There was a time when a writer expected an issue of a comic to be pretty much entirely forgotten within, at most, three years. They were something to sell to entertain for that moment. I do remember thinking that the frozen Cap being "worshipped" by Eskimos was a corny touch too much (everyone knew they worshipped Ookpik the great owl after all), but it seemed worth it for the pathos of a person out of time suddenly confronted with the present, especially in the later '60s.

There are just things that work and things that don't work and they vary from reader to reader. If the new wrinkle undoes or throws out something that had worked up to that point though... look out! Especially when they fool around with the basis origin story, that can get really dangerous. A young Bruce Wayne and the cave of a gigantic supernatural bat god you either love or hate perhaps? And the de-uniqueing, where an accident was revealed as part of a deliberate design and average seeming characters are revealed to be very unique or super themselves.

I read a circa 2000 Iron Man origin revisit via a villain dispatched in the origin still being around and ruling over a jungle domain of prisoners. They added a big dollop of general Asiatic mystery spiritualist martial arts jazz to it. I found just the amount of time all these people and the baddie were operating in seclusion since the origin in 1963 the most unlikely, but I guess that's Marvel time; maybe it was only five years not over thirty five? Except they include very real datable aspects like the Vietnam war. Basically though, Bruce Wayne would have to be in his 90s now, Spider-Man in his 70s and you know they won't let that get in the way of selling a lot of Batman and Spider-Man comics and stuff. Nobody cares that Archie is still a teenager or that Donald Duck doesn't wear pants.

So I, who am not a big fan of Wonder Woman, take it over, write-out the invisible plane, have her riding a big kangaroo all the time because I thought that was a cool visual, make her the last Amazon so there isn't this island of women just hanging around for centuries hoping a man never sets foot on it or they all turn to dust, and all the fans who liked those things and didn't like the battle roos burn me in effigy! It's probably a good idea if someone who genuinely likes something is the one to work on it. I think sometimes you get someone who didn't and wants to fix what they see as wrong. Well, I have those four Byrne issues to get to yet and I think I will really like them even though the plane and the women in togas hanging about are in it (and no kangaroos)... you get what you think you want and you might be more disappointed.

Many have been the retcons that made me shake this hoary head. 

A few major revelations were clever and well-handled, and led to new and interesting stories. Most were cheap and silly stunts, and led to absolutely nothing of value.

To those already listed, I would add...

- Puck not being a real dwarf but an old guy whose body was used as a prison for some demon and magically shrunk because... er... demons keep better when shrink-wrapped? Complete nonsense that deprived us of a great and believable character.

- Guardian being alive after all, after the fake story about him managing to turn a malfunctioning costume into a time/space vehicle IN UNDER TEN SECONDS before exploding turned out to be true.

- Hydra and SHIELD having existed and having been the same outfit since, like, forever. While the concept of Hydra infiltrating and subverting SHIELD is a nice twist, having the two outfits run around each other for absolutely no reason for decades is nonsensical.

- Aunt May not being dead, but having been replaced by an actress before her demise.


Now for a few major retcons I thoroughly enjoyed...

- Wakanda having been a technologically advanced nation for centuries. That turned out to be a pretty good idea! It clashed with everything we knew, but it made the Marvel Universe more interesting.

- Bucky not being dead (something of a capital sin, in my eyes, originally). It was handled extremely well!

- The Vision being the original Human Torch, refurbished (a great retcon that was later modified. Urgh).

- Changing the origin of all those superpowered characters of the Legion universe from “they’re aliens who just happen to be indistinguishable from humans, only with powers” to “they’re the descendants of human guinea pigs who were given super powers by the Dominators during the Invasion! crossover, and later resettled to other worlds”.

According to Grant Morrison's "Weapon Ten" explanation, Wolverine is now British, like himself. No other writers appear to have endorsed Morrison's story, though.

My memory was a little fuzzy. Fantomex was Weapon XIII. Like his predecessor The Huntsman (Weapon XII, seen in New X-Men #129-130) Fantomex was from The World, which was one of the numerous research projects of the underlying "Weapon Plus" ("Weapon +," a sideways "x") program that began with Captain America (Weapon I). Nuke (the opponent Frank Miller made for Daredevil, with the American flag tattooed on his face) was another product of the Weapon Plus project, in Morrison's retcon at least. Three of the Weapons were animals, probably referring to Morrison's series We3.



This was all part of a mutant-elimination plan set in motion long ago by Sublime, the mitochondria-based primal villain. No one can accuse Morrison of shunning the big idea! The goal of Weapon Plus was to assemble an ersatz Justice League of America, complete with a satellite HQ (with logo emblazoned in their meeting table!), code names, and marketing hype, to fight the X-Men. All of this is a big metaphor for DC vs Marvel. Note the reference below to Superman.




Anyway, I suppose Morrison's real retcon on this score was claiming that Captain America and Wolverine were part of the same larger scheme whose goal was eliminating mutants, not fighting Nazis or what have you.