"Stories that make you go Awww!" - Who is Donna Troy?

[icon_uk]

Normally team books are easier to trim that solo books, since there's more likely to be sub-plots you can trim out. Alas for me, not in this case, because in this issue, only two Teen Titans appear, two of the originals, and a long standing plot point is wrapped up 20 years or so after it started.




This is an interesting Pre-Crisis story for two reasons, the primary one being that it brings resolution to Donna Troy's past, and the other is that it's Dick's final major story as Robin. He leads the Titans in a mission in the next issue, but gives up the pixie boots after that. This is, however, his last Robin-centric story, and it's purpose is partly to show how damned good he has become in his chose mission, but focuses more on him as a person than him as Titans team leader, and what a story to go out on....

I've had to trim the first two pages, which are done in a sort of detective movie style. A darkened office, at sunset (or sunrise I suppose), and an insanely good looking guy in a trench coat ... it's like Dick wants to role-play 1940's Private Detective (I'll overlook the obvious "Private Dick" comment) and he has the resources to do so. He picks up a photograph of Donna Troy, smiles, puts it down, sits at the desk, takes out a dictaphone from a drawer, and starts to record an entry.

Now I love this opening shot, because in my head canon Dick is wearing the cape... and that's ALL he's wearing.. :)

Aaaaaanyway.... Dick's monologue in this tends towards the florid, but it was Wolfman and it was the Teen Titans and it was the 1980's (as we shall see)



He is interrupted by Terry Long. I shall not pass judgement on Terry Long's character, there are plenty of those who actually give a crap about him one way or the other to do that. I thought he made an interesting contrast to Donna, but wasn't that interesting on his own.

Here however, he's important to the plot. His wedding to Donna is coming up, and amidst the arrangements and family going's on he's noticed that Donna is stressing a little about finding out who she really is because it feels important to her before she can start her new life. Terry (to his credit) doesn't feel like that, he loves her no matter what, but it means a lot to her, and since Robin is the best detective that Terry is ever likely to meet, he wants him to help find the truth.

Dick is actually embarrassed that he's never offered to help before, but instantly agrees, but wants to get Donna's permission first (nice touch).

So Robin goes to their apartment and Donna agrees, though she doesn't think he'll find any more than she did. He asks her to remember all she can....



She mentions how she grew up on Paradise Island the Amazons used their technology to take a fraction of each of their strength and donate it to her, giving her powers like them.



I like the different way they view their mentors. Dick and Bruce are father and son, but Diana and Donna are sisters. It fits them both.

It's also weird remembering that pre-Crisis Hippolyta was a blonde, but there you go...

I didn't mean to include the next panels but I had to...



Tell me how easy it is to believe that Dick and Terry are smooching there...

It turns out that the burned ruins of the tenement are about to be demolished so this is their last chance to find anything out.



Dick shows the advantage of good prep-work by finding a hidden panel and inside he finds something else...



They go to talk to the widow of the man who had owned the building, but all she will say is that he was a no good louse, who made all sorts of shady deals she wanted nothing to do with, but then he went and lost it all gambling and all she got from him when he died was mountains of bills. So that's a dead end..

I'm trying not to let how distractingly cute Dick is in the next scene wearing the Robin tunic, no cape (and apparently no undershirt) with jeans and a trenchcoat because this is actually a beautifully touching scene...





So it might be Donna IS named Donna, but it might also be the name of the doll, or the person who gave it to her, but it's a start...

Spending more days working on the fabric of the doll, he manages to make out a name on the doll "Uncle Max", with an address.

Dick heads off to the address and finds the toy shop where "Uncle Max" works. He didn't make the doll, but he repaired it, just like he did all the toys from the local orphanage, and he always signed them "Uncle Max" to make the kids feel that there was someone who actually cared about them and their toys. Dick asks about the orphanage, but it closed down years before, after some sort of a scandal involving child slavery.

Dick searches the local papers, and finds that Elmira Cassiday, the woman who ran the orphanage, had been cleared of all charges, but the orphanage's attorney had been found guilty and jailed. But he can't find Mrs Cassidy, and every avenue he pursues leads to a dead end, until a local drops by to see him, he used to work at the orphanage and has stayed in touch and after making sure that Dick means her no harm, tells him where she is...



Styling threads there Dick... the 80's had some bad fashion choices, and Dick has many more than than that from multiple decades, but good looking young men in three piece suits ALWAYS looks cool! :)



Elmira is an old, old woman, who hasn't spoken a word in years, she never recovered from the breakdown she had after discovering what the attorney she had trusted had been doing to the kids in her orphanage, selling them on to inappropriate adults and the like.

She doesn't respond to Dick or Donna's questions, but rather than hassle her further, Dick has an idea...





Baby Donna is so cute! :) Her biological mother was very ill with cancer and died shortly thereafter.

But Donna had been a lucky one, and had been adopted almost immediately, by a young couple, Mr and Mrs Stacey who Mrs Cassiday knew would give her a loving home.

The name "Stacey" rings a bell in Donna's memory... (Donna's sheer joy at knowing her own name is fantastic)



She promises to visit her as often as she can (And she meant it, Elmira later appears in a place of honour at Donna's wedding)

Whilst Donna is ecstatic beyond words (and who can blame her), Dick still has questions (Well, he IS the detective).. mostly involving why the Staceys died in a room that wasn't even rented.

They head back to Virginia where Donna is doing the driving and suddenly...





With no money, no job skills, and still grieving the loss of her husband, Fay was easy pickings for Harrison, the corrupt attorney from the orphanage, who convinced her that she had to return Donna to county care or else, as a bankrupt, she'd be taken away from her. He assured her that she would go to new loving parents.

Donna now remembers more from the night of the fire, the people in the apartment had been her "new" parents (very unpleasant people to say the least, hitting her to get her to keep quiet when the grabbed her doll off her), who had paid Harrison for her, and Sam the building owner had let Harrison use the room in return for a cut of the money paid for her.

Donna wonders why people who hated kids would want to adopt one... it's probably for the best that no one offers any suggestions, but the implications for readers old enough to think of reasons were quite clear, and abhorrent.



Dick quietly leaves the family group to get to know each other... and Donna is in for more surprises (And for a change, NICE ones) as in...



Dick meanwhile has one more thing he wants to find out, and it's a simple one, but a powerful one... He visits a local jail as Robin, and asks to see a man who has been in prison for many years...



Dick may not be as innately ruthless as Bruce, but he has his moments.... And he finds the final piece of the puzzle that will complete Donna's past.



The story actually ends with the same framing device as the start, Dick in his office, finishing making his case notes. He looks over at the photo of Kory on his desk, smiles, and picks up the phone to call her..

Now if you'll excuse me, I have something in my eye and it's making it hard to type.

Comments

[khaosworks]

That panel of Donna and Fay Evans hugging each other for the first time in so many years... there was more power packed into that single Perez panel than in a dozen issues of anything else he's ever done.

[kaysper]

D-don't mind me. My feels are just leaking out through my eyes. And it's a bit dusty in here.

My eyes started itching around the time the doll showed up, and it just went downhill (uphill? The emotions just all go through a roller coster with this story) from there. Amazing stuff.

[sindra]

OH GOD MY FEELS!!

*sniff*

[sistermagpie]

I totally thought that was Dick and Terry kissing there. For real.

What's there to say about this except that Dick and Donna are the best friends!

[icon_uk]

Sadly "Who is Donna Troy?" is a question any new comic reader could legitimately ask.

[nyadnar17]

I adore this story. I grew up reading this era of titans and watching them mature....shame none of it ever happened to the guy currently wearing Nightwing suit.

[icon_uk]

I think this story worked so well because we'd seen before, and would again, how much Dick and Donna care for each other, they ARE family (In a way that later incarnations of the Titans didn't embody, despite going on and on about how they were family) . It added context and depth to the story.

It's also good that it's a compeltely human drama, no superpowers were involved in it's resolution, just lots of detective work. (Okay, it was Robin who intimidated the lawyer rather than Dick Grayson, but anyone non-costumed person with his sort of reputation could have made the same sort of a threat)

[halloweenjack]

I have to say, this does hold up surprisingly well. And it would have been pretty cool if Dick had kept the trenchcoat, or some superheroey variant on it, over a battle suit instead of the disco suit; a little like the Midnighter, only not as bondage-y.

Speaking of Dick, was his detective career ever hinted at again?

[icon_uk]

Yeah, Dick doesn't need bondage-y gear, he usually manages just fine without it, sooner or later. :)

And you mean "Grayson, Private Dick"? Not so much, alas, though this pre-Oracle era was notable for showing Dick being a more than competent detective in the old fashioned vein, something nowadays usually shown by having the character sitting in front of a computer monitor. (Sure, the end results may be the same, but there's a certain old fashioned part of me that likes seeing the detective poring through newspaper archives and pulling blueprints so he can inspect a property for secret panels that scenes of searching wikipedia will never replace)

[bruinsfan]

I still think this may be the most moving story I've read in a comic book.

[the_blue_padre]

Every now and then I come across someone who thinks either George Perez, or Marv Wolfman, or the 80's Teen Titans series, or maybe all of the above, is somehow overrated. And I see these scans,,,and I...I don't understand them. With any other artist, Wolfman's scripts might have read as overwrought, but Perez's pencils ACT the HELL out of these words.

And the characters are given real settings to live in...the reunion with Donna and her family takes place in a believable suburban front yard in Autumn.

And Marv took two characters and forged a friendship that never felt forced, nor an intermediate stage on the way to romance. Dick and Donna were friends, plain and simple.

Sorry, but this was MY series when I was getting into collecting comics for the first time. ANd it made me have feelings all over again.

[icon_uk]

Never apologise for articulating your likes and dislikes on s_d, it's a lot of what we're here for!

[flash_fan]

The scene when wonder woman is saving baby Donna, and the interrogation scene with Robin.... goddamn that is some amazing art.

[icon_uk]

And I love that it's not Wonder Woman baby!Donna was paying attention to, but the shiny sparkly lasso, because you know that's what a kid that age probably WOULD fixate on.

I had to cut the first panel of the interrogation scene which actually manages to make Dick's Robin costume look imposing, which is, as you might imagine, no small feat. though it's helped by Robin's dead serious expression, another nice nod to the fact that he was getting to the point where he was no longer suited to be the sort of Robin Bruce needed.

[bradygirl_12]

Loved this! This is my favorite era of the Titans tied with the early '60s goofy fun, and I enjoyed seeing Dick want to be his own man but grateful to Bruce for his mentoring as he used his detective skills. :)

[sir_mikael]

Oh wow this is great stuff. Lots of wonderful little touches both in the art and the writing. The way Mrs Evans tells her new family about Donna, the intensity in the embraces, the thing with Donna's mouth while she looks at the picture, the way she fiddles with her bracelet in the car... I feel like a lot of these little things wouldn't be there if done by a lesser creative team.

[icon_uk]

Indeed, it's the little things that always make or break stories like this for me, the little humanising touches that remind you that these are supposed to be "real" people, not just spandex clad heroes!

[queenrikki]

When I first got into comics I didn't read in any order. I just read whatever I could sneak out of my uncle's room. This is pretty much my first DC comics or at least the first one I remember. I've always loved this book.

[icon_uk]

Delighted that it has such a powerful resonance for you!

[chocochuy]

Have we ever told you how much we love you, Icon?

For years I have been hearing good stuff about this particular issue but never had the chance to read it till today. It is truly a powerful and sweet history of self-discovery and friendship. You have mine gratitude.

One final question, what did Robin discovered after questioning the corrupt attorney? I mean, when Dick says you are gonna be "his stoolie", it means hell is gonna break loose.

[icon_uk]

Glad to have been able to help! :)

Robin discovered that A) the sicko people who died in the apartment fire had never adopted Donna, even briefly, so she need feel no connection to them at all (It's the sort of thing that might bother her), and B) What the name of Donna's birth mother was, so that he could locate her grave, so Donna could visit there at the end.

[rordulum]

Love the 'Dick Grayson does science' montage. I'm imagining it set to some heavy beat and a lot of quick cuts to show how hard he's working to find the answers he needs.

It's a shame about the presence of Terry, though. He makes everything worse.

Also, I unashamedly 'ship Dick and Donna, so any stories that highlight their friendship are like kryptonite for me.

[icon_uk]

It's the 80's, so it would be something fast and funky, probably with synthesizers, showing what a smart, up-to-date kind of guy he is, with his 64kb processor computer and chemistry set.

Maybe not , but perhaps a little like this! :)

[rordulum]

Yeah, definitely reminiscent of the 'computers!' scenes in Wargames. Green on green monitors and rubber keys. Of course, Bruce would have all the best tech for Dick to take advantage of.

And of course, this all just makes me sad that Donna no longer exists. Or whatever her status is in the craptacular DCnU.