DC and Marvel are lousy with retcons and have been for decades—hell, DC got so full of them they had to reboot their whole universe TWICE (or is it three times?). What are your choices for the worst (which is easier, since most of them are ludicrous) and the best?
As more of a Marvel guy, I know my worst would have to be the whole business in Spider-Man of Gwen Stacey having had an affair with Norman Osborne…which is followed closely by the fact that Norman Osbone is still alive.
The worst has evidently been wiped from collective memory and mine (It was mentioned in an old Ambush Bug): There was some sort of magical creature that was responsible for turning both Barry Allen and Wally West into the Flash. The need was there: It was so unlikely that their origins could both happen – it’s one thing for a lightning bolt to spill chemicals onto Barry Allen, giving him the power, but it’s pretty absurd to think that a second lightning bold could spill the exact same chemicals onto Wally West.
I like the Byrne Superman. I think the worst was this “Birthright” retcon. The original post-Crisis Superman and all that came with him had been so integrated into the overall DC Universe in the prior fifteen years or so, and DC blew that up for what? Hell if I know.
One of the better retcons was DC’s Identity Crisis, which explained why Dr. Light was such a clown during the years he was a nemesis of the Teen Titans.
The Byrne reboot wasn’t so bad. It might have gone a bit too far in depowering Superman and revamping his mythos, though. It also didn’t help that DC failed to depict the powered-down version in any consistent fashion.
One of the worst retcons was the mercifully forgotten Genesis Godwave nonsense.
Yeah, I do. In the recent Dr. Strange miniseries The Oath there’s a scene toward the end of the series in which (very minor spoilers):
[spoiler]Dr. Strange and another wizard are in an area where magic is neutralized and so Strange has to duke it out hand to hand against the villain who has made the foolish assumption that Strange is soft and weak and has had everything handed to him. Dr. Strange takes off his gloves to reveal that his hands are a mass of scar tissue.
The thing is we’ve seen Strange’s hands before in comics dozens of times. He doesn’t wear gloves constantly and there are many of those situations where he wouldn’t have been encouraged to hide it. But the scars work, it makes the point of one of the things that I really like about Dr. Strange, and I didn’t mind it being changed.[/spoiler]
Okay, it’s no Alan Moore deconstructionism or Roy Thomas explaining away every inconsistency ever in the golden age, but its one that worked really well.
And mark me down as another in the pro-Byrne Superman camp. DC was planning on revamping Superman before handing him off to Byrne so he was changing one way or the other and my understanding is that one of the dictates at that time was that Superman was the only Kryptonian. I do think Byrne screwed up in two areas: I didn’t miss Superboy but could have patched in some Legion adventures and just let it go with that and he shouldn’t have tried to explain the powers. Otherwise I like the Krypton revamp, the Luthor change up (I really dislike how Luthor has been portrayed in the last couple of years), and the fact that the Kents are still alive.
I love the Internet. Here I was, expecting a huge chorus of ID Crisis as the worst, and the only mention is it being the best.
Personally, I think the retcons in it run the gamut. I like the Dr Light explanation, and the explanation for Batman turning into a paranoid asshole. I thought, however, the mindwipe thing was extended too far, treating every removed memory as though it were a mystical lobotomy like they gave Dr Light, or a full personality rewrite like the Top got. And the period between the OYL jump and the most recent issue of Catwoman where it was presented as though she got a full rewrite, not just a nudge along a path she was already started on also ticked me off.
Anyway…best:
Mon-el->Valor. Not only did it patch the hole in Legion history left by removing Superboy (a decision I approve of, by the way, since I prefer time travel kept to an absolute minimum), I thought the additions made to his history in Invasion and afterwards made him a much more interesting character.
‘It was Proty all along!’ I know a lot of people hate this one, but I thought it was cute - and neatly tied up one of the aspects of the return of Lightning Lad that always disturbed me.
Worst:
Sean Erin. twitch Adding more gay characters to the mix was a good idea. Adding a transgender character to the mix was a good idea. The execution turned it into a bad idea.
All-time best would be the early-80s revelation that Zatanna’s mother was a member of the lost sister species of humanity, Homo magus, all of whom had magical powers; they were so rare because (a) normal humans and magi who saw one another frequently fell immediately in [del]love[/del] uncontrollable lust and got married, and (b) the magic gene was recessive, so the children of such unions tended not to have magic powers (though some could use magic objects), so the Magi dwindled over generations. This was a great reveal; it explained a previously-ignored facet to a long-running character’s history without doing violence to any previous stories, shed light on the universe as a whole, and was fertile ground for future stories.
Worst retcons: Chuck Austen. Nightcrawler. I can’t bring myself to write more.
I’ll name a good Marvel one: the revelation that Hawkeye was taught archery, not by the Swordsman, but by another specialist in archery from whom he was estranged.
I’ll name another good Marvel retcon: Bucky as a tough-as-nails commando who became the Winter Soldier.
Also, somewhere along the way, Marvel decided that Captain America had an indestructible shield. That was a nice touch.
And speaking of the Cap mythos, Marvel did a good job of explaining away Captain America’s appearances in the 1950s and toward the end of World War II. Good choices.
I think that magical creature was, in fact, Barry. When he was saving the universe in the first crisis,he found himself going backwards through time; he witnessed both accidents and realized he himself was the cause, then died of a paradox-induced apoplexy.
Phil Foglio’s taking DC’s funny-animal type strip Stanely and His Monster and revealing that the Monster was actually a demon from hell, yet still keeping it whimsical and funny…plus tying it firmly to DC and Vertigo continuity.
Seriously, track down the four issues. It’s fantastic, and one of the best ret-cons I’ve ever, ever seen.
One of the worst was Kevin Smith ignoring that series and making Stanley an orphan who was sexually abused by his uncle. Or something. Christ that was miserable.
Not actually a retcon: That was the original concept of the character, according to my Legion Compendium.
… that said, the implementation suuuucked.
Skald: Different thing. The magical creature, I forget the name, was the flash-equivalent of Bat-Mite or Quisp.
Clone Saga: Ever want to hear the real story of the Clone Saga, and why it went off the rails? Every comic fan should read this. From the Editor’s mouth, as it were.
Not quite the comics, but I though the Spider-Man movie made one good change. In the original comics, we are expected to believe that Boy Genius Peter Parker invented infallible web shooters within a short period of time (and didn’t even consider patenting and selling them), whereas in the movie it is part of his “mutation.”
Not entirely true. I remember an early issue when he tried to sell his web fluid formula to a big corporation, but the corporation decided they weren’t interested when they found out that it dissolved after a couple hours.
