Get Retcked

Comic books fan have a real sore spot for sudden changes, but if there's something we readers remember better than changes, it's retcons! What are retcons? Well, imagine if the general public got to together and said, "The Dinosaurs didn't all die, they all just went into space". Retcons change the history of events in comic books, for better or worse. Regardless of how people may have responded, these retcons shaped the modern overview of comic books today! So, here is The Panel Biter's Top 10 Most Important Comic Book Retcons!

10. Who Is Under The Red Hood?

The Death of Jason Todd was the one of the building blocks of the modern version of Batman. Failing a child he was in care of reminded Batman the dire circumstances of the life he lives and repercussions of it's danger. Personally I wish Jason stayed dead to make that lesson permanent, but in 2004 Judd Winick decided the idea of Jason returning to life was worth the effort. There are two methods of which Jason Todd returned to life, the first being Superboy-Prime punching reality and changing several events in history. The second-and better received-was that Jason's corpse was put into a Lazarus Pit by Ra's al Ghul. The Lazarus Pit revived him, made him crazy, and set him up as Batman's newest foe, The Red Hood. Having a Batman villain be the direct cause of Batman's failure as a mentor/father makes The Red Hood a very personal villain unlike any other. In the years since Red Hood has returned to being a superhero, but the story hasn't lost its impact on the Dark Knight Detective.

9. Phoenix From Ashes

From one ridiculous revival to another (spoiler alert there are a lot of them on this list) we come to Jean Grey-often Phoenix, less often Marvel Girl, annoyingly often Jean Grey. In 1976 Jean went from being the second best psychic on the X-Men to being the strongest mutant on Earth with the power of The Phoenix Force. But in 1980's "Dark Phoenix Saga" she was corrupted by her own power, destroyed an entire planet, and ended her own life to save her friends. Her death signified the heart of The X-Men dying. Too bad Kurt Busiek loved her so much. In 1985, Jean Grey's body was found in a cocoon in Jamaica Bay where she originally got The Phoenix Force. In Busiek's fan-fiction-esque retcon: The Phoenix Force made a copy of Jean's body and memories and possessed it posing as Jean Grey while the real Jean was cocooned. This way Jean could return to the X-Men, marry Scott Summers, be really hot, and not be responsible for the death of a planet. Jeez. With Jean coming back to life yet again in "Phoenix Resurrection" it's no secret Marvel Comics wants to push the X-Woman as much as they can as often as they can. This makes this list just from the sheer passion from Busiek, for a fan of Marvel Comics to eventually become a writer and then undo a story he personally disliked takes a lot of balls.

8. Barry Allen: Faster Than Death

Thank God this one is easy to explain. So in 1985's "Crisis on Infinite Earths" this villain called The Anti-Monitor wanted to destroy the multiverse so the heroes of the DCU had to fight him. Of the many casualties was Barry Allen/The Flash, who ran around Anti-Monitor's death machine so fast he destroyed it, but also aged himself into dust as a result. For more than two decades, his nephew/sidekick Wally West takes The Flash mantle. Wally was the ONLY Flash to some readers. But in 2008 in Grant Morrison's "Final Crisis", Barry Allen returns. How? Simple. He didn't die, he was absorbed into The Speed Force. Acting as a type of Limbo, the Speed Force held the essence of Barry until the return of The Anti-Monitor sparked Barry's exit from the Speed Force. From there, Barry was the only Flash, much to many readers dismay. This revival is still impressive because it was basically under our noses the whole time. The Speed Force can do just about anything the writer needs it to do, so why can't it flick character's life and death switch? Real question is, why didn't Barry come out of the Speed Force naked?

7. Good Old Oliver Queen

Oh, Ollie. You poor son of a gun. And I'm not talking about "Arrow" this time. In the 1990's Green Arrow was so goddamn edgy and badass that nobody wanted to read about him so DC killed him off in a plane explosion and replaced him with his hot, young son. Then in 2001 Kevin Smith was offered to write a Green Arrow book, but he didn't want to write about the new kid, he wanted Ollie! So he wrote "Green Arrow: Quiver" where Oliver Queen is alive, but not really living. The big twist is that Oliver Queen is simple a soulless copy of the real Oliver Queen who went to Heaven. As explained by Hal Jordan-The Spectre-he used his Godly powers from back when he was Parallax to recreate Oliver Queen from DNA on Superman's cape. He created a new Oliver Queen with the qualities Hal loved most about him, meaning all the Liberalism and none of the grunge. In order to reach his full potential, Ollie asked Hal to take him to Heaven to reconnect with his soul and become the pure Green Arrow. Hell of a revival, but one that made complete sense when factoring the friendship between DC's greatest green guardians! 

6. Who The Hell is Bucky?

Longing, rusted, oven-BEEP! Damn it, it was furnace! For the longest time in comic books, Bucky Barnes was dead. Long dead. Like, in the 1940's Bucky is dead and Cap is frozen. And that's how it stayed, it was part of Cap's tragic revival into the modern day. In 2005, Ed Brubaker probably saw what Judd Winick was doing and decided the story potential of a revived Bucky Barnes as  villain was just too good to pass up! But he did it without pits of goo and reality punching! Bucky didn't fall to his death, he fell into the hands of The Soviet Union who replaced his arm and turned him into a brainwashed assassin. As The Winter Soldier, Bucky was responsible for the assassinations of hundreds of people from the 50's to the present, and when Cap finally learned who The Winter Soldier was it brought out a soft, vulnerable part of Cap we had never seen before. Unlike Jason, Bucky's development was thoughtful and lifted the character to new heights, he even became Captain America for a few years. The revival of Bucky even led to one of the best Marvel Movies ever made! So yeah, reviving Cap little helper actually went a long way.

Honorable Mention: The Captain America Program

In the 1950's Stan Lee wrote more Captain America and Bucky stories, but when he had Cap join The Avengers in the 60's he had Cap unfrozen from ice. Cap was frozen since the end of the 40's, but then how did he fight crime in the 50's? Yeah, Stan kind of forgot about his own Cap stories when he was writing an excuse for Cap to be an Avenger. What was established in the 1970's was that the US government appointed multiple Captain America and Bucky substitutes to keep the mantle alive and help keep the country unaware of their deaths. Each of those replacements would go on to become both heroes and villains, but the simple explanation of a nation keeping their people's heroes alive through lies and disguises? Totally worth the mention.

5. Fear My Power

Hal Jordan becoming Parallax might have been the worst thing to ever happen to the character. For decades, The Green Lantern was considered to be one of Earth's mightiest heroes next to the likes of Superman and Wonder Woman, but DC Comic's decision to corrupt the Emerald Knight and put him on a killing spree that would spark his evil persona was one most of us like to forget about. Geoff Johns didn't forget it though! Just like his revival of The Flash, Johns took Hal and put him back in the limelight with "Green Lantern Rebirth" in 2004. Parallax went from a supervillain name to a space monster, Hal's silverfox hairstyle became a result of Parallax's stress over him, and his turn to the dark side was Parallax taking hold of him. Johns was able to lift Hal of all guilt by saying Parallax was a case of possession and not decision. From there, Johns expanded the lore of The Green Lantern Corps, removed little problems here and there, and crafted a side of the DCU that put the Green men back on top!

4. It Wasn't Wanda

In 2004, Scarlet Witch destroyed The Avengers in "Avengers Disassembled" out of spite for The Avengers making her "unmake" her children. Her kids were a result of magic, by the way. And then in 2005's "House of M" Wanda was so motivated by guilt and anger she used her powers to reset the entire MCU so that all her friends could have the lives they wanted, only for her father Magneto to want domination over mankind. With her anger redirected to her father, she set the world back and wiped out 90% of the mutant population on Earth. These two events labelled The Scarlet Witch as a murderer, a traitor, and an unstable sociopath with daddy issues. How do you redeem her? The same way Green Lantern was redeemed. We blame it on someone else! At the end of 2011's "Avengers: Children's Crusade" the grand-daddy of evil Doctor Doom revealed to Wanda that she could not have done those things because she wasn't strong enough. He did it. Doom somehow manipulated and/or controlled Wanda into destroying The Avengers and decimating the mutants. Now he doesn't go into detail and people hardly talk about it, but that reveal alone tells us how genius Doom is and how misled Wanda has been. Either that or Marvel Editorial just really wanted Wanda to be liked again.

3. Batman's Genesis

Justice is blind, but injustice can be too. Batman wasn't created by a boy, by a bat, or by a nightmare, Batman was created from a gun and two dead parents. Throughout his history, the infamous killer of Thomas and Martha Wayne has been changed here and there. Sometimes it was The Joker, most times it was a man named Joe Chill. Sometimes the killer was a hired gun, other times it was a random act of violence. This entree has no exact date, but many times Batman's history has been retconned to say that the man who killed his parents wasn't hired to do it, he just did it for their wallets. And while the name Joe Chill is associated with the killer, many Batman stories leave the murder an unsolved case. And that's the way it should stay. If Batman found his parent's killer and locked him up, he'd have closure and he might give the Batman mantle up. But by leaving the mystery open we see why Batman never lets up on crime fighting. Because of murderer, thief, or rapist could be as bad as the man who killed his parents. Because the man who killed his parents doesn't have one face, he has the face of every low-level scumbag who'd dare to ruin the lives of innocent people. Batman fights an endless war on crime because crime has no name, no face, and cannot be thrown behind bars.

2. Old School Justice

Who would have guessed a simple team up would have created an entire multiverse? I'll make this as simple as possible. In the 50's there was the first Flash-Jay Garrick-with his silver saucer hat. In the 60's we got Barry Allen who used The Flash mantle from a comic book. But then one day The Flash joined The Justice League. With Superman. Who was on another team with Garrick. But, wait. If Jay was a comic book character where how did-? Big reveal with the team up between Jay and Barry: the comic book Jay was from is actually another universe, and there was a guy who's imagination was connected with that universe so he drew it. So, yeah, "Earth 2" is a comic book series in the DCU and another universe entirely. This allowed multiple versions of characters to exist, while also letting old school fans know their characters weren't forgotten, they just lived on another Earth. Decades later Jay and his friends would be integrated into the main DCU, and the creation of Earth 2 would spawn an entire pantheon of other Earths! All because a couple of comic book writers wanted to use "The Flash" as a superhero name again!

1. Manhattan Did It!

The New 52 was a bad idea. Did it open the universe to new readers? Yes. Did it pull in more money? Yes. Did it disrespectfully portray beloved characters, create a confusing timeline of nondescript events, create awfully new costumes, undo iconic events, ruin relationships, and portray the DCU as a fourteen year old's vision of a superhero universe? Yeah it f%#king did. The New 52 ruined a lot about the DCU and only has a handful of things that really made the event worth doing. But the bad outwayed the good and it feels like DC has been spending the last six years trying to make up for it. Hence DC Rebirth providing better stories, truer character personalities, reviving relationships and confirming important events, and being overall better than the past six years of DC Comic's publications. Now the universe feels like a gentle balance between a business and a legacy. Now Superman feels like Superman and The Titans are a thing again and characters like Wally West are actually remembered. We have Geoff Johns to thank for the positive direction the DCU has taken, but who do we have to blame for Flashpoint and The New 52 and past six or so years of disconnection. Doctor Manhattan of The Watchmen Universe. Who'd you expect, The Anti-Monitor? "Doomsday Clock" is going on right now and promises to answer all our questions, but when the DCU's darker period became a question, Johns turned to the darkest corner of the publications history, the darker world of heroes created by Alan Moore. By tapping into the legendary story of Watchmen we will see just how that universe's darker influence infected The DCU,we will see what Doc's interactions with the DCU have created, and why he corrupted our world of heroes. Only time can tell what will happen and how the DCUs rise from controversy will effect the future of DC Comics. But unlike us, for Manhattan, time is all at once.
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