13°
Capes and Cowls
As days swing by
4:00 am Mar 20 - by Matt Knicl – Buzz writer
The Amazing Spider-man (Marvel) — In fiction, mostly comics and sometimes television, the term “retcon” refers to the restructuring of past events. The characters don’t know anything has changed, but the audience knows. Comics use retcons all the time; these characters have been around for decades and after their storylines stagnate, sometimes publishers opt to rewrite a character from scratch. The most notable example of this is DC’s Crisis On Infinite Earths, an ’80s miniseries that reworked every title and character DC owned.
As I’ve recently reported, Spider-man was recently retconned after he made a deal with a devil in order to save Aunt May’s life, but only on the condition that his and Mary Jane’s marriage had never happened. This event, called “Brand New Day”, launched three issues of Amazing Spider-man to be released a month, essentially one issue every week.
The writers vary, but the premise is the same — Spider-man has never exposed his identity. Harry Osborn is alive and MJ is in Europe. Peter Parker never joined the New Avengers. Basically the past, oh say, 20 years of Spider-man have been erased.
Now I want to point out that the current issues are well-written and get back to the core of Spider-man — a single, awkward adult making jokes, fighting crime, plus interspersed metafictional editor comments. He is fighting super villains in the vein of past enemies, like a new Goblin named Menace and a Lizard-like man-beast.
This is exactly what Spider-man used to be, and as far as the “Brand New Day” issues go, they are fun.
But this retcon is troubling for many a Marvel fan because the company has pulled a DC on us; negating twenty years of story we have invested ourselves into. Likewise, it isn’t really clear what this means for other Marvel titles.
Marvel characters live in a shared world and what affects one, affects all. Spider-man is deeply rooted in the Marvel Universe and his story permeates every title in one way or another. It becomes problematic when current issues of New Avengers still include Spider-man in the roster (although this is supposed to be addressed in future issues). Likewise, in issue #553, Spider-man says Green Goblin (Norman Osborn) doesn’t remember being Green Goblin, but Osborn is currently the leader of the “reformed” villain team Thunderbolts, where he struggles with relapsing into his Green Goblin persona.
To be honest, I hope this retcon doesn’t last — that some sort of dues ex-machina will reveal the truth after a year, because the issues right now are great, but it’s not fair to nuke half of the Spider-man mythos just because.
Matt can be reached at buzz.comics@gmail.com
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Last post: Mar. 25, 2008 at 6:31 pm
Fairfield (Chris Fairfield) said on Mar. 25, 2008 at 3:00 pm:
I'm hoping that the whole thing is a big illusion, and that Spiderman returns to reality and has to face dealing with Aunt May dying. If that were the case, OMD might be an excusable -- almost brilliant even -- parable about having to face one's problems and that there is no thing as simply wishing something unpleasant away. This could explain why the OMD changes haven't really hit the other books (with the notable exception of Deapool, who mocks Spidey mercilessly for the retcon, gotta love Deadpool).
But that is probably wishful thinking... at least while Quesada is EIC.
Matt Knicl (blogs.the217.com/capes) (Matt Knicl) said on Mar. 25, 2008 at 6:31 pm:
Yeah, Quesada hated Spider-man's marriage, so its looking like this might be permanent. Check out Cape & Cowl in the DI in the next two weeks for my satire on the whole issue.
Jeff Brandt (Jeff Brandt) said on Mar. 25, 2008 at 2:08 am:
Whoa. How permanent are these changes? Mindfuck events like this are why I don't read comics very often anymore. . .
Does this negate a ton of other things, like the deaths of Morbius and Kraven? I'd definitely be OK with it negating the 90s clone BS, but yeah. And wasn't he publicly unmasked earlier this decade?