I guess they can retcon anything, but retcon this:



I don't think they ever even bothered. When he took over as editor, essentially to preside over its cancellation,Dick Giordano just put out two fine issues that ignored this hideous era and made you wish he'd been hired years before.

And as I recall, that Hex story retconned itself by issue #2 or three! The girl from the future who had been revealed to be a robot was reintroduced as a real girl!

But it's "Gut Searing"!

Like a case of the bends or appendicitis.

Holy smokes! It's been busy at the office since I came back from vacation, and I created this thread a few days ago. And I had some free time and thought, I'd post. Lo and behold we are up to page 6 here. I'm going to have to do some back reading first just in case if someone already posted what I was going to post, that way I can reply on that poster's quote.

I've gone on so much over the years about the ones that bug me most personally that IM afraid of bringing them up again, even in a thread created for that purpose. But for the record, they would include:

Crystal's marriage to Quicksilver and transformation into a character defined by whoever happens to be her husband or partner at the time.

Moondragon becoming a kind of silly, pompous screw-up, repeatedly falling or getting knocked off her self-assumed pedestal.

Orion being written as a stupid bully, or a frothing at the mouth nut-case, or, in the most recent debacle, an obnoxious, immature fratboy.

Thena being given a husband/partner and children - even totally different sets of them by different writers! - something diametrically opposed to how the character was defined in the original series.

Of course the last two are just part of the more general sabotage of the New Gods and Eternals concepts in their respective entireties.

To these long-standing beefs I could add a ton of more recent ones, but I'll just mention Doctor Strange as a representative example: the arrogant, worldly surgeon who worked and trained and studied and strove to become a better, more enlightened person wasn't interesting enough for today's Marvel so he is now a magical Tony Stark exhibiting similarly casual speech patterns and woman-chasing behaviour.

I'll dispute Hex as editorial sabotage. Jonah Hex was being cancelled due to falling sales, and Michael Fleisher (the Jonah Hex writer as far as i am concerned) was offered the opportunity to transform it into a post-apocalyptic nook in an effort to keep the character going.

Fleisher did an excellent job with the series (given what he had to work with) and told some excellent stories. He made it perfectly clear that this was the same cynical, Western anti-hero from the old book, and contained many nods to the previous series (including the series ending with Hex discovering his own preserved dead body [from the Jonah hex Spectacular where Fleisher had established how Hex would eventually die in 1904 and what would happen to his body after his death).

(As an aside, one of the (few) things I disliked about All Star Western the New 52 was that it chose to abandon this finale of Hex's life. I always liked the idea of having a hero where we knew exactly how his career and life were going to end. It suited the fatalistic nature of Jonah Hex.)

What really killed Hex was when they changed artists from Mark Texeria to Keith Giffen. Whatever Giffen's undoubted strengths as an artist, he was just totally wrong for this book, which needed the gritty realism of someone like Texeria.

One of the big instances of editorial interference from my youth was the ouster of Roger Stern from Avengers right in the middle of his acclaimed run as writer.

The story goes like this. When Roger Stern took over as writer with #227, the first thing he did in the first issue was bring in Monica Rambeau, the new Captain Marvel, as a new recruit. While she wasn't exactly the focus of the book, her character arc was a major component of Stern's run. She started off as a very hesitant neophyte with no experience as a superhero; originally she was an "Avenger in training" rather than a full member. Eventually she became a full member, gaining in experience and confidence. Finally, after the events of the classic Mansion Siege storyline, Monica was elected as team leader after the Wasp stepped down. This was in Avengers #279 - a character journey of more than 50 issues to get her to that point. Not everyone was a big fan of Captain Marvel, as some considered her to be Stern's pet character, but you can't say it wasn't earned. Everything was carefully and naturally developed.

That's the backstory.

So, just a few issues after Monica became team leader - just one arc - Avengers editor Mark Gruenwald decided he wanted Stern to dump Monica as team leader. Gruenwald was also writing Captain America at the time. He believed that the sales on both Avengers and Captain America would improve if Captain America were highlighted as the center and team leader of the Avengers. He therefore directed Stern not only to dump Monica as team leader and replace her with Captain America, but to do so in a story that showed Monica failing as team leader, necessitating Cap stepping in to save the day and right the ship.

At least, that's what I've heard, I don't know the details exactly first hand of course. But that's my understanding of the situation. Why Gru specifically wanted Monica to be humiliated as part of the change I don't know. But given that Stern had devoted five years to her character development, and that it undermined all the stories he had planned for the future, he was understandably upset at this editorial mandate. He refused and abruptly quit the book (or was fired, I'm, not sure), leaving mid-arc with #287.


ironically, that was followed by another infamous case of editorial malfeasance. Walt Simonson was brought on board starting with #290. One of the main reasons he agreed to do the book is because he was promised the use of two of his favorite characters, Mr. Fantastic and the Invisible Woman, who at the time were semi-retired from the Fantastic Four. Walt spent almost an entire year completely dismantling the team and rebuilding it so he could include Reed and Sue on the team; his first issue was #290 and his whole first arc was all set up to them finally joining in #300. But that was also his last issue, because once he finally got the pieces in place, he was told that editorial changed their mind and he could no longer use Reed and Sue after all, as they were tied to FF. Walt then agreed to jump over to FF and become the Fantastic Four writer so he could write those characters instead, leaving Avengers a complete shambles.

For my money, Avengers never recovered from the ouster of Stern. It wasn't until Kurt Busiek took over the book more than 125 issues later that came close to returning to its former level of quality.