Are You A Fan Of The Wonder Family?

Donna Troy exists because Bib Haney thought that continuity was something that happened to other people.

I am now convinced that Hippolyta would run a family vlog KZfaq channel.

So Hippolyta basically invented "Deep Fakes". This reminds me of how the "Super-Sons" stories in the 1970s were eventually explained away as a computer simulation that Superman and Batman were running. For reasons. I think the take-away here is that Hippolyta desperately wanted more children, but apparently Aphrodite wasn't up to animating any more statues, so she had to take matters into her own hands.

The editorial genius of Hyppolyta was way before her time.

"Forget it Jake, it's Silver Age DC."

"Lemme invite my family!" "Oh, your mother and sisters?" "Nah, the two video-edited versions of me, but much younger."

Hippolyta sounds like the kind of woman who, if she didn't have Diana, would sit alone in a studio apartment, drinking tea and drawing herself into her favorite Cathy comic strips.

What I'm getting is that Hippolyta really want to be a filmmaker.

I choose to believe that even today Donna Troy is still the product of Hippolyta's amazing editing skills.

NGL I knew of the "Wonder Woman, Wonder Girl and Wonder Tot adventures all being Diana led to Donna Troy" bit but I always presumed it was time travel shenanigans as the original context. Hearing the real context is far more convoluted and insane than I could've ever guessed lol

Missed opportunity for Sasha to splice together footage in different wigs.

One of the weirdest things about the Wonder Woman/Girl/Tot trio is that all the younger versions know what their future will be. And Hippolyta is happy to have the younger versions know that in the future, Diana will be Wonder Woman. Yes, they have the magic sphere and can see the future. So, the younger versions dress in versions of Wonder Woman's costume. But the problem is... Wonder Woman's origin has Diana competing to become Wonder Woman, with Hippolyta forbidding Diana to compete. Even though both Hippolyta and Diana know that Diana will become Wonder Woman. They've already seen the future.

"This isn't about the cultural insensitivity of Egg Fu. Not today." But when, Sasha? When?

I for one love this whole mess simply because of how fantastically mundane the explanation is. Anyone can write a time travel story, or have it end with "It was all a dream!" But you need some sort of mad genius to introduce the idea of editing film to create a story within a *non-film* medium. It reminds me of the scene in Spaceballs where they get a Spaceballs VHS tape in order to find out what happens next.

Oh, that's not what I thought Wonder Girl and Wonder Tot was at all. I was fully under the assumption that they were time displaced versions of Diana.

You know I didn't expect Donna Troy's whole existence to be based on that one time Wonder Woman's Mum used Ancient Amazon Photoshop to do a Fake Family Vlog during her prehistoric era trip... But that's Silver Age for you

I think it's cute that Hippolyta is really into editing and filmmaking. More characters should have random hobbies

As you said, without this era, we wouldn't have Donna, and that would be terrible, especially since Donna is one of my favorite characters.

Completely ignoring what the last writer wrote (or acknowledging for the sole sake of saying “turns out that was bogus, THIS is the TRUE true story!) and making up your own stuff (continuity be darned) is truly a time-honoured Wonder Woman tradition.

Poor Donna- she can't even successfully be removed from stories, she can't keep an origin, and she can't even keep her own backstory for herself. Remember how they killed off her ex, their baby son and her stepdaughter in a car accident? Well, they used the exact same plot for Jane Foster in Thor when they made her hold the hammer. Yes, her inconvenient ex and their toddling son went over a guardrail. No wonder that kid in Gamera wanted to prevent car accidents - in fiction, they're even deadlier!

Supposedly, the Wonder Girl stories were what were keeping tge series afloat at the time. They may have also been what established the idea of Paradise Island as being Wonder Woman's "Metropolis" rather than her "Smallville". Because with all the Wonder Girl stories, Paradise Island seemed more established than any of the places Diana went in "Man's World". Regarding the "Impossible Tales" sisters, I think what made them feel more like sisters than the same character three times is they had such notably different personalities. Wonder Woman was mature and dignified. Wonder Girl was spunky and determiined. And Wonder Tot was a mischevious little scamp.

Between Hippolyta's edited movie somehow changing reality, to the bit where the characters confront their creator and the possibility of dying if they're "retired", it'd be interesting to see a modern writer do a Grant Morrison-esque look back at this weirdo era.

11:47 I do want to note here, that in greek mythology hippolyta‘s fate was different in different stories. Her being killed by Heracles in the heat of a hera induced battle is just one version.

I do love how hard it went into "these characters were killed from being wiped out of existence" no punches are pulled.

And that was the last time Donna Troy had to deal with confusing origins or complicated retcons… lol

I have an interpretation that makes this all make sense: Wonder Woman's mother is a Moroi, one of the Fates from Greeks mythology who snip and weave strings into reality. She's doing that with film and changed reality around her

RIP The Glop 😥

I always thought the "Wonder Girl pining for her lost father" story was very weird because Wonder Girl is Diana and we all know that Diana didn't have a father (she was created from a clay statue). So, why would she even think she had a father?

It was that 'desk drawer' moment that more or less doomed the Wonder Woman franchise, so far as I'm concerned. Wonder Woman is, famously, one of DC's 'Big Three', and if you look at the other two members of the Three, Batman and Superman, you see a more or less continuous through-line from the Golden Age right up until the Crisis, when they got revamped. Sure, every era had characters and situations peculiar to it that got phased out or ignored during the following eras, but it also had ones that stuck - both characters' most iconic villains, for example, are still the ones from the Golden Age; plus, there's a ton of Silver Age Superman stuff that still informs the character today, such as Jimmy Olsen's signal watch or the Bottle City of Kandor. Sure, a lot of this stuff got dumped with the Crisis, but it keeps coming back; it's a huge amount of accumulated lore that directly affects how we view the characters today (Arkham Asylum, for example, didn't make its first appearance 'til the Bronze Age, but it's now nigh-impossible to think of Batman without it). Not so with Wonder Woman. She never got a chance to accumulate a similar storehouse of lore, because her collection of it got interrupted before it really got going. Her Golden Age original stories were a pretty good start, and while the Kanigher era was chaotic and contained a lot of stuff that contradicted them, it was still built on their framework - but then there's that 'desk drawer' moment, and just like that, all proper accumulation of lore stops dead. If he hadn't done that, chances were that elements of his run - Wondy's crazy mythological suitors, the bizarrely over/underpowered villains like Multiple Man or Mouse Man, etc. - would have gone through the refinement process of the years, and ultimately entered the collective unconscious in the same way that the Fortress of Solitude and the Batmobile have. Instead, the reset button got hit just as Wonder Woman was getting going, and that set the tone for her entire career up 'til now. The only consistent elements in the series that have remained since then have been Wondy herself, the island, a few villains and (sometimes) Steve Trevor; all the rest is constantly changing. Wonder Woman went back to the Golden Age like two more times after that; she went 'mod' and lost her powers and costume; she got a flying fortress-base, then lost it; she hangs her tiara in New York, no, it's Washington DC, no, it's Boston, no it's Gateway City; goodness knows where it is now - prominent supporting characters come and go like there's a revolving door; most of her villains are big deals for about five years, then vanish; her mother is evil; now she's not; now the AMAZONS are evil, but not really, and on and on and on and on and ON. She's an icon, yes, but it's HER that's iconic, not anything or anyone associated with her - her mythos has never really found its feet. And no; of course that's not ENTIRELY due to Kanigher shoving those character pictures in a drawer - there were other factors, before and after - but that was the last nail in the coffin, in my opinion.

10:19 Imagine if this suddenly turned into a really meta psychological story of Carol Sue realizing she doesn't even exist and is just part of a story

I like this angle of Hippolyta being a master propagandist. They should bring that back, its funny.

The idea of Amazon island as a space outside of time where Diana experienced different periods of her life simultaneously while interacting with 2 versions of herself that she basically treats as sisters is sooooo trippy and fascinating. Like what are even the implications of being partly raise by literally yourself? how does your perception of yourself change when you’re also your own older and younger sibling? What is it like to have different memories of the same events from 3 different perspectives?? Like imagine Wonder Girl genuinely liking Wingboy or Merboy while having the knowledge that she literally can’t end up with neither of them simply because that’s not what Diana will do. Does that create….resentment??? Self hatred??? Honestly forget the time continuum, the psychological and philosophical implications alone are mind boggling

Surprised there wasn't a Wonder Grandma in the Wonder Family. 😂😂😂

One imagines that Hippolyta and Steve Trevor probably felt pretty safe during the "chopping block" scene in Kanigher's office, compared to the others who were also there.

The weirdest thing about the answer to the letter about Hippolyta and Hercules is that they don't say they prefer to write happier stories - they say they prefer to write about 'her during happier times'. Implying that, yes, Hercules does still kill her but these stories are set before that happens?!

I'm just thrown off by the fact the amazons, no Hippolyta made early Photoshop and editing live action footage rotoscoping... Wait, they have cameras?!

They actually addressed the Hippolyta/Hercules thing in a DC/Marvel crossover - WW Attacked (Avengers) Herc as the "Despoiler of Hippolyta", where as Hercules flippantly replies, "If I recall, she rather enjoyed the whole encounter". 🤣 The cool thing about that is that it establishes that Hercules IS indeed part of both franchises in the greater 'Omniverse'.

0:34 I was looking at the dialogue, and didn’t know there was a golden age golden age Harlequin, Molly Mayne.

In the vein of "Super Sons" I think we need a "Wonder Tots" series starring a time-traveling Wonder Tot and superbaby Clark.

I think it's amusing that when you said Morpheus, my first thought was "From Sandman or Greek Mythology?" I know these stories predate the Sandman comic, but the fact that is where my mind went, especially since he was from DC Vertigo.

Wonder Woman always had a cool, "breaks the mould," vibe ( courtesy of it's libertine creator, Mr. Moulton). But, as a personal aside, I'll always think they should have left Wonder Girl's first full origin story, in the Wolfman/Perez New TT alone. It was some brilliant, impactful writing.

Film producer Hippolyta is wild.

Why is Hippolyta, queen of the amazon and practically a greek goddess, so obsessed and capable in video and photo editing? Why is there a library full of films on Paradise island?

I've long felt that after the end of the Golden Age, DC really didn't know what to do wit Wonder Woman, a situation that more or less continued up to the Perez revamp. (And pretty much picked up again after he left the book.) Also, I hope this is leading into an overview of Donna Troy's confusing history.

"We prefer to write of her during happier times" implies that Hyppolita was killed by Hercules in the context of Silver Age DC Comics as well & Wonder Woman stories featuring her are in denial. There are so many levels of falsehood within their admittedly fictional tales!

Because just giving Diana a couple of younger sisters wouldn't have been as exciting, I guess.

DC's editing in the 60s was horrendous, but the worst was Wonder Woman where panels side by side would contradict each other, sidekicks had to be retconned, and they literally forgot the title was turning 200.

I suppose it would have been against the Comics Code for the editor to just respond: "Suck it, kid!" (But you know they wanted to).

Maybe Queen Hippolyta will one day restart her independant film making career in the DC Universe.... I certainly want so after this video!

Justice for the Glob! He did nothing Wrong!

So is Kanagher part of a pantheon of all-powerful in-universe editors along with Grant Morrison from their Animal Man run?

There needed to be a fourth, Elderly Wonder Woman! She could've been called "Wonder Witch!"

Gotta love those hideous glasses that were so popular in the ‘60s for some reason. I think my Mom and both of my older sisters had them.

The True Origins of Donna Troy!

Wonder Woman, Wonder Girl and Wonder Tot. Wonder why? Wonder no more! Thanks, Sasha!

16:54 Wonder Girl looks like an obsessed stalker in this panel.

The explanation for the Impossible Tales is needlessly convoluted. They’re Wonder Woman movies. That’s all they needed to say. They’re fictional movies within the Wonder Woman universe. And they do say that, but they also all this extra stuff on top of them, and it takes a very simple premise and framing device and turns it into a giant mess. The intro to the Impossible Story could’ve just been Wonder Woman and Steve Trevor going on a date to see a Wonder Woman movie instead of the cave paintings and the whole explanation about Wonder Woman and her mother editing family movies together to make it look like they were all together or something.

It was a Wonder how this gotten solve I thought Joker origin story was just as 3x confusing

In my own perfect world there would be a trinity of TV shows for Wonder woman, batman, and Superman. They would all run concurrently and have high quality Game of Thrones esque budgets and occasional crossovers. Arrowverse on coke, essentially. And in that, or in a film format, I would love to see a Wonder family in the way that it would create a different vibe than what you would see with Batman Superman. With batman the relationships with supporting characters/sidekicks is as an adoptive father and teacher, were as Superman with characters like Supergirl and Connor Kent, its racial as kryptonians in a partner/found family dynamic. Wonder Woman could then have a sibling relationship with her side character and thus add a different dynamic in dealing with true blood relations and how that would affect her status as a symbol and admired hero. Just my ideal portrayal to make this set up work.

"Etc."...The Professor and Mary Ann (a.k.a. "and the rest") know that pain all too well. Perhaps they should start a support group.

Sasha, in today's video, I heard your Canadian accent for what seems to me to be the first time. Specifically, in your pronunciation of "golden," for a moment I thought you had said "Goulden" and was wondering if that was the name of a DC editor or writer, lol! Such things make your videos even more delightful, keep up the good work!

At this point I'd take DC just saying "After Diana left Hippolyta got empty nest syndrome and adopted two kids"

Silver Age Wonder Woman suffered because they just didn’t know how to write a strong heroic woman character while still having her conform to the supposed societal norms of the decade. The impossible stories created characters that fans wanted (Wonder Girl) but did so in the silliest ways possible. This is why in some ways the changes made By O’Neil made some sense at the time.

The whole "Manno, Merboy, and Mer-Mite being brothers" situation shouldn't be held onto too tightly, since Wonder Woman, Wonder Girl, and Wonder Tot are occasionally referred to as sisters. So don't think for one moment that Merboy is a separate character from Manno anymore than Wonder Tot is a separate character from Wonder Woman.

0:39 I SWEAR I've seen this image recreated for Harvey Birdman. And if not, it should have been.

I feel like Queen Hippolyta taking all this footage and editing it to make stories to entertain people with no thought for how it impacts her daughter(s) was a huge inspiration to Kris Jenner.

The fictional fan winner, being fictional, could have been simply animated in.

19:31 The closest thing Donna has to a definitive backstory is her being Wonder Girl who escaped retirement. The best part is that it's true.

Somebody hire Hippolyta for all the Hollywood movies that change direction midway through production.

So they can actually travel through time? In that case I guess they could have showed the cavemen the movie for some reason. Originally Hippolyta formed Diana out of clay so it's not much crazier if she somehow brought Wonder Tot and Donna Troy to life from celluloid, if the creators had gone that direction. It is at least interesting how these stories anticipated the invention of deep fakes.

One more thought: It could be said that, being based in Amazon/godly magic using a technique like that to 'create an adventure', Hippolyta caused a reality leakage that turned the whole silly notion real until a literal Deus Ex Machina had to be invoked.

"Ye better start believin' in Impossible Tales, girl... Ye're in one!"

I never really knew how deep the WW rabbit hole went so this is all new material to me. Thanks!

So coming out of this we had Diana as Wonder Woman, eventually Donna as Wonder Girl ... but what of Wonder Tot?!

I love the recent Wonder Woman videos. Can we get more? The Perez reboot, her Elseworlds stories, etc, etc.

Someone recommended this video to me. My biggest take aways; "The type of fan comics attract. It tends to be the person who likes answers, enjoys internal story logic and nods to past events. In laymen's terms, nerds." Children, by their very nature, ask a lot of questions anyway, but yes, even when they grow up the type to keep buying the comic book are going to keep asking questions! Internal consistency is a nice thing to have for that reason. "Being an editor is important." Sometimes I cut writers some slack for things an editor really should have caught. Having an editor in the first place implies a writer is free to let their thoughts flow with the reassurance someone else will stop them and point out when they stop making sense. Water filters are supposed to increase the number of sources one can drink from. "Note that Wonder Girl's picture is on top? It's too late, that cat's out of the bag, you can't put that back in, the universe is broken, because of poor editorial oversight and communication! This launches Donna on a quest for an origin that will span decades." Donna Troy's origin, once she finally had one written, shouldn't have even been that hard to "fix". As I understand it, Wonder Woman's powers either come from marital arts and mental training, or goddess gifts that basically amount to giving blood. In either case it shouldn't be the kind of thing amazons should be able to copy and paste into Donna Troy with a laser, otherwise they should all have Wonder Woman level powers. Diana beating all the rest in the contest to be Wonder Woman is a plot point. She took to the training better or was more gifted by the gods than the others. The Titans of Myth escaping Tartarus and trying to one up the Olympians by making Wonder Woman's sister into their own champion, a fine enough "fix" for Donna being more or less Diana's equal. Diana and Donna refusing to fight, beyond good natured sparring, because their sisterly bond is more powerful than the old grudges of old gods, that's touching. Titans and Olympians learning from the adopted sisters and starting to reconcile, that could go on for months, maybe years, before it got old! Thousands of years in jail is a lot to move past, but they can start! Wonder Woman's quest to create a better world continues to progress!

Beyond omega level : Hippolyta 's editing skills

If Bob Kanigher confused the hell out of readers who were going over these stories with a fine-tooth comb, it's no wonder that Bob Haney couldn't figure out what the heck he was up to. I mean as soon as Wonder Girl took over for a couple of solo stories of her own, with no obvious reference to the stories taking place in the past, you couldn't blame a casual reader for thinking she was a separate character from Wonder Woman. Besides, the more important factor here was that Haney needed a girl to break up the sausage-fest in TEEN TITANS -- and Mort Weisinger didn't like "his" character (Supergirl) being used by other editors/writers. But thank whatever comic-gods there be that Haney DID "make a mistake" (whether or not on purpose) because it led to Donna Troy, a classic DCU character.

Also hot take (maybe more like like warm really...) ...supposing Hippolyta has an unrealized magic power where things she creates become real and alive. Kind of depends on the original 'made from clay' origin for Diana but when the Queen makes something, life eventually gets breathed into it. Hence, her film edits became real, eventually.

And Donna Troy has had an identity crisis longer than since she's had a superhero identity.

...oh no I've gone cross-eyed.

The fan reply illustrates the problems of the era. The fan club reply letter is supposed to be from Wonder Woman but the response is out of character. It's signed WW but there is no effort in the text to respond in character as Diana.

Marvel was quickly surpassing DC in competition and DC had to come with some outlandish story ideas🪅If nothing else, it makes for some alternate universe mind-bending fun

I have never had a waking nightmare about Wonder Woman before listening to this episode

Hippolyta’s hi-jinx here make a lot more sense if you assume this photo/video editing tech is new, and Hippolyta is just really getting into it, like middle-aged moms who use TikTok a lot

I'd rather Tom King did an Impossible Tales backup starring Wonder Woman, Wonder Girl and Wonder Tot instead of Trinity and the Guys, but almost anything would be better than Trinity

Please do a video on Wonder Woman '66 (a.k.a. "Return to the Golden Age"). WW #156 and #159 through #171, the ones that re-introduced Golden Age villains Paula von Gunta, Minister Blizzard, Cheetah, Giganta, and Dr. Psycho. My personal favorite year (or so) of Kanigher's run. After the first half-dozen stories, the issues start to waffle back and forth between "Golden Age" and "modern" Wonder Woman stories until #172, which is another revamp again.

So the original Blue Beetle, Dan Garret, brings actual readers (and doxxes their addresses) on adventures but Wonder Woman uses fake fans? They're both breaking the fourth wall for the same reasons, but somehow Blue Beetle's is actually making more sense...and having read those recently that's just weird.

Also the idea that some of Wonder Woman's adventures are basically propaganda put together by her and her mom seems...insidious

This video was amazing with Silver Age goodness! Who cares what Harley is doing this week, when ya got The Wonder Family being chased by giant versions of themselves with butterfly nets and being trapped in a future zoo by giant aliens/and/or super evolved humans. Good times. That's what it's all about!

I've always thought WW's Impossible Tales were "inspired" by Lois Lane's Imaginary Tales since Superman's Girlfriend, Lois Lane was hugely popular then and Kanigher was hoping for similar sales for WW.

Sasha you made my day by giving Wonder Tot some love. Thank you!

Editing photos and video. Rewriting history. Surprisingly relevant

But why didn't they just give her little sisters? That would have been so much easier.

The sign carrier at the 20:28 mark looks like he could be a young Rorschach from the Watchmen.

Wow. These stories suck! ...but "Joe The Editor" as an antagonist would be the most interesting thing possible for Wonder Woman to face going forwards.

I didn't realize DC had their own Multiple Man

"I know where I came from-but where did all you zombies come from?"

This is so confusing. Like these events happened at three different times in Diana’s life, and her mother just happened to be recording it every time? And somehow got Diana to talk to her future self as if she was really there. It makes my head hurt trying to understand it. Also hated that trope back then of having small children in comics talk so weird. Saying things like, “me sorry”. I never heard a child talk like that.