The newest member of the X-Men, The Suit has powers far beyond that of mortal men.
Marvel Universe
- Shang-Chi:
- Roy Thomas insisted that Shang-Chi had to be biracial with a white mother, not of full Chinese ancestry. This was apparently because the audience wasn't ready for a solo book with an East Asian lead. In the end, his mother (who was never named) only appeared twice, in stories ten years apart, and that part of his ancestry was rarely mentioned. It was finally retconned as part of the Soft Reboot that accompanied the first Shang-Chi film.
- Marvel had licensed the Sax Rohmer Fu Manchu novels for a comic adaptation, but hadn't known what to do with them. Thomas wanted them written into the new Shang-Chi series, so Fu Manchu became his father. When Master of Kung Fu ceased publication and Marvel lost the rights to Rohmer's works and characters, they were no longer allowed to use those stories or characters, which led to a Given Name Reveal to rename some (most notably, "Fu Manchu" was explained, without explicitly using the name, to be an alias), others being Exiled from Continuity, and an eventual Soft Reboot (which helped to remove the racist Yellow Peril baggage of the original tales).
- X-Men:
- Stan Lee originally wanted to call the series The Mutants, but his boss said that very few readers would know what a mutant was. Lee's protest that nobody, including he himself, knew what an X-Man was had no effect.
- The original conclusion for The Dark Phoenix Saga called for Dark Phoenix being psychically lobotomized; however, then-Editor-in-Chief Jim Shooter ordered writer Chris Claremont and artist John Byrne to come up with something more drastic as punishment for her crimes, and she was killed off. Fortunately, the talent was able to make that work for a powerfully dramatic conclusion and it is generally agreed that it was a superior idea to the original concept. Still, the original ending was shown in the 1984 one-shot Phoenix: The Untold Story.
- When it was decided to bring Jean Grey back without the Dark Phoenix baggage (by having it be the Phoenix Force impersonating her while the real Jean was being healed in a cocoon at the bottom of Jamaica Bay), it was decided to relaunch the original X-Men lineup as X-Factor. One slight problem - Angel, Beast, and Iceman were tied up in The New Defenders, so that series was cancelled, and the rest of the team killed off in a Heroic Sacrifice, so the trio could be freed up for X-Factor.
- When writers were forced to kill Jean again, the plans to give her a true death were changed to allow her to come back one day.
- Chris Claremont had to deal with many mandates when he came back to the book in 2000. Exiles was re-packaged as New Exiles and Claremont was told he could only use characters he created or wrote as the protagonists for his first run on X-Men. Igor Kordey was replaced as the artist on New Excalibur while already working on the first issue; nobody informed Claremont, the writer, at the time of the change in artists. During his third, and latest, run on Uncanny X-Men, Claremont had to drop an ongoing plot, namely the formation of a new Hellfire Club, while the story was in full swing. He was told to abandon the story because a different writer at the time professed interest in using the Hellfire Club. Eventually, it turned out to be All Just a Dream, making the forced abandonment of the plot in Uncanny X-Men a jarring example of executive meddling.
- Chris Claremont originally wanted to reveal that Nightcrawler's parents were Mystique and her female lover, Destiny, with Mystique having used her shapeshifting powers to turn into a man and impregnate Destiny. The higher-ups at Marvel wouldn't allow it.
- During Byrne's run on the title, he made a habit of having Wolverine kill people off-panel (thought there would always be a veiled reference to it later in the same issue). Jim Shooter had a bad habit of having his assistants read the books, so he wasn't aware of his trend until he actually overheard John Byrne bragging about it to a fan during an autograph session. Jim Shooter then demanded that every character that Wolverine killed off-panel be brought back. Claremont ended up with the unsavory task, and brought them all back as cyborgs, who eventually formed the band of villains known as the Reavers.
- In 2002, then-EIC Bill Jemas decided he didn't want Marvel to keep paying royalties to Rob Liefeld for Deadpool, Cable and X-Force, thus he decided they needed a lot of rebranding. X-Force had already been retooled, dropping the strike force team in favor of the mutant celebrities, thus the series was rebranded as X-Statix. Cable was a little more harder, needing to drop the techno-organic virus arm and his habit of using big honking guns and turning him into something of a soldier of fortune, thus being rebranded as Soldier X. Deadpool had the largest change, being turned into an amnesiac named Alex Hayden and just having scars instead of being cancer-ridden. While X-Statix would last much longer than the other two, Soldier X and Agent X were abject failures and while Cable would go back to normal, Agent X got three extra issues to reveal that Alex Hayden wasn't Deadpool at all and explain what happened to Wade in the meantime.
- For a brief period, Joe Quesada at Marvel Comics tried to encourage a "whoever is dead stays dead" policy, in order to combat the increasing perception that character death is meaningless in the medium. It wasn't an editorial mandate as is often mistakenly said (though there probably is some truth that he used the justification to influence people not to bring back characters he disliked). This policy notably affected several high-profile works for the company: Grant Morrison had to give Emma Frost the diamond mutation to take the place the then-dead Colossus would have played, and Beast played the science-guy role that the then-dead Moira MacTaggart would have had. This edict proved very unpopular with fans, and overturned by 2004 with Magneto being brought back (ironically Magneto was himself labeled "staying dead" even though Morrison always intended on bringing him back). It took four years before fan-favorite Psylocke was brought back to life in 2005 after being killed off in Xtreme X-Men, as she was originally slated to die in the Psi War arc, which was a few years before her actual death. Chris Claremont, though, merely planned for her death to be temporary, with the idea being that when she returned, she would be stripped of all of the Crimson Dawn stuff that had been added to her story (including her facial tattoo) plus perhaps even returning her to her original body (and not the Asian body she ended up in), however Claremont's plans were scrapped. Furthermore, when Joss Whedon took over what became Astonishing X-Men, one of the very few editorial mandates forced upon him was to bring Colossus back to life.
- Spider-Man:
- J. Michael Straczynski was vehemently opposed to Marvel's Editor-In-Chief Joe Quesada's mandate to erase Peter Parker's marriage to Mary Jane, thus rewriting 20 years of the comic's history, via a Deal with the Devil with One More Day, but was apparently willing swallow his protests go through with the story, only to be faced with further meddling in the story's execution. Straczynski had several of his ideas vetoed, and at one point threatened to have his name removed from the credits. Perhaps tellingly, Quesada's meddling was extensive enough for him to be outright credited as a co-writer on the version of the story that was eventually published.
- The Clone Saga has a long and complicated history, but the short version is that high sales of the initial issues led to the marketing department forcibly extended it from its six-month arc to last for two years. Tons of changes were also made to the story during development time by various people outside of the creative team, leading to certain aspects like Judas Traveller that nobody on staff fully understood or knew what to do with.
- Mini Marvels: A backup feature in an issue of Marvel Adventures jokes that this is what the Skrull invasions of Earth are attempts at — for the Skrulls, Earth is a popular reality show that they've gained ownership rights to, and now they want to exercise creative control. Unfortunately, Earth has turned out to have rather extreme Protection from Editors.
- Omega the Unknown: Steve Gerber's original idea was about the difficult life of a realistic young man, but Stan Lee insisted he have powers and crossovers with other in-universe superheroes. Eventually, the book was taken away from Gerber entirely, and given to another author who summarily killed the characters off. Then, thirty years later, it was given to yet another author for an update, without so much as informing Gerber.
- Marvel 1602: Fantastick Four: In-Universe, King James I offers... suggestions to William Shakespeare such as the witches in Macbeth. A couple of actors nearby comment that Will nearly wept when James ordered ghosts put into Hamlet.
- Star Wars (Marvel 1977): When Marvel got the license after the first movie, George Lucas forbade them to have Vader directly interact with the rebels, as it could interfere with what he had in mind for the movies.
- Fantastic Four: While Doug Moench was the main writer for about a year (1980-1981), an editorial mandate prevented him from using any of the iconic members of their Rogues Gallery due to the editor thinking they were overused. The result was that Moench came up with two Suspiciously Similar Substitutes: Absolute Xenophobe "Stygorr the Nightlord" stood in for Annihilus, while sentient Black Hole "Ebon Seeker" stood in for Galactus and had a similar origin.
- Black Panther: The short-lived Kasper Cole version came about because editorial wanted to shake up the book. Christopher Priest claims they began looking for new writers and gave them the task of getting rid of T'Challa and introducing a "hip-hop relevant" Legacy version of the character. The order eventually came back to Priest, who ended up creating Cole, despite not liking the idea one bit.
- Captain America: Back in 1999, Mark Waid asked for his name to be removed from Vol. 3 #14 because the editors changed the story to the point where it didn't resemble what he had intended. Set inside the Red Skull's mindscape, Waid's point was that, from the twisted perspective of a high-up Nazi, they weren't the bad guys. In the Skull's screwed-up brain, Cap is both the embodiment of evil and - since he won - the new fuhrer. The editors preferred to make the Skull a Card-Carrying Villain (while, paradoxically, removing any suggestion of racism), and Cap simply represented as "that guy the Skull doesn't like because he keeps beating him".
- Len Kaminski revealed
that The Crossing was why he ended his run on Iron Man — the editorial staff was insistent on the story, which infamously attempted to retcon that Iron Man was really a Manchurian Agent for Kang, and much like the fan reaction ended up being, Kaminski hated the idea and chose to get the hell out of dodge rather than be Mis-blamed for it. - The Avengers:
- Near the end of Roger Stern's run, editor Mark Gruenwald wanted Captain America to lead the team again, and requested that the current head of the group, Monica Rambeau, be shown as inferior in order to justify Cap's return. Stern refused, as he felt the idea was racist and sexist (since Monica was the first black character to lead the Avengers, and only the second woman to do so), and was fired as a result.
- Walt Simonson similarly walked away due to the meddling his run received, including editorial giving him permission to have Mister Fantastic and the Invisible Woman join the Avengers, only to rescind that approval after he'd already written them into the book. Prior to that, he'd also been told he couldn't use Iron Man or Thor, which only furthered his frustration with the gig.
- Steve Englehart had wanted Quicksilver to become a major recurring villain, as he liked the idea of the Avengers having to face a former teammate who'd fallen from grace. However, a later Retcon established that Quicksilver's villainous behavior was the result of Brainwashing from Black Bolt's brother Maximus, and one of Englehart's West Coast Avengers scripts was even rewritten by editor Ralph Macchio in order to redeem the character.
- The short-lived 70s book Champions was pitched as a book involving leftover X-Men Angel and Iceman having adventures in Los Angeles. However, a mandate by Len Wein that the team had to have at least five members and "One must be super-strong, one must be female, and at least one must have his own comic." This led to the book also having Hercules, Black Widow, and Ghost Rider on its roster - needless to say, not an especially focused lineup.
- On a podcast, artist Ryan Stegman mentioned that he was told to tone down the designs on the new characters created for Charles Soule's Inhumans so that they would be easier to adapt in Marvel's live-action TV shows (Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and Inhumans).
- Before the 2019 buyout of Fox, Disney and Marvel actively tried devalue the comic franchises whose film rights were owned by the rival company. The Inhumans were the most obvious attempt, with Marvel blatantly making a huge push to try and have them take the X-Men's place as the comics' discriminated superhuman minority. Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch, popular characters in both the MCU and the Fox produced X-Men films, had their origins retconned, no longer being mutants or Magneto's children in order to disconnect from the X-Men as much as possible. And while Disney has denied claims of giving the Fantastic Four this treatment, it's noticeable that their comic was cancelled shortly before the 2015 movie was released and the team was Put on a Bus from the Marvel Universe as a whole until the buyout was underway.
