemed so bad if they hadn't made him a professor with a gaggle of female students Donna's age. (And WTF is up with them throwing their panties at him? No one needs an A that badly.) It's like, "Dude...why are you hanging out with teenagers, again?"

[book_of_daniel.insanejournal.com]

To this day still the best comic book wedding ever. George and Marv loved these characters. This book was so damn great back in the day it makes me ache to think how f***ing awful the new Titans book is now.