Best/Worst X-Men Retcons

[Tycon]

Worst:
-Logan and all the furball mutants are actually an entirely different species
-Azazel/Nightcrawler (he should've been Mystique & Destiny's child)
-Xorn is Magneto
-AvX Phoenix crap to justify Avengers being involved
-Original Flavor Mondo was just an evil spy
-Magneto's Roma erasure
-Scott has a brother
-Mystique & Sabretooth (honestly ew)

Best:
-Cipher
-Billy and Tommy being Wanda's reincarnated kids
-Pietro and Wanda being Erik's kids (and they still are)
-Magneto's Holocaust backstory
-Monet is/are the M-Twins but not really
-Penance is actually Monet but not really
-Graymalkin being under the school the entire time
-Pixie is Mastermind's daughter
-Scott has a brother

[Gray Lensman]

Worst:
-Logan and all the furball mutants are actually an entirely different species
-Azazel/Nightcrawler (he should've been Mystique & Destiny's child)
-Xorn is Magneto
-AvX Phoenix crap to justify Avengers being involved
-Original Flavor Mondo was just an evil spy
-Magneto's Roma erasure
-Scott has a brother
-Mystique & Sabretooth (honestly ew)

Best:
-Cipher
-Billy and Tommy being Wanda's reincarnated kids
-Pietro and Wanda being Erik's kids (and they still are)
-Magneto's Holocaust backstory
-Monet is/are the M-Twins but not really
-Penance is actually Monet but not really
-Graymalkin being under the school the entire time
-Pixie is Mastermind's daughter
-Scott has a brother

I find this funny for some reason. Havok = good and Vulcan = Bad I presume? I know the rest of the retcons in the story that introduced the latter were pretty bad.

[berserkerclaw]

BAD:anything to do with Romulas and the Lupine
Third aummers brother being Vulcan. It works with Adam X.
Gambit leading Marauders into tunnels when it showed them following the Morlocks.

Iceman being Gay

Magneto not being Xorn is lame

Silverfox not dead by creeds hands and being a Team X member. Never worked

[AdamFTF]

It's interesting how a couple of these (Phoenix is not Jean, Magneto is or isn't Xorn) show up on both sides for people.

Well, welcome to the X-Men fandom where everything is a good idea escept when it's not and every character is loved except for by those who hate them.

No, really. Look around this board. There are few fandoms with so many conflicting opinions on things.

[Geek Mangacomic]

The whole Xorn retcon was bad. I wish they would’ve kept Xorn as an alter ego for Magneto. Eugh.

[lurkerforyears]

for me the worst retcons are the ones that don't make sense to the point most of the fandom actively tries to forget about them, or they create constant contradictions

-Jean wasnt Jean during the Phoenix Saga, it was the Phoenix perfectly adopting the form of Jean. This retcon was ignored very recently in the Jean Grey Marvel Legacy issue in which Teen Jean grey travels back to the past to talk to Jean when she was on her own thinking the xmen had died in Antartica. It treated it as Jeen meeting the real Jean Grey.

-the whole Romulus story of Wolverine

-Angel having healing blood and belonging to an ancient race of Angels. Also, everything that happened to him since being born again from the life seed.

-the relationship between Monet, her sisters, Marius and Penance.

I must be forgetting others. I would count the Azazel one but sadly it firmly became canon.

[RCX]

I think I hate all retcons.

[Grey]

Favorite: iceman being gay. I think it worked just like someone coming out late in life would work. People saying “but you’ve been with girls..” etc etc. his coming out really started some good conversation imo, even if a lot of folks don’t like it.

Least favorite: honestly don’t know enough abor overall X-Men history to have one

[SpiderClops]

Good:

-Iceman is gay.
-Scott's family(Havok, Vulcan, Cable, Rachel, Corsair, Nate Grey).
-Scott and Jean mind-linked when they were children.
-Maddie was a ploy by Sinister(Nothing good was gonna come out of that story the moment Claremont made her a Jean look-a-like, not to mention all the other suspicious things that were supposed to be just "coincidences". Yeah, sure Claremont).
-Scott's childhood.
-Polaris, Wand and Pietro are Magneto's children.

Bad:

-All the Xorneto stuff from Morrison's run.
-Retconning Phoenix so many times that nobody knows what it's supposed to be anymore.
-Jean had strong feelings for Logan since the beginning.
-Like half the history of Wolverine. He is one of the top martial artists in Marvel, is a samurai, is a ninja, meditates, knows multiple languages, is supposedly highly intelligent, his power creep.
-Wanda and Pietro are not Magneto's children. They are not mutants.

[Star_Jammer]

Good:
Iceman is gay

Bad:
It was written by Bendis.

[Silver Fang]

I'm on the fence with it, but I am sure this goes under bad retcons
Holly (1).jpg
Holly (2).jpg
Creed hating Logan for costing him Holly. A teenage mutant he was in love with. In fact I seem to remember this being declared as non-canon at some point. If so, then that shows how bad it was.

[AbnormallyNormal]

I liked the retcon making Chamber related to Apocalypse and revealing his true body that was cool (but dropped later)

I hate the recent retcon making Wanda and Pietro unrelated to Magneto/Polaris and not even mutants, in fact I don't even recognize its validity. To me it is not a thing.

The retcons around Jean Grey and the PF are confusing and dumb, I think it's best to go with the original intention of PF being an entity that merged/bonded with JG instead of outright replacing or simulating her

Madelyn Pryor... well, I actually loved their eerie but heart warming romance, her and Cyclops. XFactor ruined it, not the fault of Claremont, it was Marvel being greedy and short sighted, which is the cause of most of these huge story blunders. Claremont then had to salvage the character SOMEHOW and that involved extremely convoluted stuff but I felt it more or less "worked" although it's going to be nearly impossible to ever portray her in live action probably due to how complicated it all is

Retconning Cable to not just be a random Big Tough Old Guy Cyborg With Guns and Pouches into an actually SUPER meaningful and interesting character was a GOOD retcon.

Retconning Apocalypse into an ancient Egyptian mutant named En Sabah Nur who discovered a Celestial Ship in the Medieval Era was pretty interesting, made the character a lot less cartoonish and somewhat more depth, and that trend has continued since of "humanizing" Apocalypse somewhat.

Some of the retcons or Power Creep to Wolverine and Deadpool turning Wolverine from just a sort of mean ******* who can heal from wounds into an almost 100% immortal All Personality Types character was well pretty **** actually, another instance of Marvel's greed and short sightedness. Turning Deadpool from a very very very dark and tortured character into a super fun loving superficial "Chimichanga" character that is only known for 4th wall breaking... was a mistake. Popular enough but ruined the character's pathos and depth utterly.

The retcon revealing Mr Sinister guided Cyclops was pretty decent. Ties into Maddy Pryor stuff really though and Cable stuff. That's what is good, you can use basically one retcon concept to tie in like a bunch of characters to make them go from more simple into a complicated series of relationships. Genius move to be honest, what Claremont came up with regarding Sinister's relationships to those 3, and how Sinister was created by Apocalypse, worked on his behalf, but ultimately needed a way to get rid of Apoc since he was nuts

The retcon(s) to humanize and ennoble Magneto worked extremely well IMO although even to this day a ton of fans seem to consider Magneto "Supervillain" lol. I blame the 90s and, again, the whole idiotic "lets make things as basic as possible so as many kids read comics as possible" nonsense.

The retcons showing more about Mystique's past are pretty interesting, making her a more flawed but complicated character.

Retcons are good if they make characters more 3-dimensional, increase their relationships with other characters, and so on. And retcons are bad if they overly simplify things and seem obviously motivated by commercial interests

[Shadowcat99]

You all have pretty much said everything I would say. The only one I would add, and it's so minor, and I'm not even sure it's considered a retcon or just a forgotten story...but back in the 90's in adjectiveless X-Men (Blue Squad), Psylocke was trying to woo Cyclops and they began a flirtation that has never been touched on since. I remember, at the time, that I found it so shocking because, though on different squads at the time, Psylocke and Jean were teammates. I always felt that so much more could have been done with that story. The reason I'm even mentioning it here is because it's never been talked about since. So, in a sense, I feel it's been retconned out of X-Men history. (Can I use retcon that way? LOL!)

[Gray Lensman]

You all have pretty much said everything I would say. The only one I would add, and it's so minor, and I'm not even sure it's considered a retcon or just a forgotten story...but back in the 90's in adjectiveless X-Men (Blue Squad), Psylocke was trying to woo Cyclops and they began a flirtation that has never been touched on since. I remember, at the time, that I found it so shocking because, though on different squads at the time, Psylocke and Jean were teammates. I always felt that so much more could have been done with that story. The reason I'm even mentioning it here is because it's never been talked about since. So, in a sense, I feel it's been retconned out of X-Men history. (Can I use retcon that way? LOL!)

I think that ended when Kwannon showed up in Betsy's original body and much, if not the whole thing was blamed on her. But it has been so long since I have seen it referenced in anything other than fanfic I'm not really sure myself.

[Dementia5]

You all have pretty much said everything I would say. The only one I would add, and it's so minor, and I'm not even sure it's considered a retcon or just a forgotten story...but back in the 90's in adjectiveless X-Men (Blue Squad), Psylocke was trying to woo Cyclops and they began a flirtation that has never been touched on since. I remember, at the time, that I found it so shocking because, though on different squads at the time, Psylocke and Jean were teammates. I always felt that so much more could have been done with that story. The reason I'm even mentioning it here is because it's never been talked about since. So, in a sense, I feel it's been retconned out of X-Men history. (Can I use retcon that way? LOL!)

Yeah, I remember that. Betsy and Jean had a nasty little confrontation over it as well.

Not sure it counts as a retcon as much as a “let’s just conveniently forget this ever happened, okay?” If they had specifically brought it up again to deny its validity in some way (“I was being mind controlled” or “it was all a dream” or “UV rays from Venus reflected off a weather balloon onto some swamp gas”), that would be a retcon.