Retro Review

Can I get a retcon on the past week? Actually, make that ten days. There’s plenty I’d like to keep in them, like the evenings I spent with friends, but there’s plenty of stuff I could’ve done without.

No? No retcons in reality? Darn it.

As you’ve noticed, Retro Review has been a tumbleweeds-blowing-through-it ghost-town kind of a blog this past week. Some stressful issues at work came to a head, and some personal and health issues decided to pipe up at the same time, leaving very little energy and time for the research and blogging I’d planned. In the end, rather than being my usual stubborn self, I gave myself the week off. Starting from tomorrow, I’ll write about some of the best and worst retcons to appear in comics, starting with Terry Moore’s Strangers in Paradise retcon to the future, and finishing with the controversial One More Day storyline.

One of the things I’d like to keep from this week even if I could retcon it would be the comics I picked up. Fables really got moving again, showing for sure that the concept still has enough energy to keep moving, and Top 10 Season 2 #2 put my mind to rest that the series is a worthy successor to the original, and not another mess like Beyond the Farthest Precinct. I also picked up the Stray Toasters trade paperback: when it first came out, I found it to be one of the creepiest and most disturbing comics ever, and I’m keen to re-read it and see how I feel now.

This week, I’d like to look at some of the retcons that have happened in comic books over the years. In case you don’t know the term, a retcon is a retroactive change in the continuity of a comic book series, or indeed a TV series or series of books. Retcons can be as simple as revealing that a character that was shown to have died actually survived, or as major as revealing that a character that was established as a hero was a villain all along. Some are done to keep characters seeming young or relevant, like the current retooling of Carol Danvers’ backstory to have her serve with the USAF in Afghanistan, rather than in the 70s space mission with NASA. Others are done to open up new story possibilities or for dramatic effect. Many are controversial, as continuity can be sacred to fans. Whatever the reasons, no retcon will pass without criticism.

There are also the revamp-type retcons, which DC Comics seem to be very fond of, where the entire history of a series is discarded in favor of a new version: the Crisis on Infinite Earths was the first time DC engaged in this kind of retcon, with changes like “Clark Kent was never Superboy, he only became active when he moved to Metropolis” and “Wonder Woman wasn’t in the Justice League of America from its founding”. This kind of retcon, because it disposes of so much history, can really disappoint fans: how do you handle your favorite series being basically cancelled and never referred to again?

So, join me this week for a walk through some of the best and worst retcons I’ve found while reviewing old comics.

Legion of Super-Heroes went through a period of great controversy in the early 90s, and no issue was more controversial than#31, the issue in which a long-standing fan question about Element Lad’s sexuality was answered, and another character, Shvaughn Erin, was changed in a very significant way. Dealing as it did with gender identity and sexuality, the revelations of this issue were considered shocking by many, even though, at least according to Al Gordon, not as shocking as they could have been. Some people hated the issue, even citing it as the reason they dropped the title, but for me, LSH #31 had a very beautiful message about love and life.

 The story is part of the “Five Years Later…” storyline, which ran through the first 61 issues of the 1989 relaunch of Legion of Super-Heroes, and included a lot of changes that long-time fans did not like. The team had disbanded in the wake of intergalactic economic collapse, and the universe was a darker place, with war, crime and strife abundant. Keep reading →