What's the worst retcon you've read?

[thecrimson]

Retcons are sometimes a necessary evil in comic books. Not all of them are well-written, so what is the worst retcon you've seen? I think for me it'd be that Xorn was Magneto...and then he was a dude who just thought he was Magneto.

[Kizaru]

Scarlet Witch and QS not being Magneto kids or mutants, because MCU.

[Expletive Deleted]

The Crossing.

[The_Greatest_Username]

Scarlet Witch and QS not being Magneto kids or mutants, because MCU.

I echo this one.

[The Sword is Drawn]

Scarlet Witch and QS not being Magneto kids or mutants, because MCU.

Has this actually stuck? Because it's utterly nonsensical and messed up if it has.

[Sea Hound]

I strongly disliked the rewriting of Claremont's version of Storm and Black Panther's first meeting. He wrote them as two brave teens, fighting together and respected both characters. The retcon had a powered Storm being a complete swooning damsel in distress, and being rescued before they disappeared into the countryside to have very under aged sex. (She was 12/13 ish, T'Challa a little older.)

Ick, ick, ick.

[616MarvelYear is LeapYear]

I strongly disliked the rewriting of Claremont's version of Storm and Black Panther's first meeting. He wrote them as two brave teens, fighting together and respected both characters.

I LOVED it!

[Sea Hound]

I LOVED it!

Fair enough. You like what you like.

[responsarbre]

I strongly disliked the rewriting of Claremont's version of Storm and Black Panther's first meeting. He wrote them as two brave teens, fighting together and respected both characters. The retcon had a powered Storm being a complete swooning damsel in distress, and being rescued before they disappeared into the countryside to have very under aged sex. (She was 12/13 ish, T'Challa a little older.)

Ick, ick, ick.

Same here. It was terribly disrespectful to Storm.

[Adjudicator]

I have to go with avenger disassembled, one of the worst character action ham fisted stories ever to just get the avengers the writer wanted.

OMD was bad as well,, spidey deal with a demon. Never read another Spider-Man book.

[Iron Fist]

- Xorn being Magneto
- Emma Frost's diamond power because 'planted' by Cassandra Nova
- Making Mary Jane a total bitch to ease fans into the idea of retconning away her marriage to Peter in One More Day.
- Morrison bringing Jean back from the dead with zero explanation and making the phoenix force a power she just has instead of it being a cosmic entity.

[Wind Rider]

I strongly disliked the rewriting of Claremont's version of Storm and Black Panther's first meeting. He wrote them as two brave teens, fighting together and respected both characters. The retcon had a powered Storm being a complete swooning damsel in distress, and being rescued before they disappeared into the countryside to have very under aged sex. (She was 12/13 ish, T'Challa a little older.)

Ick, ick, ick.

Quoted for truth. That Dickey retcon was totally craptastic and unnecessary. I was happy when the Amazing X-Men annual reflected Claremont's original encounter between Storm and BP.

[t hedge coke]

Has this actually stuck? Because it's utterly nonsensical and messed up if it has.

When impossible retcon meets desperate headcanon, you get: Wanda's reality alterations during Disassembled-through-House-of-M altered their lineage along with all the other shifts and mutations.

[Bafflement]

Messiah Complex. Completely inverting Bishop's backstory to shoe-horn him into the role of a Scary Black Man villain stereotype. Manages to be both a clumsy contradiction of continuity and horrifyingly offensive at the same time.

[The Sword is Drawn]

Brian Braddock - Guardian of the Marvel Multiverse 2000 - 2005.

Brian went from depowered Captain Britain to uniting the two sides of the Captain Britain Mythos, and effectively becoming the new Merlyn, back in 2000. Roma announced that, much like her father, she would be passing on and Brian was replacing her.

He appeared as such in the pages of Avengers, a few years later. Transforming Kelsey Leigh into the new Captain Britain of Earth 616. Wth Meggan at his side, echoing his own origin story, but with him and Meggan now in the place of Merlyn and Roma.

Roll on to 2005, and House of M, and it seemed that Chris Claremont never got the memo.

Roma is back from the dead, Brian is Captain Britain again, Meggan gets trapped in-between dimensions and Brian cannot get back to Otherworld. We were told that some force (which was never explained) was stopping him, at the start of New Excalibur. But by the time we had the crossover story with eXiles at the end of that run, this has been completely forgotten.

The entirity of this change, and how Brian was suddenly no longer the Guardian, was pretty brutally retoconned by a wruter simply pretending it never happened. No explanation, let's just move on.

Terrible storytelling.