Which characters have been most hurt by origin tweaks?

[Zero Hunter]

It has been going on for years. A character has a set origin that works, but for some reason latter writers come in and decide "well instead of that how about this?", and then the retcons commence. It seems to be much more a thing in the last 20 years than it was before with almost every character getting some new "tweak" to their origin. Sure some work out very well like Cap being frozen in ice or Magneto being the father of Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch, but by and large most or not great and only hurt the character. So the question is which origin tweak hurt a character the most?

For me it is easy and that is Apocalypse. When he burst on the on scene he was quickly moved up to one of the top 3 X-Men villains alongside Sinister and Magneto. Then the retcons started. First the garbage 12 storyline were Apocalypse was reduced from and immortal bad ass to a parasite that has to jump from body to body. Then came the whole pawn of the Celestials thing from the Dark Angel Saga with the whole "death seed" thing. It seems like everytime they mess with him he gets worse and worse.

[Immortal Weapon]

For a while the totem retcon hurt Spider-Man. For a character that's a science hero having a mystical origin is contradictory. Said origin retcon lead to garbage like Morlun and "The Other" story arc.

[CrimsonEchidna]

I'm going to go the reverse and say Marvel really should've used Secret Wars as their out to wipe the slate screen and pull a New 52. Not necessarily hard reboot everyone, but reset the board to better status quos.

Instead we got mutants dying thanks to the terrigen mist, Spider-Man as your friendly neighborhood billionaire philanthropist, Captain America as a Hydra Agent, and the whole continuity snarl of bringing in Miles and some of the other Ultimate characters but being vague with what they remembered and what they didn't.

[DrNewGod]

The whole Mr. Sinister fixation with The Summers was a death-spiral of mess.

Sage is a neat character. The backstory of her as as Professor X's Black Op inside The Hellfire Club was straight up trash.

Anything that makes pre-spider-Peter Parker more than an unusually bright kid from Queens (say like ... not actually dead spy parents), is a bad idea.

Taking the mystery out of Wolverine's origins probably wasn't helpful.

Storm and The Black Panther as a teenage thing just made the Marvel Universe feel like a smaller, place, with less room for amazing things to happen.

[Seren]

I still can't figure out if Marvel is still using Bendis Spider-Woman Origin as Jess true origin or the one from her original series. I've seen authors use either one or the other and I'd like Marvel to make up their mind.

[Immortal Weapon]

I'm going to go the reverse and say Marvel really should've used Secret Wars as their out to wipe the slate screen and pull a New 52. Not necessarily hard reboot everyone, but reset the board to better status quos.

Instead we got mutants dying thanks to the terrigen mist, Spider-Man as your friendly neighborhood billionaire philanthropist, Captain America as a Hydra Agent, and the whole continuity snarl of bringing in Miles and some of the other Ultimate characters but being vague with what they remembered and what they didn't.

Marvel should have used Secret Wars to bring over ultimate Nick Fury instead of sticking with Marcus Johnson.

[Digifiend]

None of Marvel's heroes have it as bad as DC's premier heroine, Wonder Woman. She and Donna Troy both keep getting their origins changed. Originally it was simple - Diana was the daughter of Hippolyta, who then rescued Donna from a fire, Hippolyta adopted her and granted her the Amazon powers, thus making Wonder Woman and Wonder Girl sisters (though that actually happened in flashback in Teen Titans - the book had accidentally used Wonder Girl despite her actually being a younger Diana, similar to Superboy who was a kid Superman at the time, so they had to retcon her into a new character). Crisis of Infinite Earths rebooted Diana, but NOT Donna, making her origin a continuity snarl. New 52 of course also made a mess of things. At one point Diana was said to merely be a clay construct. That's no longer the case, but is now Donna's origin instead.

And that is why Marvel doesn't do continuity reboots.

[Michael Watkins]

Iron Man wasn't broken

[jetengine]

For a while the totem retcon hurt Spider-Man. For a character that's a science hero having a mystical origin is contradictory. Said origin retcon lead to garbage like Morlun and "The Other" story arc.

I rather like that retcon because it left things open. Is he a character mystically chosen ? Or was he just picked up post bite ?

[Huntsman Spider]

I rather like that retcon because it left things open. Is he a character mystically chosen ? Or was he just picked up post bite ?

And the arc's initial ending was on a more ambiguous note, stating that the scientific and mystical origins could both be true at the same time, on account of the fact that people used to ascribe phenomena they couldn't explain --- like the rising and setting of the sun --- through then-contemporary science to divine power or influence. As science demystified a lot of those phenomena, fewer people came to believe they were magical or divine in nature, but as with contemporary debates over religion vs. science, it could be said that one (science) explains how something works, while the other (religion or spiritualism) explains why something works.

As for the situation with Peter Parker's parents, they're still dead and they've stayed as such. Any indication otherwise, like in the 90s pre-Clone Saga comics, was simply trickery meant to f*** with him and break him down further. Of course, if you're referring to Teresa Durand-Parker from the Amazing Spider-Man OGN "Family Business" and more recently Chip Zdarsky's Spectacular Spider-Man . . . that's another story, though she turned herself in to the authorities at the end and may never be heard from again.

[JudicatorPrime]

I think just about every Marvel character has something about their origin that we'd change, if we could. And most of it wouldn't be well-received.

[Frontier]

Instead we got mutants dying thanks to the terrigen mist, Spider-Man as your friendly neighborhood billionaire philanthropist, Captain America as a Hydra Agent, and the whole continuity snarl of bringing in Miles and some of the other Ultimate characters but being vague with what they remembered and what they didn't.

To be fair, HydraCap came a little after Secret Wars happened .

[Carabas]

For a while the totem retcon hurt Spider-Man. For a character that's a science hero having a mystical origin is contradictory. Said origin retcon lead to garbage like Morlun and "The Other" story arc.

*looks at sales and critical reception of JMS's Amazing Spider-Man compared to other Amazing Spider-Man runs in the same era*

Define "hurt"?

[SuperiorIronman]

Iron man being adopted is one thing.
However the biggest problem with it was Tony's proposed actual origins in that he was really the son of some British rockstar and his dad was a Hydra agent. It makes the universe feel smaller if Tony is the son of an agent, who is also agent of one of the most prolific supervillain organizations in comics. Not to mention we also got no mention as to why Howard and Maria simply didn't try again. It's not that hard to explain, and nothing in the original story said that they couldn't.

International Iron man is a D-list Iron man book and the actual origins do not help it.
_________________________________

Morlun's actual origin is interesting at first, but suddenly raises a thousand questions.
So he's part of a family of inter-dimmensional steam punk vampires who primarily eat Spider people but also eat the lifeforce of other totems (animal themed people). That's all fine and good but he's been raised to ultimately take part in the "great hunt" which is said to be the thing that will permanently prevent all spiders from ever being born post-hunt.
So Morlun being the iditot he is will take part in a hunt that will destroy his primary food source and help starve him. The problem being is that he's also shown to be able to eat like a regular person so he has a functioning digestive system..., so what does he eat spiders for in the first place? How did that win out on the evolutionary tree? Darwin, a little help!?

[Immortal Weapon]

*looks at sales and critical reception of JMS's Amazing Spider-Man compared to other Amazing Spider-Man runs in the same era*

Define "hurt"?

The OP wasn't talking about sales when he made this topic.