Marvel has made me so angry today. For 4 decades the soul sword was a unique weapon, which only Magik knew how to create because she invented the spell. Sorcers like Dr. Doom and Belasco sought out her soul sword because it was the only one in existence and they didn't know how to forge a second one. Now in 1 day they've quadrupled the number of soul swords. A new character who is a clone of 5 X-Men created by Mr. Sinister in the future has been sent to the present with the soul sword she was wielding in the future, even though the way she was sent to the present was by her genetic information being uploaded to an older cloning machine and her being recreated now.

Even worse, it turns out that Belasco had a soul sword long before Magik did because the Elder Gods just showed him how to make one, meaning now it's been retconned that Magik didn't invent the spell, and the reason Belasco didn't have a soul sword is because his masters just took it away from him for no reason. This makes it so that it makes no sense whatsoever that he ever wanted Magik's since he could have easily created a new one at any time.

Instead of being the badass and extremely powerful villain who the X-Men were too scared to face again even as a Danger Room simulation, he's now a pathetic loser who is reduced to begging Mary Jane and Black Cat get back the toy his parents took from him, and gets easily tricked and defeated by them. And they somehow split his soul sword in 2 and give both of those swords to S'ym while making Bleasco S'ym's servant. I freaking hate this.

The idea of Belasco making his own soul sword could have been great.  If he finally discovered how Illyana did it all those years ago it would show his cunning and elevate him as a threat, setting up one epic final confrontation.  Instead they went about in the worst way possible, with every single aspect being completely wrong and detrimental to him as a character and villain and to the soul swprd as a concept.

The Spider-Man office has had no respect for past stories, continuity, characters, or fans for decades at this point. Now they're doing the same thing to the X-Men and mystical sides of Marvel.  The only way to salvage this mess is to retcon this entire Mary Jane and Black Cat story out of existence and make it so that it never happened.

I think it's more that every writer picks and chooses what things they care about and makes their own canon, there's no real continuity anymore.

If you don't like the story (and I agree that sounds terrible) just ignore it.. there's a good chance the next writer will as well.

That's a beaut!

I loved Nova so much as a kid... every superhero creation I drew, for a while, had a rocket exhaust for legs when he flew.  I thought that was the coolest thing, ever.

It would be fun I think to try to make a timeline for some of the major Marvel characters... it would be such a big project though.

I pretty much ignore the Winter Soldier retcon. Bucky’s dead.

That’s what I said.

Bucky being dead and Cap frozen in WWII was the second big retcon of the Marvel Universe. The first was Namor being a bowery bum. Bucky being alive is, in a sense, a return to the original continuity, just with a twist.

That said, Brubaker's Cap run is, bar none, my favorite Cap run of all time (Steranko's brief run is #2), so I am good with the retcon and think it brings a whole new dynamic to Cap's story, especially when put in the context of the grief and angst Cap went through over Bucky's death, all the faked returns through the Silver Age, his relationship with Rick Jones as he tried to be a new "Bucky" and his longtime partnership with Sam Wilson. The return feels like a "kick in the teeth" kind of payoff that really works and puts the character through an emotional wringer providing conflict, consequence and growth for the character of Steve Rogers, and then seeing that played out in the attempts to rebuild their relationship as friends moving forward and trying to find redemption for Barnes just makes for such great fodder for storytelling that is greater than a slavish adherence to continuity for the sake of continuity alone. If it was change for change sake, that would be one thing, but it wasn't, it was grist for perhaps one of the greatest runs of Cap of all time. Continuity only matters if it can be a spring board to great stories for a character, but if adhering to continuity for its own sake and not because it makes a better story than the change stands in the way of better stories for a character, that make the change. Bringing Bucky back made for better stories and made Steve Rogers a better character overall.

-M