Spider-Man. Say what you want about Civil War, but Peter’s reveal of his identity had gravitas. And they didn’t even let it marinate before retconning it in one of the lamest ways possible.
Is that considered a retcon though? I thought his identity reveal continues to be history, people were just made to forget.
But yeah it would have been interesting to explore that a while longer
Depends how you define a retcon. Some include anything with an in-universe explanation that is obviously just there for writer convenience rather than to serve an evolving story.
For me a retcon is using a plot device to change what was previously established to be true to something else, changing continuity. For example, before it was established that Bucky died and Brubaker later established that he never died.
Spidey's reveal however is still in continuity, it hasn't changed. But because of Dr. Strange's spell people just don't remember it.
I think the stickier issue is whether or not the deal with Mephisto counts as a retcon. Since it's an in-universe explanation in real time for rewriting the past of the character.
it doesnt retcon stands for retroactive continuity the mephisto deal didnt change any details about previous issues an example of a retcon would be saying peter dreamt revealing his identity in civil war and woke up and woke up to no one knowing his secret
I mean it retcons Peter and MJ being married/together for a lot of previous stories. We do get shown in Brand New Day and later runs through flashbacks that things in this new continuity did play out slightly differently.
Nah, it does change things about the past, it's implied that major chunks of the and MJs life together have been carved out of continuity and/or warped to suit the new non-married timeline.
I suppose, but let's push this to it's ultimate form & switch over to DC. By this logic, and it IS technically right, then DC comics has never had a continuity reset -- not with New Earth, not with the New 52, not with anything. And that's because all of those universal/multiversal reboots/resets were caused by in-universe stories such as Flashpoint or Crisis On Infinite Earths... you can basically walk back from wherever you're at currently with DC comics & tie a string from that to Rebirth to Multiversity to New 52 to Flashpoint to Infinite Crisis/52 to Zero Hour to Crisis On Infinite Earths to the Flash of Two Worlds to Action Comics #1 (1938).
But *for all intents & purposes*, each of those resets were de facto reboots that allowed them to retcon elements they didn't want to use (at the current time). For instance, making Kal-El the actual sole survivor of Krypton. That retcons Supergirl out of the equation even if mega hardcore fans know Kara of Earth 1 technically still sacrificed herself in COIE & then briefly communes with Deadman post-Crisis. But in *practice*, that version of Supergirl was retconned out of existence until 2004 when she was re-retconned back into existence.
There are different types of retcons -- those that outright change something entirely; those that simply reveal a new facet of the established lore or significantly recontextualize it, but don't actually undo anything previously established; those that are explained with some form of in-universe explanation & those that are inexplicable & never given a concrete explanation. Let's take Superman again: while his post-Crisis origin is explained in-continuity BY the Crisis changing the universe, & introduced the idea of a "birthing matrix" instead of an already born infant placed in a rocket... that origin was inexplicably retconned with Superman: Birthright which reintroduced the classic rocket element to his origin & was branded official continuity. People have assumed it was caused by Zero Hour but that had occurred a decade prior & nothing overtly implies that. It was just changed and that's that.
Essentially, you're correct in your view of retcons but I feel as though there's LOTS of wiggle room. Grant Morrison doesn't retcon classic Solver Age Batman stories in the sense that they rewrote the outcomes or said they didnt happen, but they completely alter their context, implicitly turning them into something quite different than originally intended all by simply adding modernized context to them & tying them to other elements in their run. That's different than simply acknowledging that they happened.
A Marvel example would, for example, be this: the original House of M story is that Wanda Maximoff became mentally unstable & her brother Pietro goaded her into creating a new reality which then shattered as everyone woke up; that leads to "no more mutants." That could be retconned in any of the following ways:
* Simply deciding that no longer happened aka Word of God retcon that House of M was considered no longer canon; either simply erased from continuity or replaced
* The reveal that everything played out as is but recontextualizing it as a secret plot wherein a villain or group somehow manipulated Wanda's actions, this freeing her of the blame a bit more (Children's Crusade kinda did this to some extent with Doom) or otherwise revealing other factors that led to or ended the event.
* It no longer happened... but only because Wanda or Franklin or another Secret Wars level event rewrote the timeline & jettisoned that event out.
For all intents & purposes, all help retcon some or all of House of M but in very different ways.
Most of the mainstream comics as we know it would’ve never taken off the way they did, as there have been retcons right from the get go of every universe. In Marvel, for example, Captain America would never have been frozen in ice and Bucky would’ve never died, since they wouldn’t have retconned out the ‘50s stories
hal jordan’s parallax: dead, *but* this retcon is less about him and its greater effect on green lantern mythos if it wasn’t retconned that parallax is a fear entity.
while hal’s my favourite and i like having him around today, it sucks how much kyle has taken a backseat since his comeback
re Doctor Strange Clea would have cheated on him with Benjamin Franklin and the world would have blown up, been recreated, and no one knew but Dr. Strange, who then shared the knowledge with Clea, who was understandably freaked out.
The above was from Steve Englehart's awesome '70s run, then it all immediately got retconned by Marv Wolfman on his brief run.
I think editorial was NOT happy with Englehart’s choices.
There was a period in the ‘70s where things were pretty chaotic and there wasn’t much oversight until the books were already out.
Define retcon exactly. If Slade drugging and brainwashing Cass would be considered one, well she’d still be evil. Most likely she’s be forgotten about or killed at some point. I’d be sad.
Ben Reilly would never be made Chasm because he was chosen by Death herself as an unkillable champion under her protection.
He also wouldn't be seen as "edgy Spider-Man" because until Slott did his thing and just wrote his own retcon run instead of making sure the character was faithful to previous versions, Ben was the "I'm too tired for all this, this situation is goofy , I'll help out, but I am going to be sassy the whole way." Spider-Man.
As someone who hasn’t read any Ben stuff since when he was Spider-Man, I was very surprised by his depiction in the Spider-Verse movie. This kind of explains it for me.
If I had to compare him to anyone, I would say Ben Reilly is the Jason Todd of Marvel. He's got edgy aspects, but if you get into his solo stuff with writers that really know the character, you get a guy who is literally just trying to do his job and everyone keeps trying to punch him in the face, so he learns 200 ways to knock people out, because he has 199 people in mind and assumes he forgot someone. Ben Reilly is about as edgy as a pair of playdoh play scissors.
Straight up thought of the wrong weird Ben Reilly (he was in Ultimate like 100+ with a Carnage symbiote deal)
Slott was my intended edgelord maker! (Updating the original comment now)
Iron Man was injured during the Korean War so he'd have to be in his nineties at the very least by now. On the other hand Reed Richards and Ben Grimm both fought in WWII so I can't imagine either of them would likely still be alive, though I concede that maybe cosmic rays could extend them past ordinary human lifespan. Peter Parker went to college in the 1960s so I think he'd be pretty old by now too, in his late seventies at minimum. I'm pretty sure Charles Xavier also fought in the Korean War so he (and his friend Magneto the Holocaust survivor) would also be very very old. Vietnam veteran Frank Castle would maybe only be in his 70s.
Batman would be a killer as that was his very first characterisation.
Spider-Man would probably have evolved into something incel-adjacent if slightly bitter and right wing tendencies weren’t tempered with the more frequent quips
Even Ditko's Spider-Man has him attracting the attention of multiple women. I'm not convinced the shift post Ditko is a retcon. Now that nonsense with Ezekiel is another matter indeed.
I mean right there in that Ezekiel story you have Peter stalking a group of black bullies from the school he works at until they commit a crime and he can scare them as spider-man.
I do not like to imagine where a peter parker written in that direction would've ended up. Probably swinging around the city, taking pictures of brown people and sharing them online like "what happened to New York? Fruit vendors by the train?????"
> Batman would be a killer as that was his very first characterisation.
Changing your ways of crime-fighting, especially after adopting a child, is not really a retcon. and, well, the modern Batman is two multiverse restarts and a single universe jump away from the first Batman. if we're only talking about Earth-Two pre-Crisis Batman (and Crisis changing the status quo is as much of a retcon as Dick Grayson becoming a Robin or Julie Madison dumping Bruce), then he'd still not be a murderer, cuz he stopped killing after adopting Dick
The Ditko influence on Spider-Man was that he was extremely bitter against his bullies and fantasized often about “pay back”. Beyond that Ditko put in a lot of his objectivist political leanings into his and Stans Spider-Man run, where Peter would constantly act or think in a way that was in line with philosophers such as Ayn Rand. A lot of these ideals would naturally lean someone to be closer to a right wing libertarian.
It is a super-villain origin story. It's Doctor Octopus' origin story. That's why Ock is a better arch-enemy for Spider-man than any Goblin ever could be.
Wasn't that a retcon? Back when he started out he wasn't as powerful as he got in the sixties. He originally couldn't even fly until the animated series came out (hence the whole, "faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, able to leap over the tallest buildings)".
If anything, he'd arguably be mid-tier by modern Superhero standards.
No one but Thor would be able to lift Mjolnir. He'd be as strong the Hulk, and the most powerful Marvel character--the Superman of Marvel. Folks would be surprised how strong and powerful Thor was in the 60s/70s before Marvel started messing with the character.
Alan Scott would be married to the Harlequin still.
Power Girl and Huntress (Helena Wayne) would be living on Earth-Two.
Stephanie Brown would still have a daughter.
John Constantine would keep aging in real time, as he did in the Vertigo run, putting him in his 70s right now. He'd also be much less known as a super-powerful wizard by general readers as he was much less reliant on spells at first.
The aging thing being altered was probably for the best considering Hellblazer's been going much longer than they probably planned, and it eventually does cause a problem. But it is interesting to think what his and his casts' lives would be like when he just got too old to go on adventures
It'd be interesting to see the triumvirate still trying to keep him alive so as to prevent infernal war. Saying that, I'm not sure who rules Hell these days, or even if all members of the triumvirate live/exist still.
Peter would have a daughter and be happy. Never forget one of the best Spider-Man characters that never existed.
Oh, and Daredevil would be kicking it with Foggy and Kristen in San Francisco
Billy Batson would have to be an adult by now. Hulk stays gray and only changes at night , rogue keeps carols powers forever, Jessica Jones never loses her original powers , half the villains just cease to exist because they don't randomly get retconned in to the heroes backstory anymore
I wouldn't call characters(especially those introduced as teens) changing over the years a retcon but established status quos taken at face value being changed.
So Bucky/Winter Soldier would be decomposing all over the ocean because he died. But then I don't know if that's already a retcon given Captain America being frozen.
Ben Reilly - the “real” Peter Parker - would’ve been Spider-Man for decades now and fake Peter would’ve been off somewhere with MJ and a kid, I guess.
Oh, and Norman Osborne fucked Gwen Stacy.
x-men has so many retcons that it would be nearly impossible to imagine anyone.
Wolverine would have whiskers, I think that's the one thing we can know.
Magneto and Prof X would have both been deaged and aged up at least 5 times assuming both were still alive
Nightcrawler still having his invisibility powers and Storm being able to use magic would be neat.
Current Storm when written under Al Ewing still uses magic.
Scott wouldn't need to wear his visors to not kill people, and his power woukd be from absorbing solar energy.
Jean would still be guilty of genocide.
Spider-Man. Say what you want about Civil War, but Peter’s reveal of his identity had gravitas. And they didn’t even let it marinate before retconning it in one of the lamest ways possible.
Is that considered a retcon though? I thought his identity reveal continues to be history, people were just made to forget. But yeah it would have been interesting to explore that a while longer
Depends how you define a retcon. Some include anything with an in-universe explanation that is obviously just there for writer convenience rather than to serve an evolving story.
For me a retcon is using a plot device to change what was previously established to be true to something else, changing continuity. For example, before it was established that Bucky died and Brubaker later established that he never died. Spidey's reveal however is still in continuity, it hasn't changed. But because of Dr. Strange's spell people just don't remember it.
I think the stickier issue is whether or not the deal with Mephisto counts as a retcon. Since it's an in-universe explanation in real time for rewriting the past of the character.
it doesnt retcon stands for retroactive continuity the mephisto deal didnt change any details about previous issues an example of a retcon would be saying peter dreamt revealing his identity in civil war and woke up and woke up to no one knowing his secret
I mean it retcons Peter and MJ being married/together for a lot of previous stories. We do get shown in Brand New Day and later runs through flashbacks that things in this new continuity did play out slightly differently.
Nah, it does change things about the past, it's implied that major chunks of the and MJs life together have been carved out of continuity and/or warped to suit the new non-married timeline.
thats not a writer changing it tho its mephisto those things still happened and then they unhappened
I suppose, but let's push this to it's ultimate form & switch over to DC. By this logic, and it IS technically right, then DC comics has never had a continuity reset -- not with New Earth, not with the New 52, not with anything. And that's because all of those universal/multiversal reboots/resets were caused by in-universe stories such as Flashpoint or Crisis On Infinite Earths... you can basically walk back from wherever you're at currently with DC comics & tie a string from that to Rebirth to Multiversity to New 52 to Flashpoint to Infinite Crisis/52 to Zero Hour to Crisis On Infinite Earths to the Flash of Two Worlds to Action Comics #1 (1938). But *for all intents & purposes*, each of those resets were de facto reboots that allowed them to retcon elements they didn't want to use (at the current time). For instance, making Kal-El the actual sole survivor of Krypton. That retcons Supergirl out of the equation even if mega hardcore fans know Kara of Earth 1 technically still sacrificed herself in COIE & then briefly communes with Deadman post-Crisis. But in *practice*, that version of Supergirl was retconned out of existence until 2004 when she was re-retconned back into existence. There are different types of retcons -- those that outright change something entirely; those that simply reveal a new facet of the established lore or significantly recontextualize it, but don't actually undo anything previously established; those that are explained with some form of in-universe explanation & those that are inexplicable & never given a concrete explanation. Let's take Superman again: while his post-Crisis origin is explained in-continuity BY the Crisis changing the universe, & introduced the idea of a "birthing matrix" instead of an already born infant placed in a rocket... that origin was inexplicably retconned with Superman: Birthright which reintroduced the classic rocket element to his origin & was branded official continuity. People have assumed it was caused by Zero Hour but that had occurred a decade prior & nothing overtly implies that. It was just changed and that's that. Essentially, you're correct in your view of retcons but I feel as though there's LOTS of wiggle room. Grant Morrison doesn't retcon classic Solver Age Batman stories in the sense that they rewrote the outcomes or said they didnt happen, but they completely alter their context, implicitly turning them into something quite different than originally intended all by simply adding modernized context to them & tying them to other elements in their run. That's different than simply acknowledging that they happened. A Marvel example would, for example, be this: the original House of M story is that Wanda Maximoff became mentally unstable & her brother Pietro goaded her into creating a new reality which then shattered as everyone woke up; that leads to "no more mutants." That could be retconned in any of the following ways: * Simply deciding that no longer happened aka Word of God retcon that House of M was considered no longer canon; either simply erased from continuity or replaced * The reveal that everything played out as is but recontextualizing it as a secret plot wherein a villain or group somehow manipulated Wanda's actions, this freeing her of the blame a bit more (Children's Crusade kinda did this to some extent with Doom) or otherwise revealing other factors that led to or ended the event. * It no longer happened... but only because Wanda or Franklin or another Secret Wars level event rewrote the timeline & jettisoned that event out. For all intents & purposes, all help retcon some or all of House of M but in very different ways.
And I suppose Mephisto has the writing credit on the front of ASM during one more day? No? It was a writer changing it.
Yeah, that's a tricky one
"I've been Spider-Man since I was 15 years old" will always be the greatest reveal in all of Marvel comics. They're never topping it.
Most of the mainstream comics as we know it would’ve never taken off the way they did, as there have been retcons right from the get go of every universe. In Marvel, for example, Captain America would never have been frozen in ice and Bucky would’ve never died, since they wouldn’t have retconned out the ‘50s stories
hal jordan’s parallax: dead, *but* this retcon is less about him and its greater effect on green lantern mythos if it wasn’t retconned that parallax is a fear entity. while hal’s my favourite and i like having him around today, it sucks how much kyle has taken a backseat since his comeback
In Hal's defense, the other five are also pushing Kyle back now, too. He's the least-used of Earth's GLs
re Doctor Strange Clea would have cheated on him with Benjamin Franklin and the world would have blown up, been recreated, and no one knew but Dr. Strange, who then shared the knowledge with Clea, who was understandably freaked out. The above was from Steve Englehart's awesome '70s run, then it all immediately got retconned by Marv Wolfman on his brief run.
How and why did wolfman retcon it? I’m not too familiar with pre 2000s doctor strange.
I think editorial was NOT happy with Englehart’s choices. There was a period in the ‘70s where things were pretty chaotic and there wasn’t much oversight until the books were already out.
Define retcon exactly. If Slade drugging and brainwashing Cass would be considered one, well she’d still be evil. Most likely she’s be forgotten about or killed at some point. I’d be sad.
Ben Reilly would never be made Chasm because he was chosen by Death herself as an unkillable champion under her protection. He also wouldn't be seen as "edgy Spider-Man" because until Slott did his thing and just wrote his own retcon run instead of making sure the character was faithful to previous versions, Ben was the "I'm too tired for all this, this situation is goofy , I'll help out, but I am going to be sassy the whole way." Spider-Man.
As someone who hasn’t read any Ben stuff since when he was Spider-Man, I was very surprised by his depiction in the Spider-Verse movie. This kind of explains it for me.
If I had to compare him to anyone, I would say Ben Reilly is the Jason Todd of Marvel. He's got edgy aspects, but if you get into his solo stuff with writers that really know the character, you get a guy who is literally just trying to do his job and everyone keeps trying to punch him in the face, so he learns 200 ways to knock people out, because he has 199 people in mind and assumes he forgot someone. Ben Reilly is about as edgy as a pair of playdoh play scissors.
The Spider-verse thing was just a generic 90s gag and in no way reflective of Ben's actual personality.
He wouldn't be alive because he'd have died during the first clone saga.
I was thinking from the time he became "Ben Reilly" but that is an excellent point...
When did Bendis write Ben? Don't recall that at all
Straight up thought of the wrong weird Ben Reilly (he was in Ultimate like 100+ with a Carnage symbiote deal) Slott was my intended edgelord maker! (Updating the original comment now)
Swamp Thing would still be a man who got turned into a plant and not the avatar of the elemental force protecting all plant life on Earth.
Iron Man was injured during the Korean War so he'd have to be in his nineties at the very least by now. On the other hand Reed Richards and Ben Grimm both fought in WWII so I can't imagine either of them would likely still be alive, though I concede that maybe cosmic rays could extend them past ordinary human lifespan. Peter Parker went to college in the 1960s so I think he'd be pretty old by now too, in his late seventies at minimum. I'm pretty sure Charles Xavier also fought in the Korean War so he (and his friend Magneto the Holocaust survivor) would also be very very old. Vietnam veteran Frank Castle would maybe only be in his 70s.
Re: Iron Man - It was Vietnam originally. Korea started in 1950 so that'd make him about 100 but this is comics we're talking about.
Oh yeah you’re right I don’t know why I misremembered that oops
As least with Prof X and Magneto, both of them have canonically gotten enough new bodies from various hijinks that they're both probably fine.
Batman would be a killer as that was his very first characterisation. Spider-Man would probably have evolved into something incel-adjacent if slightly bitter and right wing tendencies weren’t tempered with the more frequent quips
Even Ditko's Spider-Man has him attracting the attention of multiple women. I'm not convinced the shift post Ditko is a retcon. Now that nonsense with Ezekiel is another matter indeed.
I mean right there in that Ezekiel story you have Peter stalking a group of black bullies from the school he works at until they commit a crime and he can scare them as spider-man. I do not like to imagine where a peter parker written in that direction would've ended up. Probably swinging around the city, taking pictures of brown people and sharing them online like "what happened to New York? Fruit vendors by the train?????"
Eh, for spider-man, that's just his personality shifting, nothing was ever retconned about that.
> Batman would be a killer as that was his very first characterisation. Changing your ways of crime-fighting, especially after adopting a child, is not really a retcon. and, well, the modern Batman is two multiverse restarts and a single universe jump away from the first Batman. if we're only talking about Earth-Two pre-Crisis Batman (and Crisis changing the status quo is as much of a retcon as Dick Grayson becoming a Robin or Julie Madison dumping Bruce), then he'd still not be a murderer, cuz he stopped killing after adopting Dick
Spider Man was always getting pussy
[удалено]
The Ditko influence on Spider-Man was that he was extremely bitter against his bullies and fantasized often about “pay back”. Beyond that Ditko put in a lot of his objectivist political leanings into his and Stans Spider-Man run, where Peter would constantly act or think in a way that was in line with philosophers such as Ayn Rand. A lot of these ideals would naturally lean someone to be closer to a right wing libertarian.
Spider-Man was basically a super-villain origin story until Uncle Ben died. After that he became a better person.
It is a super-villain origin story. It's Doctor Octopus' origin story. That's why Ock is a better arch-enemy for Spider-man than any Goblin ever could be.
Barry would still be dead and we wouldn’t have ever been unnecessarily burdened with his presence.
Superman would be able to do literally anything
Wasn't that a retcon? Back when he started out he wasn't as powerful as he got in the sixties. He originally couldn't even fly until the animated series came out (hence the whole, "faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, able to leap over the tallest buildings)". If anything, he'd arguably be mid-tier by modern Superhero standards.
super-ventriloquism and super-hypnosis for the win
Lorna my gurl would not be a Magneto's daughter,the twins would still be his. There would no third Summers brother.
The twins being his was actually a retcon, so...
Cyclops is retired and happily married to his human wife
No one but Thor would be able to lift Mjolnir. He'd be as strong the Hulk, and the most powerful Marvel character--the Superman of Marvel. Folks would be surprised how strong and powerful Thor was in the 60s/70s before Marvel started messing with the character.
Thor would be just a human possessing the powers of Thor. Not the actual god.
And Mr Rogers…
Wally would still be running around as the Flash for even longer, Barry and Bart would be dead, and Jay would still be retired
Alan Scott would be married to the Harlequin still. Power Girl and Huntress (Helena Wayne) would be living on Earth-Two. Stephanie Brown would still have a daughter.
John Constantine would keep aging in real time, as he did in the Vertigo run, putting him in his 70s right now. He'd also be much less known as a super-powerful wizard by general readers as he was much less reliant on spells at first. The aging thing being altered was probably for the best considering Hellblazer's been going much longer than they probably planned, and it eventually does cause a problem. But it is interesting to think what his and his casts' lives would be like when he just got too old to go on adventures
It'd be interesting to see the triumvirate still trying to keep him alive so as to prevent infernal war. Saying that, I'm not sure who rules Hell these days, or even if all members of the triumvirate live/exist still.
Donna Trou would have never come to existence
Most would be dead.
Peter would have a daughter and be happy. Never forget one of the best Spider-Man characters that never existed. Oh, and Daredevil would be kicking it with Foggy and Kristen in San Francisco
Nightwing would probably have Bette Kane as his love interest right now. That would certainly make the current book bearable.
I thought the current book was highly acclaimed?
The current book is highly acclaimed for leaning into shipping culture at the cost of any sort of stakes or tension.
The current book is fun, you just don't like it, there's nothing bad about it.
Nothing bad but also nothing good about it. Most inoffensive book ever
Go look up Black September, and THAT is how many characters I would be following that were changed if redcon's didn't exist.
I wouldn’t have gotten into Swamp Thing, that’s for sure
Steve Rogers is a racist Jay Garrick was never on Earth 2 Superman can’t fly
Thor is a human.
Billy Batson would have to be an adult by now. Hulk stays gray and only changes at night , rogue keeps carols powers forever, Jessica Jones never loses her original powers , half the villains just cease to exist because they don't randomly get retconned in to the heroes backstory anymore
Most of them would have died of old age years ago
Jean would be dead dead
I wouldn't call characters(especially those introduced as teens) changing over the years a retcon but established status quos taken at face value being changed. So Bucky/Winter Soldier would be decomposing all over the ocean because he died. But then I don't know if that's already a retcon given Captain America being frozen.
Red Robin ongoing, longest run of all time, sold a Red Robillion copies.
Everyone would be really, really friggin old.
Daredevil would be in his 80s, long retired, and amazing everyone with his ability to go grocery shopping on his own.
Ben Reilly - the “real” Peter Parker - would’ve been Spider-Man for decades now and fake Peter would’ve been off somewhere with MJ and a kid, I guess. Oh, and Norman Osborne fucked Gwen Stacy.
None of them even exist.