What's the worst retcon you've read?

[dzub]

(excuse my lack of reading the last dozen pages)

Has anyone mentioned about sentry yet?
in the very same issue of Dark Avengers he got turned a junkie that got powers through drug binges AND, i repeat AND the force of god too

[Celgress]

My top, or bottom, five.

OMD
Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver not being Magneto's children
Gwen Stacy/Norman Osborn's relationship & children
"Snap" Wilson
The Clone Saga

[Adam-X]

Also was not a fan of it (especially because I liked the two new girl mutants he killed off), But it lead to some pretty good stories. I really liked Rise and Fall of the Shi'ar Empire and War of Kings, even if Vulcan was na annoying character.

Peace

I agree. RISE and FALL OF SHI'AR Empire and WAR OF KINGS was indeed really good. I just don't think that rewriting Giant Size X-Men #1 was needed. All because he wanted to make it the "Third Summers Brother." (When there was a story already in place for that... But that's besides the point). Those stories would have been just as good if Vulcan wasn't a made a Summers Brother. If he was just another crazy mutant.

My top, or bottom, five.

OMD
Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver not being Magneto's children
Gwen Stacy/Norman Osborn's relationship & children
"Snap" Wilson
The Clone Saga

Heh - the Clone Saga... that was a mess.
Snap Wilson was just bad writing... like who thought Sam Wilson needed a "dual personality" thing...
Not read the Gwen/Norman thing.

And hold on - Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver are not Magneto's children?

[megaharrison]

Gay Iceman

[Omega Alpha]

SW and Quicksilver not being Magneto's children anymore is up there. So is OMD. Clone Saga would be the worst, but fortunately that too was retconned. Still is pretty bad.

Also, Alicia Masters is a Skrull and she never married Johnny. Never mind that literally makes Johnny a victim of rape (which is something writers don't seem to consider when making stories about shapeshifters sleeping with people- all of them would go to jail IRL), it erased 10 years of solid character development for him and I don't think he ever truly recovered.

Everything happening with Nick Fury since Battle Scars was just pathetic.

That said, Sins Past has to be the absolutely worse one. Seriously, WHY?

Snap Wilson and The Crossing seem pretty bad too, although I never read those stories.

The kids being Peter's would have been much better imo. Hell the only reason it was scrapped was because it would 'age' Peter.

No, it would still be pretty stupid. Just slightly less stupid.

[Stahlflamme]

Speaking of Scarlet Witch the constant Retcon of her powers is ridiculous. Mutant probability manipulation. Magic. Chaos Magic. Chaos Magic doesn't exist you are a reality warper(Disassembled). You're a magic user the reality warping was the life force(Childrens Crusade). I'm the guy who established you as an reality warper, guess what(AvX). Magic user that can rewrite reality(Axis). Magic User with probability manipulation(Axis tie-in mighty Avengers). Not Magnetos child genetic experiment by HighEvolutionary the power you got throught genetics? Chaos magic, which didn't exist AND was given to her by Chthon(Uncanny Avengers). We're gonna see what her MUTANT powers are, too(Interview about the upcoming solo).

[Adam-X]

Speaking of Scarlet Witch the constant Retcon of her powers is ridiculous. Mutant probability manipulation. Magic. Chaos Magic. Chaos Magic doesn't exist you are a reality warper(Disassembled). You're a magic user the reality warping was the life force(Childrens Crusade). I'm the guy who established you as an reality warper, guess what(AvX). Magic user that can rewrite reality(Axis). Magic User with probability manipulation(Axis tie-in mighty Avengers). Not Magnetos child genetic experiment by HighEvolutionary the power you got throught genetics? Chaos magic, which didn't exist AND was given to her by Chthon(Uncanny Avengers). We're gonna see what her MUTANT powers are, too(Interview about the upcoming solo).

To me, Wanda will always be a Mutant with Probability Manipulation, with a touch of magic (due to her mutant power).
In my head, her probability manipulation actually "created" her ability to control magic, because she believed it was magical powers she had (thus altering, in a sense, her own powers).
Which would explain why Sentinels detect her as a mutant; and why you have folks like Agatha Harkness training her to use magic.
And to me, she will always be the daughter of Magneto.

[Stahlflamme]

The silly part about the Magneto retcon is that it doesn't erase their history. As a matter of fact the reveal led to the relationship between the two and Magneto being explored a lot more than it had been done in years.

[Adam-X]

The silly part about the Magneto retcon is that it doesn't erase their history. As a matter of fact the reveal led to the relationship between the two and Magneto being explored a lot more than it had been done in years.

Well, let's face it - Magneto's a mess too. He's Magneto. He's dead. He's alive. He's de-aged to a baby. Now he's back. Now he's dead again. Now he's good. Now he's bad. Now he's dead again. Now he's Joseph. No, that's a clone. Now he's Xorn. No wait, Xorn is Xorn. Now he's...

I don't even know anymore.

How did comics for for 20 years or so (60's to the 80's) without being overly complicated... then in the 90's... everything fell apart.

[Doctor Know]

I had never heard of Snap Wilson before reading this thread. Researching it, Jesus f*ck? That was incredibly mean spirited and dumb.

The recent Magento, QS and SW thing.

New X-Men's Xorn not being Magento and subsequent retcons to explain it.

One More Day, OMIT, and Sins Past.

Alicia Masters is secretly a skrull and dumped Ben for Johhny? How could I have missed that? Jesus, who thinks of these things?

[PhantomStranger]

That frakking cat in Spider-Man...long time Spider-Fans know which one I'm talking about.

[Byakko]

The retcon wizardry that let Avengers Disassembled happen. The reason for her 'snapping' not making any sense when we had years of comics establishing she remembered the magic children, and got over it. And then there was an attempt to 'fix' this discrepancy by saying she got possessed by an unnamed 'life force' that she and Doom found, as revealed in Children's Crusade.

Is she even a Nexus being anymore? Is that even a 'thing' anymore with the High Evolutionary tossed into the mix?

And I love that Wiccan and Speed exist, I think they're fine characters. But my gawd, their actual 'origin' is such a fanficky mess that you have to toss your hands up and say '**** it' after a certain point. I group them in with Wanda because they were partially the bandaid used to 'fix' Wanda's retconned to high-heavens mess of a story; by inviting in even more freaking questions.

[Iron Maiden]

I had never heard of Snap Wilson before reading this thread. Researching it, Jesus f*ck? That was incredibly mean spirited and dumb.

The recent Magento, QS and SW thing.

New X-Men's Xorn not being Magento and subsequent retcons to explain it.

One More Day, OMIT, and Sins Past.

Alicia Masters is secretly a skrull and dumped Ben for Johhny? How could I have missed that? Jesus, who thinks of these things?

You had to be around for the 1990s FF written by Tom DeFalco who as IIRC was also EIC. It was an awkward situation that was set up when Ben stayed behind on Battleworld and took up with another woman and again my memory might be off but I think all the Battleworld people were illusions. Johnny and Alicia grew closer during his absence and then after Byrne left for DC, Roger Stern briefly wrote the FF and married them. Apparently Tom DeFalco didn't like this development so he brings in Lyja the Skrull who was spying on the FF and was impersonating Alicia the whole time.

And I like it better that the retcon of Magneto being the father of Wanda and Pietro has been reversed for now at least. Bob and Madeline Frank were originally introduced as their parents. Madeline's story had her being at Wundagore Mountain and taken in by the High Evolutionary. Then a later story, to justify Magneto being the father, has Magda there and also about to give birth. Her character didn't even exist at the time of the first story of their birth so it was a clumsy, cobbled together switch in the first place.

[Stahlflamme]

The retcon wizardry that let Avengers Disassembled happen. The reason for her 'snapping' not making any sense when we had years of comics establishing she remembered the magic children, and got over it. And then there was an attempt to 'fix' this discrepancy by saying she got possessed by an unnamed 'life force' that she and Doom found, as revealed in Children's Crusade.

Is she even a Nexus being anymore? Is that even a 'thing' anymore with the High Evolutionary tossed into the mix?

And I love that Wiccan and Speed exist, I think they're fine characters. But my gawd, their actual 'origin' is such a fanficky mess that you have to toss your hands up and say '**** it' after a certain point. I group them in with Wanda because they were partially the bandaid used to 'fix' Wanda's retconned to high-heavens mess of a story; by inviting in even more freaking questions.

Childrens Crusade stated she was a Nexus being.
Speaking of the whole Wanda suffers from previously resolved psychological trauma thing, they literally did the same thing with Wiccan, who got over the death of his friends in childrens crusade and then was apparently suffering from it for over a year by the time of the 2013 series. What does the story establish, oh Wiccan has super ultra reality warping powers, you know which the childrens crusade stated he and Wanda didn't have. Horrible retcon repeated in horrible series.

[Nomads1]

The retcon wizardry that let Avengers Disassembled happen. The reason for her 'snapping' not making any sense when we had years of comics establishing she remembered the magic children, and got over it. And then there was an attempt to 'fix' this discrepancy by saying she got possessed by an unnamed 'life force' that she and Doom found, as revealed in Children's Crusade.

Is she even a Nexus being anymore? Is that even a 'thing' anymore with the High Evolutionary tossed into the mix?

And I love that Wiccan and Speed exist, I think they're fine characters. But my gawd, their actual 'origin' is such a fanficky mess that you have to toss your hands up and say '**** it' after a certain point. I group them in with Wanda because they were partially the bandaid used to 'fix' Wanda's retconned to high-heavens mess of a story; by inviting in even more freaking questions.

Also known as, in my book, THE RETCON THAT RUINED THE MARVEL UNIVERSE FOREVER!

You had to be around for the 1990s FF written by Tom DeFalco who as IIRC was also EIC. It was an awkward situation that was set up when Ben stayed behind on Battleworld and took up with another woman and again my memory might be off but I think all the Battleworld people were illusions. Johnny and Alicia grew closer during his absence and then after Byrne left for DC, Roger Stern briefly wrote the FF and married them. Apparently Tom DeFalco didn't like this development so he brings in Lyja the Skrull who was spying on the FF and was impersonating Alicia the whole time.

.

I actually liked how they fit Lyja the Skrull spy in there. I wasn't a fan of the Johnny?Alicia relationship. At first, it sort of made them feel sleezy for me (especially Johnny. Alicia always had that vulnerability about her that endears the character). Then, they married and got overdramatically boring (especially when they brought in homewrecker Crystal - Englehart sure seemed to have it in for her - and Johnny reverted to type). However, afterwards, I felt they handled it badly. They foccussed too much on Johnny and Lyja (which I actually came to like) and not enough on Ben and Alicia (or even Ben and Lyja. That would have been interersting). Alicia, in fact, almost disappeared from the series. All in all, I know it's not a very popular period for the FF, but I enjoyed a lot DeFalco and Ryan's run.

Peace