Retcons?
Zev Steinhardt
A retcon is a reimagining of continuity. When John Byrne rewrote Superman’s origin and powers after the Crisis on Infinite Earths, it was a retcon. When they went back and said that Alan Scott’s Green Lantern ring really was an actual Guardians-of-Oa-type ring, that’s a retcon.
I can’t believe I just used my 200th post on a comic book question. My name is George, and I’m a big ol’ geek.
Actually, the easiest 
way to tell is by looking at the insignia. Superman’s “S” is shaped differently. And Batman’s bat doesn’t have the yellow oval.
Of course, ever since the Crisis, everything has gotten complicated, with all kinds of extra-continuity stories, especially about Batman in various time periods (there was one in which Batman became Green Lantern).
There is also the current cartoon Batman series (is it “Batman Forever”?), which depicts a post-Bruce Wayne Batman in the future who does a lot of fancy Jackie-Chan tricks. Ugh.
Was anyone else as annoyed as I was with the characterization of Batman in the much-ballyhooed “Dark Knight Returns”? Batman was always a dark character, with all kinds of inner demons, but in Dark Knight he had become (in his old age) a twisted ultra-conservative hard case.
One interesting note. After the Crisis, Jay Garrick’s home town of Keystone City and Barry Allen’s home town of Central City became twin cities (mirroring the Kansas Cities).
Barry Allen was killed in the Crisis and succeeded by his wife’s nephew, Wally West (previously Kid Flash).
Okeedokee, Bat-freaks.
I recall a one-shot from the early- or mid-eighties starring Batman and Batman, Earth1 and Earth2 versions, in a parallel story involving a bad guy who somehow managed to channel his parallel.
The bad guy was like Lucien or Lucifuge or some such, with flaming red hair and beard and spiffy suits. It might have been a Detective annual, but I’m just darned if I remember. He hucked the Bat into a pit with poison gas jets . . .
Anyone remember this?
I believe that the current version of Batman’s costume does not include the yellow oval. Personally, I think it looks better that way.
The “extra-continuity” stories you refer to are known as “Elseworlds”, and were clearly marked as such with a banner on the cover and a first page spread which included an explanation of what’s going on - taking familiar characters and exploring how things could be different by changing a thing or two. Such as Thomas and Martha Wayne happening upon a crashed spaceship and a Kryptonian infant, and naming him Bruce (safe to assume that the Kents went on childless in this one - good story, too, with a super-powered flying Batman opening a serious can of whup-ass on the criminal element…)…why did Batman tend to be the character explored in these stories? Because he has more grey areas to explore, I suppose. More fun for the writers that way.
As for the “cartoon” you’re talking about, it’s Batman Beyond, in which Bruce Wayne is a senior citizen (it’s somewhere around the year 2030) and takes on a teen-aged apprentice to confront the crime that has reclaimed Gotham. It’s pretty well done, brought to you by the guys behind the successful Batman,** Superman** and Justice League animated shows. Very low on “Jackie-Chan tricks”, though. (I’m sure Mr Chan would really appreciate his skills being referred to as “tricks”) Of course he uses some martial arts - he’s being trained by Batman, ferchrissake… and yeah, he’s got a new suit full of all kinds of technological gimmicks, including super-strength and flight. His biggest advantage? A real-time audio/visual link to Bruce Wayne in the Batcave. The show’s biggest advantage? Character development. Unfortunately, this is not a “current” series. Production was stopped in order for the creative team to concentrate on *Justice League, another series that I am definitely a fan of.
Animated versions of the heroes are outside comic-book continuity, BTW.
retcon = retroactive continuity
–Cliffy
Yeah, since I haven't kept up with the comics for about 10 years, I don't have a firm grasp of what is going on right now. However, if you're looking at comics up to the Crisis and you're trying to tell the two apart, then look for the yellow oval for the Earth-1 Batman.
Perhaps you're right in saying that it looks better without the oval. But, I've become enough of a fuddy-duddy to believe that the 1970s and 1980s were the "real" Batman stories, so I'm attached to that oval.
I always liked DC better than Marvel, originally because they had Batman and Superman, but later because it seemed the writing was being done with more of an eye on quality and the artwork was more sophisticated (Green Arrow and Sandman were two of my favourites).
However, by the 1990s, I began to feel manipulated by DC, because of the constant "crises" -- oh, oh, Superman's dead -- oh, oh, now there are four Supermen -- oh, oh, there's a new Batman, because Bruce Wayne has a broken back (it's funny, I can't recall that other fellow's name right now) -- oh, oh now Oliver Queen's dead and there's a new Green Arrow.
And then the endless crossover stories. It became such that you couldn't follow just one character or storyline without having to buying the entire DC line every month. I felt used. (And, jeez, comics are getting _expensive_!)
And it annoyed me that every time a book got a new editor or principal writer, he or she would find it necessary to make major alterations to the continuity. In other words, not only was the style of the current stories going to change, but every 18 months or so, the entire backstory of every character was being altered. (Okay, so I'm exaggerating a little.)I think you’re thinking of Brave & Bold # 200. The villain’s name was Brimstone, I’m not sure exactly what his real name was, but as you are remembering, it was a take-off on Lucifer, and his shtick was devil-themed or hell-themed crimes.
I don’t remember a “Lucien” in the Batman stories, but the CEO of the Wayne Foundation was Bruce Wayne’s friend Lucious Fox (a man, by the way).
Sorry to disagree but this is wrong.
What Byrne did to Superman was a reboot: a wholesale erasure of history and starting the character from scratch.
They never actually said that Alan Scott’s ring was an Oa-type ring, but if they had, that would have been a retcon.
A retcon is an abbreviation for “RETroactive CONtinuity”. The word first appeared in a letter column of All Star Squadron (ca issue #20-something). It specificially means the insertion of something into continuity that either redefines or adds to what’s already there without substantially changing the original story.
When Alan Moore said that Swamp Thing was, and always had been a plant, not a goo-encrusted guy, that was a Retcon. When the Legion started from scratch, erasing all it’s history, that was a reboot.
Retcons, if done well are elegant things indeed. If they’re done poorly, they can undermine a story or character (Hal Jordan was a drunken test pilot, anyone?)
Fenris, uber-geek
< Uber-geek powers: ACTIVATE! >
Actually that doesn’t work.
Batman didn’t get the “New Look” (aka the Carmine Infantino redesigned costume with the yellow circle) until about 1964 (I happen to remember the first issue of JLA where the New Look appeared was #28). Batman’s first E1 appearance is fuzzy as hell, but had to come sometime around 1952 or so, since Batman #92 was the first Ace the Bathound story, and Ace is purely E1.
Same with Superman. He had the modern irregular pentagon since about 1942, but the earliest provable appearance of the E1 Superman is Action #242 (1st Braniac, ca 1958). It’s certainly likely that the E1 Superman appeared earlier, but you can’t prove it. (This also jibes with the fact that a proto-Supergirl, Lori Lemaris and Titano all appeared in Superman in '58)
Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman are really hard to pin down in terms of their E1/E2 boundries. And the retcons don’t help.
Certainly all issues of Superman/Action during WWII should be the E2 Superman. However, rectons have said that the E2 Superman worked at the Daily Globe for George…something. But Superman was at the Daily Planet during those issues.
I read an article in a magazine called “Omniverse” (Mark Gruenwald had a lot to do with it) once that suggested that there were (at the time) three, not two Supermen. The E2 Superman was only presented in comics for a few issues. Then the “middle” Superman (labled “Earth E” and never officially accepted by DC) took over and was replaced in the mid-50s by the E1 Superman. This actually works pretty well, since it gives a place to put most of the mid '50s “Zebra Batman” or “Batman, Outer Space Cop” stories that are technically E1, but don’t really fit.
< Uber-geek powers DEactivate >
And Zev, don’t let this stuff scare you off: most comics fans live happy, normal lives without knowing this sort of minutae
Fenris
I suppose I can accept that definition. I hadn’t realized the two were separately defined.
**
I’m dead certain it happened – might have been in one of the GL Corps occasional issues, but the story was that a centuries-ago GL had set himself up as a tyrant, so the Guardians brought him down by changing the vulnerability to yellow to a vulnerability to wood. The peasants revolted and beat the GL down with clubs and sticks, and the GL’s lantern and/or ring rocketed into space*, eventually making its way to Earth and burning into a meteor in the atmosphere. That’s when it was found and made into a lantern, insert Alan Scott origin here.
Anybody else remember this, or was all that acid I dropped in the '80s just coming back to haunt me?
- – Not sure whether that part was the Guardians’ doing or the GL’s.
I believe I know what’s going on: this sounds like post-Crisis story, I was talking pre-Crisis (pre-Crisis, the first Green Lantern to ever go bad was Sinestro)
Guardians didn’t exist on E2. However, they did have something to do with Alan Scott. Way back in the dawn of time, the Guardians thought that all this “magic” stuff was just crap, cluttering up their tidy universe. They scooped up most of the free-floating magic and bound it up in something called “The Starheart”. It somehow ended up in E2’s universe and a chunk of it became the meteor that the lantern was made from.
Fenris
Not scared at all. As I said earlier, I was a big Marvel fan growing up. I followed the Avengers, the X-Men, the FF, Spider-Man, Daredevil, etc.
Incidently (relating back to what to what Kilt-wearin’ man said about Elseworlds), one of my favorite Marvel serieses (is that correct?) was What If?. It showed us how the Marvel Universe would have been different if something different had happened. The first issue related what would have happened if Spider Man joined the FF (making them the Fantastic Five) early on. Feeling like a fifth wheel, Sue Storm ended up leaving the FF and marrying the Submariner.
Zev Steinhardt
Yeah, but (exluding the “Clone Saga” nonsense and the recent (post-Cable) state of the Mutant books) most Marvel comics fans have no idea of the level of silly, trivial weirdness that D.C. can offer! 
And I agree: those early “What Ifs” were fantastic!
Fenris
Yeah, this is definitely post-Crisis. But it still fits the retcon definition, doesn’t it?
Chaim, you rule! It was indeed B&B 200, with Brimstone.
A million thanks.
Zev:
Another of my high school comics was one in which the Thing ended up in a world where the Surfer had never showed up and Galactus hit an unprepared world. In the altworld, Ben Grimm had been cured and left the FF, replaced by Spidey, and they’d gotten the snot beat out of 'em. Somewhere in there was a Red Skull/Cap America subplot, and something about Namor as a homeless alcoholic.
OK, I guess I remember the issue. Point is, was that in the same “What If?” series?
No. That was the final issue of Marvel Two-In-One (#100).
The Red Skull was indeed the villian on that world. Cap was (presumably) killed along with everyone else when Galactus came.
Zev Steinhardt
I’m not insane! Yay!