"X-Men: Deadly Genesis" cover
© Marvel Comics
Fun with Retconning
By: Kurt AmackerDate: Wednesday, December 19, 2007
Greeting, Maniacs, and welcome to another fun-filled ride into the gaping maw of Comicscape. I’ve listened in at various corners of the World Wide Web, where the cool kids hang out. While smoking their Camels cigarettes and wearing their black Converse shoes, they’ve typed their fingers numb about the future of Peter Parker’s marriage. Mephisto arrived to seal the deal to save Aunt May’s life in The Sensational Spider-Man #41, offering to take a slice of Parker’s soul and erase his marriage to Mary Jane Watson-Parker forever. Needless to say, everyone – including me – objects to this lunacy. In other news, as of Ghost Rider #18, Johnny Blaze is now part-angel. His soul still belongs to Satan, but Roxanne Simpson’s prayers – the ones she uttered to save him back in the 1970s – earned Johnny a lifeline from Heaven. A rogue angelic entity answered the God Line and bound the Spirit of Vengeance to Blaze, thus recruiting him for some kind of Heavenly Black Ops squad. The irony of spending his life as the demonic Ghost Rider fighting evil never quite dawned on Blaze. Satan owns Blaze’s soul, but he can’t do a lot with it. Blaze only remained in Hell because he didn’t know he could leave – or something. You figure it out. And, as of the recent Superman arc, The Third Kryptonian, there is – you guessed it – a third Kryptonian, next to Clark Kent and his cousin, Kara Zor-El, Supergirl. Apparently, Kartsa has lived on Earth for years undetected – a refugee of the Kryptonian Stellar Navy. The three examples I’ve mentioned indulge in “retconning” of one sort or another.
For those unaware, to “retcon” something means to erase, add, reconcile, or otherwise amend an older story with new information. It combines the express “retroactive continuity,” which may have first appeared in the letters page of All-Star Squadron #18, in 1983. The origins of the verb form – retcon – remain shrouded in urban legend and years of angry Usenet threads. But, the practice remains one of the most controversial and overused tactics in ongoing comic book storytelling. Gwen Stacy secretly had a couple of kids with Norman Osborne. Supergirl never existed, and Superman remained the first and only survivor of Krypton – then not. Joe Chill killed Thomas and Martha Wayne – or didn’t, then did. Retconning takes several different forms, some more coherent and logical than others. Its purposes are legion – to erase a hated storyline, like The Clone Saga; to stage a dramatic reveal, like the survival of Bucky Barnes; to clean up muddled continuity, as in Crisis on Infinite Earths; or to “reset” a character to suit editorial whims, as seems to be the case with the likely undoing of Spider-Man’s marriage. Someone will always find a reason to alter a character’s canon, if you can even pin that down.
There are a few ways to rewrite history that comic publishers usually employ:
1. La-La-La That Didn’t Happen!
Here we have the easiest and most obvious route. Whether you reboot a character, declare your new series to exist only in “loose continuity” with previous versions, or just plain ignore the past, you mostly throw out what you, the editorial staff, or the publisher doesn’t like and write something new. It’s really easy – you just pretend things didn’t happen. If some jackass over at Newsarama has a long-box full Avengers issues from the 1980s that contradicts you, just remember who writes the stories! Just tell him to go cyber-screw with that WoW hottie he’s been romancing from his parents’ basement, and then crack the Internet in half!
2. All Right, It Happened – But Not the Way You Thought!
Daniel Way and Marvel just indulged in this one in the pages of Ghost Rider. Yes, Johnny Blaze sold his soul. Yes, Roxanne Simpson saved him from the fires of Hell with her “purity.” But really, she unwittingly enlisted him into Heaven’s Hit Squad – the angels that do the Divine Dirty Work, with the Ghost Rider as their blunt object against evil. Ed Brubaker pulled the same number in Captain America. Bucky Barnes, who Marvel swore for years wouldn’t return, came back as the Winter Soldier. Apparently, the Soviets recovered Bucky after he “died” trying to defuse a drone plane. They turned him into a cyborg killing machine. He spent most of the 20th Century in stasis, but they woke him up whenever they needed to assassinate someone particularly important. Along the way, he interacted with both the Black Widow and Wolverine, as well as catching the eye of S.H.I.E.L.D. This sort of belated twist ending to a years-old plot works a little bit better than the first approach. Brubaker pulled the same thing with X-Men: Deadly Genesis. There,we learned that Charles Xavier sent another team ofnew X-Men to the living island of Krakoa to rescue the old team, before the one we saw in Giant-Size X-Men #1 in 1974. Before Wolverine, Storm, Nightcrawler, and the rest of the gang went in and made history, Xavier recruited a bunch of barely-trained teenagers from Moira MacTaggert. They failed miserably and almost all of them died – except for Vulcan, the missing brother of Scott and Alex Summers. Frankly, revelations like that resonate more with a current story than someone else’s older work. “It was Earth all along!” works better at the end of one movie, not at the end of the fifth sequel that comes out 30 years later.
3. Yes, It Happened – But We’ll Fix It with Our Super Powers!
The event has undoubtedly happened, but a writer, editor, or publisher can correct it through the use of an in-story device – usually time travel, magic, a cataclysmic reboot, or some kind of continuity-fixing miracle device a la the Cosmic Cube. This sort of continuity-correcting occurs in instances like Crisis on Infinite Earths and the recent Spider-Man story, One More Day. I remember a guest at one of my high school writing classes pointing out that in science fiction, you can virtually write your way out of anything. In one of his own novels, some scientists wrapped the Moon in tin foil to open whatever corner he’d painted himself into. Similarly, Captain America can make the Winter Soldier remember his life as Bucky Barnes with the Cosmic Cube. Mephisto can claim a piece of Spider-Man’s soul and erase his marriage in exchange for saving Aunt May. The Multiverse can collapse into a single DC Universe after a war between the heroes and the Anti-Monitor. Then, it can expand again by means I can’t even begin to explain. Usually, this method belies an external motive on the part of the publisher. In the case of Crisis on Infinite Earths and, later, Zero Hour, DC needed to clean house. The publisher’s continuity had become too complex for anyone outside of the most diehard fans to follow, so they used in-story events to rewrite and simplify history. Then, someone decided to turn the blender on again with Infinite Crisis, 52, Countdown, and whatever else. Marvel decided to clean up its mutant mess with House of M. In that case, the all-new, all-crazy Scarlet Witch took the powers of all but 198 mutants, thus making them a threatened minority again. In the case of One More Day, Joe Quesada has expressed his distaste for an older, married Peter Parker for many years. He’s said that he wants to put the genie back in the bottle. And, while it hasn’t happened yet, most readers feel certain that Mephisto’s arrival spells the end of the Parkers’ marriage.
4. It Happened, and You Didn’t Even Know About It!
In this case, the writer and publisher present an untold story from the character’s past. These kinds of changes may take the form of harmless, justifiable adventures told from an earlier point in the character’s history. I can accept that 20 years ago, Batman took down a drug cartel in Gotham that tried to market Man-Bat’s serum as a street drug (I made that up, I think). However, in some cases, writers shoehorn unlikely plots into decades-old continuity. Apparently, before Norman Osborne dropped Gwen Stacy off of a bridge, he fathered fraternal twins with her – a boy and a girl, both imbued with some of his Green-Goblin-powers. He killed her so that he could raise the twins himself and blame Spider-Man for everything. J. Michael Straczynski has used this tactic to no end during his run on Amazing Spider-Man. Rather than the victim of a simple lab accident, Spider-Man is also part of a long line of men with arachnid powers that form a sort of mystical totem chain. As I said, writers and publishers can use this tactic to tell a few yarns from different eras. But, they risk treading into the second tactic I mentioned, creating situations and stories that can’t help but resonate in the present.
5. I Know It Doesn’t Make Sense Now, But Here’s How It Happened!
Writers and publishers use this method to reconcile contradictions. George Lucas could’ve copyrighted this and sued everyone after he jumped through flaming hoops to line up the Star Wars prequel trilogy and the original trilogy. C-3PO and R2-D2 don’t remember Tatooine in A New Hope because their memories were wiped. Leia’s remembered her mother dying when she was very young, only because she was referring to Breha Organa, her adopted mother, not “her real mother” that Luke asked her about in Return of the Jedi. Writers and publishers sometimes have to sew up holes in continuity created by editorial oversights or logical contradictions. This can take the form of semi-coherent explanations – you were drunk when it happened, and don’t remember – or grand, universe-screwing changes to the laws of time and space. DC introduced the biggest safety net ever with Hypertime in Mark Waid’s 1999 miniseries, The Kingdom. It means that, effectively, all of the stories told in the DC Universe have actually happened at some point, but in different timelines. Those timelines can cross sometimes, thus bringing two versions of a character together. Marvel does the same thing, keeping Nick Fury youngish via injections of something called the Infinity Formula. At some point, the publisher had to explain how a guy who served as a sergeant in World War II could still head up S.H.I.E.L.D. from anything other than a wheelchair.
6. It Was All a Dream!
Here, we have the mother of all cop-outs. If a story doesn’t work or proves wildly unpopular, a writer or publisher can simply wake the character up or show them stepping out of a simulation of some kind. Alternately, you can blame some kind of grand super-villain setup, implanted memories, or hallucinations. Marvel teased Wolverine’s origin with this tactic for years. Logan remembered things and then learned that they hadn’t happened, or that it was some kind of staged memory, or whatever. Before they let him remember everything after House of M – and the last remaining bit with Sabretooth in his own title – Marvel had fragmentarily rewritten Wolverine’s origin so many times that no one knew what to believe. They’ve finally started to clean up some of this mess with Wolverine: Origins, but it grew tiresome in the 1990s to see a book with a title like Weapon X X-Posed! You’d read the issue, only to learn the name of the janitor that might’ve worked at the Weapon X facility when Wolverine escaped – only it’s not the janitor, but his son, because Logan killed him – possibly.
Few publishers or writers can surmount the problem of keeping canon in an ongoing superhero universe, particularly one that is decades old and has been written by many different people. Despite the tone of this week’s Comicscape,I cut retconning a lot of slack. I think that it remains an unavoidable consequence of the kind of shared universes that Marvel, DC, and to a lesser extent, Image, maintain. This brings back an old argument I made in this column a long time ago: that stories need not progress forever. Marvel and DC could kill every single Golden, Silver, and Bronze Age character in their canon, and there would still be years worth of stories left for future readers – more than any person would consume in a lifetime. I could write a book of the great miniseries and runs I haven’t read yet, knowing that I won’t even read them all before I die. I would rather publishers concentrate on telling new stories instead of dragging out old properties past their prime. But, that’s a pipedream. As long as old characters make money, the publishers will keep them around.
Invariably, in the hands of all but the most skilled writers, new stories will only reflect on the same themes and ideas that have driven the characters since their inception. To do otherwise will only drag the characters farther from the very qualities that drew readers to them in the first place. For example, J. Michael Straczynski tried, to his credit, to really alter the basic ideas behind Spider-Man. I don’t think he did it well, but he tried to redefine the character away from the most common understanding. In his world, Aunt May would have to find out about her nephew’s secret identity; Spider-Man’s abilities couldn’t be the result of a simply lab accident; and, what the hell, MJ and Peter should end up happily ever after. Straczynski brought the two together after a long separation, and has only split them apart via One More Day under orders and protest. At one point, he asked to have his name removed from the series. I give him a lot of flack in this column, but I appreciate his intentions. I think that Straczynski realized that if Spider-Man were to remain viable, something had to change, lest it turn into another long rehash. It looks like Marvel disagreed.
Still, all is not lost. Even as fans groaned, Ed Brubaker skillfully resurrected Bucky Barnes as the Winter Soldier. To bring the character back would, in theory, rob Captain America of an important part of his origin. But, Brubaker managed to create a compelling story about the agony of living out of time, issues of memory and identity, and the ability to atone for one’s mistakes. You can write about whatever you want, with or without retconning. The story just has to stand on its own merits, and not show as a pale attempt to shake things up for a short-term sales spike. While Crisis on Infinite Earths served an obvious functional purpose, it also stands as a staggeringly complex work that serves as love letter to DC’s history and a reflection on sacrifice for the greater good. Despite the mucking that has come after, I think it still holds up rather well.
Continuity in any ongoing story proves tricky in virtually all storytelling mediums. Try to line up all of the threads of The X-Files and see if you don’t have a few questions by the end of the series. The problem remains that we, the consumers, demand more of the same. We like something and we want a second helping. We don’t like change. We keep buying, while Hollywood and the publishing industry gladly sell to us. That drags stories out for years through sequels, prequels, reboots, revisions, and other hazards to consistent storytelling. Complaining about continuity and retconning seems almost naïve in light of this. That doesn’t mean I intend to drop any book older than five years from my pull list or skip the next James Bond movie. But, I also realize that we, as audiences, have to accept stories on their own terms and realize that mistakes will occur. No one curses Thomas Mallory for screwing with Camelot continuity in Le Morte d’Arthur in the 1470s. He kept some Arthurian stories he liked, excised others, and added material of his own. Some of the principle characters of the Robin Hood legend weren’t incorporated into the story until a few hundred years after the outlaw’s earliest appearances. It’s only in an age of corporate storytelling that we can even keep track of these details – one where properties are bought and sold, and new mediums preserves stories for much longer.
In short: if you’re a fan, enjoy stories in and of themselves. Don’t sweat the details. If you’re a publisher, continuity’s not nearly as important as good, meaningful storytelling. For instance, if you want to bring someone back from the dead, remember what that would entail – lost time, resumed contact with loved ones, questions about faith, new issues for science, and a host of other interesting angles. That’s good storytelling. Don’t just bring someone back with a shaky explanation so that they can kick ass and spike sales. Make the stories mean something, and we’ll forgive and understand most the retconning.
Now, wake up. This week’s Comicscape was all a dream.
The Spinner Rack
By Ben Johnson and Kurt Amacker
DARK HORSE COMICS
Aliens Omnibus Vol 2 TP $24.95
Kurt: I wish these stories were as good as I remember them being. Still, I might have to pick these up.
Grendel Behold The Devil #2 (Of 8) $3.50
Ben: The first issue was in line with the wickedness I loved so much. Welcome back Mr. Wagner.
Gunsmith Cats Omnibus Vol 4 TP $16.95
Oh My Goddess Vol 7 Rtl TP $10.95
Plasticland HC $29.95
Ben: The region between Pamela Anderson’s belly button and chin.
Kurt: But, would you kick her out of the bed?
Rex Mundi DH Ed #9 $2.99
Robert E Howards Conan Frost Giants Daughter One Shot $3.50
Kurt: It’s a reprint of Conan #2 with a reprinted cover by Frank Frazetta. Don’t be fooled.
Scream #2 (Of 4) $2.99
Ben: Brought on by only the most extreme post-Mexican-food experience.
Star Wars Clone Wars Adventures Vol 10 TP $6.95
Star Wars Dark Times #7 $2.99
Ben: Yes, yes they are.
DC COMICS
Army @ Love #10 (MR) $2.99
Batman And The Outsiders #3 $2.99
Birds Of Prey #113 $2.99
Catwoman #74 $2.99
Checkmate #21 $2.99
Ben: Right now she’s at work.
Kurt: I think you might want to let the other 20 know about her.
Countdown Arena #3 (Of 4) $3.99
Ben: Not bad. Not good, but not bad. – Ben Johnson, Mania.com
Countdown Ray Palmer Superwoman Batwoman #1 $2.99
Kurt: At Palmer’s size, the possibilities here are endless. Giggity-giggity.
Countdown Special The Atom 80 Page Giant #2 (Of 2) $4.99
Countdown To Final Crisis 19 $2.99
Ben: Anyone want to take bets on the likelihood of this being the final crisis?
Kurt: Look for No-We-Really-Mean-It-This-Time Crisis in 2009.
Detective Comics #839 (Ghul) $2.99
Kurt: Look for me to not buy the crossover issues and wait for the trade, because I’m cheap and patient.
Ex Machina #33 (MR) $2.99
Ben: I wish I had this power. I would never get pissed off when I couldn’t find the remote again.
Hellblazer Bloodlines TP (MR) $19.99
Justice League Of America #16 $2.99
Legion Of Super Heroes An Eye For An Eye TP $17.99
Legion Of Super Heroes In The 31st Century #9 $2.25
Metamorpho Year One #6 (Of 6) $2.99
Moon Child Vol 9 $9.99
Ben: I did this, and now I’m in jail for indecent exposure.
Kurt: Are you sharing a cell with Al Brown?
Programme #6 (Of 12) $2.99
Scooby Doo #127 $2.25
Ben: I was sure that in the last episode Shaggy would wake up and realize the whole thing was just a drug induced hallucination.
Kurt: When he wakes up, Scooby will be a real dog that won’t talk. Freddy and Daphne will be in a codependent, polyamorous relationship with Velma. And, the entire gang will spend its time debunking phony psychics.
Shadowpact #20 $2.99
Spectre Tales Of The Unexpected TP $14.99
Superman #671 $2.99
Superman Batman #44 $2.99
Tales Of The Multiverse Batman Vampire TP $19.99
Ben: Why doesn’t DC officially bring back Elseworlds?
Kurt: I was all excited when I saw this, but then I realized that I have all three of the graphic novels it reprints. Imagine that.
World Of Warcraft #2 $2.99
Kurt: Let the nerd jokes begin! Actually, let them continue! I should’ve made this joke last month!
Young Magician Vol 10 $9.99
IMAGE COMICS
Circle #2 $2.99
Cryptics #3 $3.50
Kurt: This is a Steve Niles comic that you can give to your kids.
Glister #3 $5.99
Ben: Further proof that all the good names are taken.
Kiss 4K Kissmas SP $4.99
Ben: Further proof that comics really are for losers.
Kurt: Gene Simmons called my house once. I’m serious.
Madame Mirage #1 Rocafort Cvr Cgc Graded 9.8 $69.99
Ben: $60 for a comic that comes sealed in plastic so I can’t even read it without rendering it useless? Sign me up!
Kurt: Ben, I have a fine mail order bride from the Philippines waiting here for you. If you’ll just PayPal me $2000, she’s all yours.
Madame Mirage #4 $2.99
Special Forces #2 (Of 6) $2.99
Ben: Even their poop is hardcore.
Walking Dead Vol 3 HC (MR) $29.99
MARVEL COMICS
Avengers Classic #7 $2.99
Cable Deadpool #48 $2.99
Captain America Chosen #5 (Of 6) $3.99
Kurt: This is by David Morell, author of First Blood. This is by the man who gave us Rambo.
Captain Marvel #1 (Of 5) 2nd Ptg (Pp #793) $2.99
Exiles #100 $3.99
Foolkiller #3 (Of 5) (MR) $3.99
Immortal Iron Fist #11 $2.99
Ben: Leave it to Ed Brubaker to make the Mortal Kombat story seem high art.
Kurt: What did I tell you? You can write good stories about anything.
Incredible Hulk #112 $2.99
Ben: Hercules plays Hulk.
Iron Man Enter Mandarin #4 (Of 6) $2.99
Ben: I think I’ll wait to read this man porn in trade.
Marvel Adventures Avengers #19 $2.99
Marvel Adventures Fantastic Four #31 $2.99
Marvel Adventures Two-In-One #6 $4.99
Ben: Starring Luke Cage, Hulk and Jenna Jameson – FOR KIDS!!!
Marvel Holiday Special $3.99
Kurt: I don’t know if this keeps getting funnier or sadder every year.
Marvel Illustrated Iliad #1 (Of 8) $2.99
Kurt: Will it keep continuity with the original epic?
Marvel Zombies HC 6th Ptg Iron Man (Pp #792) $19.99
Kurt: You know, I think I’m going to wait a year to read this for every time Marvel reprints it with a new cover.
Mighty Avengers #6 CWI $2.99
MMW Rawhide Kid HC Vol 02 $54.99
Ben: The not incredibly gay version.
MMW Rawhide Kid HC Vol 02 Var Ed 87 $54.99
New X-Men #44 2nd Ptg Ramos Var $2.99
New X-Men #45 MC $2.99
She-Hulk 2 #24 $2.99
Terror Inc #4 (Of 5) (MR) $3.99
The Order #6 $2.99
Thor #4 2nd Ptg Var $2.99
Ultimate Fantastic Four TP Vol 09 Silver Surfer $13.99
Ben: This has become one of the best sci-fi comics ever.
Ultimate Spider-Man Venom Prem HC $19.99
Ultimate X-Men #89 $2.99
What If Civil War $3.99
What If Civil War Wraparound $3.99
What If Civil War Wraparound Sketch Var $3.99
Ben: Not one, not two, but three versions of the same book, none of which will I be buying.
Wolverine Firebreak One Shot $3.99
Kurt: Well, it’s by Mike Carey, who turned in a good run on Hellblazer. Then again, he also cowrite the Holiday Special I mocked above. What the hell, I’ll buy this.
Wolverine Origins #20 $2.99
World War Hulk Warbound #1 (Of 5) WWH $2.99
X-Factor Prem HC Heart Of Ice $19.99
X-Men First Class Vol 2 #6 $2.99
X-Men TP Blinded By The Light $14.99
X-Men TP Vol 01 Complete Onslaught Epic $29.99
Ben: Most misused word in the English language #18 – epic.
Kurt: I think it’s probably just the most misused word in comics advertising and marketing. But remember – EVERYTHING WILL CHANGE!
Questions? Comments? Let us know what you think at comicscape@mania.com.
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Yes, I am/was/still am one of those hacks who would get pissy every time a character sauntered through the revolving door of death. In younger days, I argued several menial plot twists to death convinced I knew the complete backstory of X character...then I realized I was a dork and moved on.
While I still think that more writers should respect the backstories of the pre-existing characters, it makes sense why they don't. I had never really thought it out as you did above.
However, I reserve now and future rights to get pissy again should a writer do something truly asinine like the clone saga, or the electric blue superman.