History Retcon / ComicBooks

* Also happens to Superman's cousin, ComicBook/{{Supergirl}}. Not only have there been four separate versions, but the pre-ComicBook/{{New 52}}'s version's history became so convoluted on its own that Sterling Gates just [=retconned=] it out in issue ''35'', to give her the simple story we all ''thought'' was true before. The reason for the massive continuity snarl around Supergirl is because of an editorial mandate that Superman be the only surviving Kryptonian when his own continuity was rewritten and simplified after ''Comicbook/CrisisOnInfiniteEarths''. (During the Silver Age, so many other survivors had appeared that it was weakening his story.) This caused obvious problems for Supergirl (which in turn broke the Legion of Super-Heroes, among other things, since it was heavily interconnected with her), and necessitated increasingly convoluted explanations until they finally just threw up their hands, admitted that casual readers would always assume she was Superman's surviving cousin regardless, and switched it back to that.

** At least in the Franchise/MarvelUniverse this kind of things can be easily explained away thanks to their *infinite* number of [[AlternateReality alternate universes]]. It is entirely possible that the current Micros are just not the originals and that they're as confused as to whom they're dealing with as the heroes are.

* [[ComicBook/{{New52}} The New 52]]: Just a year in and they're already contradicting themselves. ''ComicBook/TeenTitans'' had Tim Drake mention his time as Robin and that there had been prior versions of the Titans. When the trade paperback came out, [[OrwellianRetcon this was revised with Tim always]] being ''Red'' Robin (never regular Robin, though still Batman's sidekick), and omitting mentions of prior Titans.

* Both [[OnlyKnownByTheirName Moose's]] given name and surname have changed various times in ''Franchise/ArchieComics''.

** Another example that's pretty much like the Trope Picture is the Lightning siblings. Lightning Lad got his powers by being struck by the lightning of some monsters. Then it's revealed he has a twin sister who was there as well! ''Then'' it's revealed they ahve ''another'' brother, who was ''also'' there!

* A pretty minor one, all things considered, but Frank Miller retconned what age ''ComicBook/{{Daredevil}}'' was when his father was killed. Originally, he was already in college. In Frank Miller's miniseries, ''Daredevil: The Man Without Fear'', Matt is younger, and is instead in 12th grade. So instead of his father pressuring him to be important and Matt studying and then enrolling in law right before his father died, Matt was pressured to study and picked law... but didn't necessarily ''have'' to follow through, since he had already acted as a vigilante at the time and his father was dead.

That last retcon is also notable for ''[[ContinuitySnarl completely borking]]'' the continuity of the ''ComicBook/{{Legion Of Super-Heroes}}'' comic, since the eponymous Legion was introduced in UsefulNotes/{{the Silver Age|of Comic Book}} as a group of thirtieth-century teenagers who were inspired to form their own "hero club" by stories of Superboy's exploits. The Legion's writers at the time tried to patch things up by, variously, establishing that Superboy had only existed in a pocket universe, killing off the pocket universe Superboy, revamping one-shot character Mon-El into a Superboy {{Expy}}, further rejiggering the timeline by having Mon-El kill the Time Trapper, and finally scrapping and rebooting the whole damn thing during the ''Comicbook/ZeroHour'' crossover in 1994. The ''Legion of Super-Heroes'' was then rebooted again in 2001, and then retconned ''again'' in 2007 back to a variant on the original continuity, with some adjustments. By this point, alternate timelines, retcons, and reboots are a fact of life for Legion fans.

That last retcon is also notable for ''[[ContinuitySnarl completely borking]]'' the continuity of the ''ComicBook/{{Legion Of Super-Heroes}}'' comic, since the eponymous Legion was introduced in the SilverAge as a group of thirtieth-century teenagers who were inspired to form their own "hero club" by stories of Superboy's exploits. The Legion's writers at the time tried to patch things up by, variously, establishing that Superboy had only existed in a pocket universe, killing off the pocket universe Superboy, revamping one-shot character Mon-El into a Superboy {{Expy}}, further rejiggering the timeline by having Mon-El kill the Time Trapper, and finally scrapping and rebooting the whole damn thing during the ''Comicbook/ZeroHour'' crossover in 1994. The ''Legion of Super-Heroes'' was then rebooted again in 2001, and then retconned ''again'' in 2007 back to a variant on the original continuity, with some adjustments. By this point, alternate timelines, retcons, and reboots are a fact of life for Legion fans.

* Originally, Nightmare Moon was portrayed to be a SuperpoweredEvilSide of Princess Luna, then [[ComicBook/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagicIDW the comic]] changes it so that Nightmare Moon was the product of the Nightmare forces possessing Luna, though this retcon is based on a WordOfGod from Creator/LaurenFaust saying that Nightmare Moon was brought about via an force separate from Luna.

* ''Comicbook/XMen''
** So that one team member wouldn't end up [[MoralEventHorizon committing Genocide]], Comicbook/JeanGrey was rewritten so that she was never Phoenix and she never died on The Moon. It was the Phoenix Force itself, who took on Jean's appearance and memories (Quasi-confirmed in a later issue of ''What If..?'' which showed what would have happened if "Jean" had had her powers stripped rather than committing suicide). Has been retconned several times since then, the latest version is that it ''was'' Jean on the Moon. How she ended up in Jamaica Bay a few years after that isn't accounted for. Plus becoming Phoenix in the first place was a retcon. Xavier basically went "Oh, she had this powerful other self in her the whole time, that I just sealed away."
** From an ComicBook/XMen [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bL6J7FJmy1c fan-parody film]] on Magneto's retcon survival: "No, that was actually Xorn's twin brother possessed by the sentient mold Sublime, pretending to be me, pretending to be Xorn." As crazy as that sounds, the parody writer is not making that up.
---->'''Beast:''' That defies all logic!
** "Hey guys, there was a secret team of X-Men that I, Professor Xavier, sent off to their deaths. I really didn't mention it before because I thought that it would have been far too depressing for you guys, and because I am the biggest bastard on the planet. Now go on out there and save that world that both hates and fears us!" (X-Men: Deadly Genesis seemed like it was designed for the sole purpose of smearing Professor Xavier's reputation.)
** Comicbook/{{Psylocke}}'s RaceLift from a Caucasian British woman to a Japanese assassin was originally explained by Claremont as being the result of magic and surgery performed on her by Spiral and Mojo. After the title changed writers to Fabian Nicieza, he had not been aware of Claremont's explanation and introduced the character Revanche, who was said to be inhabiting Betsy's original body. In his version of events, Spiral and Mojo [[FreakyFridayFlip performed a body-swap]] on the two women, although he'd later state that their DNA and appearances became intermingled due to imperfections made in the swap. An initial earlier explanation by Nicieza had also stated that Kwannon had accidentally swapped her mind with Betsy after encountering her body on a beach, but this was retconned as false memories due to the inconsistency with what was shown when Betsy originally emerged from the Siege Perilous.
** In the late 90's, when Creator/ChrisClaremont once more began writing for the X-Men, the character Sage was retconned to being one of Xavier's original students, placed as a spy in the Hellfire Club under Sebastian Shaw.
** For a long time ComicBook/{{Rogue}}'s stripe of white hair was explicitly dyed however it was later retconned to be natural.

* ''Franchise/SpiderMan'':
** The stories "Comicbook/OneMoreDay" and "Comicbook/BrandNewDay" infamously altered twenty years worth of continuity by erasing Peter Parker and Mary Jane Watson's marriage from continuity. This happened because Spider-Man saved his aunt's life by making a deal with Mephisto, a "demon" character typically used as the Franchise/MarvelUniverse stand-in for the Devil.
** Infamously, ComicBook/TheCloneSaga had to muck around with continuity so much (both because of its initial premise and because of the unholy mess it later became) that at one point they had to dedicate an entire special double-sized issue to retconning away a ''previous retcon''.
** Then, there's the Hobgoblin. The writer at the time he was first introduced, Roger Stern, set up this massive story about a replacement Goblin who was starting to meddle in the affairs of the Kingpin, among others. However, before Stern could reveal the identity, he left the title and the next writer said it was Ned Leeds, a go-to guy for wanna-be Goblins. Between the late 80s and the mid 90s, the role of the Hobgoblin fell to mercenary Jason Macendale, who was ''incredibly'' incompetent. Then, Stern returned for a three-issue mini-series devoted to finally clearing up the mystery of the Hobgoblin.
* Back at DC, the revamp of ComicBook/{{Firestorm}} in the late '80s when John Ostrander took over. This was the start of the idea of the "Firestorm Matrix," and culminated in the character going from nuclear man to fire elemental. Oh, and by the way, the nuclear power plant explosion that fused Ronnie Raymond and Martin Stein? That was not just fate, not just a coincidence. You see, Stein was singled out to be the "true" Firestorm/Fire Elemental all along!

* The fastest turnaround in retcon history may appear in ''Uncanny X-Men Annual'' #2. Serving as both a prequel and installment to ''Comicbook/DarkReign'', it does away with [[Comicbook/SubMariner Namor]] being presented as a skeevy, smelly, creepy old man by turning the dialogue between him and Emma subtly flirtatious.
* Comicbook/{{Wolverine}}
** His claws originally ''appeared'' to be part of his glove, so the revelation that they were part of his body may or may not be considered a retcon. Later X-rays of his arms clearly showed that the claws were implants with mechanical housings and an extension/retraction mechanism. When it was later "revealed" that his claws were a natural part of his skeletal system, the conflict with the earlier x-rays was never mentioned. (This includes his original entry in ''The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe''.) Similarly, Wolverine's eternal [[TheRival rival]] Sabretooth first appeared in ''Iron Fist'' as a psychopathic human murderer who wore clawed gloves.
** In his early X-Men appearances, Wolverine's skeleton was said to be reinforced with ''strips'' of adamantium. The current incarnation has the adamantium fused throughout his bones at a molecular level.
* In issue #34 of ''SelfDemonstrating/{{Deadpool}}'', it is revealed that Deadpool is not actually Wade Wilson, but stole the identity from the man who would become T-Ray. This was later retconned in such a senseless, ham-handed way into a trick by T-Ray to mess with Deadpool's head that most fans didn't even remember it until it was restated in ''Cable & Deadpool''.

* Writers for ''ComicBook/FantasticFour'' initially couldn't decide whether or not the title characters kept their identities secret through ClarkKenting. The retcon was a combination--they ''thought'' their identities were secret, [[EverybodyKnewAlready and everyone else was humoring them]].

* The character of Peter Quill aka [[Comicbook/GuardiansOfTheGalaxy Star-Lord]] has been subject to a number of different retcons in order to make his origin somewhat comprehensible in the wider Franchise/MarvelUniverse. The original ''Star-Lord'' stories took place TwentyMinutesIntoTheFuture and possibly in an AlternateUniverse, which was slightly reinforced in an ''[[Comicbook/TheInhumans Inhumans]]'' mini-series which established Star-Lord's father as part of the present day Marvel Universe, with the implication that Peter wasn't even born yet. This was thrown out the window during ''Comicbook/{{Annihilation}}'', which tried to position Peter as part of the current Marvel Universe while keeping his original 70's origin. Finally, Creator/BrianBendis just said "Screw it" and started over from scratch, establishing an entirely new (and more coherent) origin that contains bits of the various retcons, but firmly established Star-Lord as a present day Marvel character.
* ''Franchise/StarWars: Jedi vs. Sith'' is basically an official FixFic that fits together disparate elements from the Prequel trilogy that conflict with the original trilogy (1,000 years vs. 1,000 generations for the Republic), elements from the Prequel trilogy that conflict with each other, the Valley of the Jedi from ''[[VideoGame/DarkForcesSaga Dark Forces: Jedi Knight]]'', some novellas that were in part ''themselves'' retcons for the Dark Forces saga, among other things.

* A particularly controversial example was Steve Engelehart's retcon of ComicBook/TheFalcon's origin in ''Comicbook/CaptainAmerica''. When the Falcon first appeared, he was a kindly young social worker who became a superhero to help Cap fight off a group of exiled war criminals. Then Englehart came along and decided that before he put on a costume, the Falcon had actually been a violent, drug-dealing pimp who only became a hero because the Comicbook/RedSkull had brainwashed him in order to have a [[TheMole Mole]] in Cap's confidence. Enter Rick Remender, who retconned that retcon in ''All-New Captain America'' by revealing that Sam Wilson was always the social worker, but the Red Skull had put in the violent, drug-dealing pimp past in an attempt to discredit him, hoping that people would be ''racist'' enough to believe it.
* In the Disney Comics, The Phantom Blot's identity was retconned to be a complete mystery. In the first issue he appeared in, not only was his face seen, but his face resembled [[spoiler: ''WaltDisney'']]. Arguably, this was a good decision, giving the Blot an air of mystery.

* When the 3.75" ''Franchise/GIJoe'' figures first sold, G.I. Joe was envisaged as an American anti-terrorist task force. When they were made available in the UK, they were sold under the name ''Action Force''. They were accompanied by a comic of the same name which established that Action Force was an international anti-terrorist organisation, of which G.I. Joe was the name of the American branch (and to which Action Force would also change its name later on).

* The Marvel Comics Micronauts were inexplicably brought back to life in a 1996 issue of ''Comicbook/{{Cable}}''. This was exactly ten years after they sacrificed themselves to create a Genesis effect that completely restored their ruined Homeworld into a new world at a natural state. In Cable, Homeworld is inhabited by Psycho-Man who is using Baron Karza's old body banks to create dog soldiers.
** Commander Rann, Mari, and Bug are now the only Micronauts. For licensing reasons, they are now called The Microns; the others having died in war (Marvel no longer has the license to use Acroyear and most of the others. Huntarr's absence is baffling since he was created by Bill Mantlo, the writer of the first Micronauts series).
** Homeworld is once again an overpopulated technometropolis and the Microns are freedom fighters. Homeworld is again under the iron fist of someone who probably has to remain unnamed due to licensing restrictions.
** In a never released story (again due to licensing), Baron Karza and Thanos have a fight which merges all of the Microverses into one ,so now Sub-Atomica and Jarella's Homeword are now in the same dimension.
** Rann and Mari's appearance and personality are different in every re-appearance. In ''Cable'', Rann is buff and heroic looking while Mari's look screams butch lesbian. And she seemed to have given up the swords for normal futuristic weapons. Then Rann and Mari are looking like their old selves in ''[[ComicBook/CaptainMarVell Captain Marvel]]'', although they don't do much more than talk (kind of like a typical episode of Star Trek TNG). In Realm of Kings: Son of Hulk Rann now sports a goatee and reading glasses. And unlike in ''Cable'' where Mari had about three lines between the two issues, she's back to her usual verbose self but now talks like an average Earth bimbo instead of a Homeworld Princess. And look at the man legs on her.
** Bug is now a member of the Guardians of the Galaxy and for some reason, he's normal human sized and not about 3 inches which is normal when Microversians travel to the regular Earth universe. Rann and Mari (who is once again inexplicably letting others call her Marionette) have a robot sidekick named Carl (don't ask) and their latest enemy is Son of Hulk. They journey around the Microverse aboard the Endeavor III (which sports the most insanely stupidest ship design ever seen in print or screen: a giant atom). It looks as if someone really hated the deeper, more cerebral Micronauts: The New Voyages.
** At least in the Franchise/MarvelUniverse this kind of things can be easily explained away thanks to their *infinite* number of [[AlternateReality alternate universes]]. It is entirely possible that the current Micros are just not the originals and that they're as confused as to whom they're dealing with as the heroes are.

* In the Flemish "De Rode Ridder" series, based on a series of books of the same name, album 131 provided a retcon of the meaning of the title: for about 64 books and 130 comic albums, it had been thought that the title referred to the nickname of Johan the protagonist "The Red Knight", based on his red tunic, 130 revealed that actually Johan was the "Rode" Knight because he belonged to the family of the historical(!) Lords of Rode.
* ''Marvel: The Lost Generation'' is a twelve issue miniseries built entirely around retcon - specifically, filling in the blank in Marvel history from 1955 to 1961.
* ''Comicbook/{{Infinity}}'' and ''Comicbook/{{Inhumanity}}'' retcon parts of the prior ''Comicbook/SilentWar'' mini-series, namely the bits about the Terrigen Mist being fatal to anyone without [[Comicbook/TheInhumans Inhuman]] lineage.
* As revealed in the 1980s title ''Monster Hunters'', minor 1940s Marvel [[SuperSpeed speedsters]] Hurricane and Mercury were ''both'' Makkari of ComicBook/TheEternals under assumed names.
* On the other hand, ''ComicBook/AgentsOfAtlas'' eventually revealed that UsefulNotes/{{the Golden Age|OfComicBooks}} heroine Venus is, contrary to previous portrayals, ''not'' the goddess of the same name who had her own series and joined the Champions(in order to [[CuttingTheKnot cut the knot]] of a particular ContinuitySnarl). Aphrodite was not amused.
* The French comic series ''ComicBook/DungeonTheEarlyYears'' provides one of the best Retcons ever so far. In the very first issue of this FunnyAnimal gritty comic, the Dungeon Keeper has a look at a picture of his lost love who looks human. Then, in a prequel album, we see her alive under the traits of a snake. Then the authors showed a portrait painter picturing a bird lady as a human and explaining "it's a style that people like these days".

* Originally, Nightmare Moon was portrayed to be a SuperpoweredEvilSide of Princess Luna, then [[ComicBook/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagicIDW the comic]] changes it so that Nightmare Moon was the product of the Nightmare forces possessing Luna, though this retcon is based on a WordOfGod from Creator/LaurenFaust saying that Nightmare Moon was brought about via an force separate from Luna.
* Geoffery St. John of ''ComicBook/SonicTheHedgehog'' was retconned from the son of the king's guard who hated Overlanders for killing his father to the son of the king's guard who partnered himself up with Ixis Naugus in an attempt to free him and overthrow King Acorn for allowing this to happen. It also retconned his choice of people for King Acorn's Secret Service from "the best people for the job" to "people with questionable pasts that he could pin the blame on should he get caught". It's said that he genuinely loved Hershey the Cat, married her and abandoned the plan, but when she was killed off-screen, it pushed him into the DespairEventHorizon and back into the plan.
** Sally's various hair/fur coloring was retconned to her falling into a vat of chemicals and subsequent washings changing the colors.
** Following a TimeSkip, Antoine seemingly TookALevelInJerkass as he was shown to be massively cold towards his then-former {{Love Interest|s}} Bunnie Rabbot. It was later revealed that he was actually his AlternateUniverse EvilTwin Patch and that the real Antoine was in his universe.

* While traveling backward in time in the 1973 Sise-Neg storyline, ''ComicBook/DoctorStrange'' paused in Ancient Egypt for a couple of panels to cast a spell that briefly changed the Thing back to human Ben Grimm, allowing him to escape from shackles designed for the Thing's massive wrists, escape, and begin the defeat of Rama-Tut by the ''ComicBook/FantasticFour'' in FF #19. (In the original Lee/Kirby story, it was vaguely described as a result of the hot Egyptian sun).
* The origin of Comicbook/{{Quicksilver}} and the Comicbook/ScarletWitch have been retconned a number of times. Originally, they were said to be the children of World War II heroes Whizzer and Miss America, only to be revealed years later that, instead, they were the children of Magneto. Flash forward to ''ComicBook/{{AXIS}}'' and a spell launched by the inverted Witch to harm those in her bloodline, only to have Magneto mostly unharmed, thus making ''him'' not their father. ''AXIS'' also had a retcon towards ComicBook/{{Venom}} - Eddie Brock's StartOfDarkness was caused by him taking and publishing a confession by Emil Gregg, who confessed to being the serial killer Sin Eater. However, Eddie was discredited when Spider-Man captured and unmasked the Sin Eater and revealed that he was a completely different person and that Emil was a pathological liar. Flash forward to ''AXIS: Carnage'' to reveal that Emil was indeed the Sin Eater and that his lying habit essentially gave him an out.
* Issue #40 of ''Comicbook/ThePowerpuffGirls'' (DC run) bore the title "Everything You Know About The Powerpuff Girls Is Wrong," but this is subverted as it is merely a class assignment to invent origin stories about the girls, using the origins of Superman, Spiderman and the Fantastic Four as parallels.

* A minor one concerning ComicBook/IronMan and [[AllThereInTheManual data books]]: When ''The All-New Iron Manual'' was released, the original Hulkbuster armor was classified as the "Model 14" armor, retconning it from being a modular piece of armor for the "Model 13" Modular Armor to its own set of armor. When the book was rereleased, the Hulkbuster was restored to being the modular piece of armor, which had the side effect of knocking down all armors after the Modular Armor down a model number.

* As revealed in the 1980s title ''Monster Hunters'', minor 1940s Marvel [[SuperSpeed speedsters]] Hurricane and Mercury were ''both'' Makkari of TheEternals under assumed names.

** For a long time SomicBook/{{Storm}}'s stripe of white hair was explicitly dyed however it was later retconned to be natural.

* Any time a comic has on its cover the following phrase: '''"EVERYTHING YOU KNEW ABOUT [X] IS ''WRONG''!"''', look out, retcon incoming, full force.

* Franchise/{{Superman}}: His origin, early years, and powers have been revamped a ridiculous number of times just in "official" comic book continuity (and not counting in-story changes). Probably the most notable and drastic example took place in John Byrne's "Man of Steel," commissioned by DC in the 1980s to "clean up" the past several decades of Superman continuity by revamping his origin and the story of how he began his superhero career. Among other things, this retcon scaled back Superman's powers from the ridiculous levels they had been inflated to (although they have since begun to creep back up a bit), re-established Superman as the only surviving Kryptonian (that one didn't stick either), and wiped out previous continuity in which Clark Kent had a hero career as a teenager in Smallville using the name ComicBook/{{Superboy}}, during which time he also befriended the young Lex Luthor.
** That last retcon is also notable for ''[[ContinuitySnarl completely borking]]'' the continuity of the ''ComicBook/{{Legion Of Super-Heroes}}'' comic, since the eponymous Legion was introduced in the SilverAge as a group of thirtieth-century teenagers who were inspired to form their own "hero club" by stories of Superboy's exploits. The Legion's writers at the time tried to patch things up by, variously, establishing that Superboy had only existed in a pocket universe, killing off the pocket universe Superboy, revamping one-shot character Mon-El into a Superboy {{Expy}}, further rejiggering the timeline by having Mon-El kill the Time Trapper, and finally scrapping and rebooting the whole damn thing during the ''Comicbook/ZeroHour'' crossover in 1994.
*** The ''Legion of Super-Heroes'' was then rebooted again in 2001, and then retconned ''again'' in 2007 back to a variant on the original continuity, with some adjustments. By this point, alternate timelines, retcons, and reboots are a fact of life for Legion fans.