Originally Posted by
HypnoHustler
Well, first Byrne pretended that Sandman was breaking the fourth wall and lying to readers when he had any thought bubble about being a good guy over the previous two decades, which was just a bizarre rationale no one liked. And then since everyone complained about that they came up with the hackneyed brainwashing crap. In any event, his change of heart from bad to good was retconned and he was turned bad again. I think “brainwashing” as a plot device counts as a retcon as much as any dumb plot twist that undoes past continuity, such as “magic erased our memory” or “he was actually in Europe and not dead.”