I’m referring to the work of the patron saint of comic book retcons - Roy Thomas. The term was even considered a compliment! Just let leave those ghosts alone.īut there was a time when retconning was held in high esteem. If Godzilla invaded New York while wearing a trench coat, or Doctor Doom teamed up with Henry Kissinger, then we might like those moments forgotten, but we don’t want them overturned or rationalized away as part of some complicated retcon. We will delight in a clever reinvention of a beloved character - a “new take” that doesn’t do violence to the past so much as it sees the character through a new, more contemporary lens - but we prefer that the past remain unchanged. At worst, “retconning” yields to “rebooting,” where stakeholders wave the white flag, wipe everything away, and pledge that this time they’ll get it right!Īttached as we are to our comics and our continuity, and concerned that vast swaths of our collections might suddenly “no longer count,” comics fans are justifiably touchy about retcons. Over time, “retcon” has become a pejorative term, applied to creators backing away from some previous change, or altering a character’s core values after-the-fact. Today, my esteemed fellow bloggers and I are looking at “retcons” in comics - those moments of “retroactive continuity” that seek to clean up or reinvigorate the creaky comics continuity that sometimes encumbers our favorite characters.

Batman by Roy Thomas