Things in Comics continuity you simply choose to ignore.

[captainpat]

That one time Harley Quinn killed a bunch of kids

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I don't think there's been an official retcon of this which is weird considering there are lines in later comics that make it explicitly clear she's against killing kids. Regardless, this shit is not part of Harley's history, and I don't care what anyone says.

 

[Tatsumaki Senpuukyaku!]

DC's continuity since COIE is so fucked up that it's more enjoyable to ignore it and try to read the issues as if they are all standalone

 

[Creamium]

One More Day. Brand New Day. Superior Spider-Man. Spider-Verse. Parker Industries. I've pretty much chosen to forget the last 10 years of Amazing Spider-Man continuity.

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Is there a common thread then in Slott's handling of the characters/story that makes it so bad for you? His long run seems to be pretty divivise. I've actually wanted to read some of these (like Superior) but I mostly stay away from Spidey because it's all so mired in continuity I don't have a clue of. That's why it was so much fun to read Bendis' Ultimate run. It felt like a best-of Spidey for people who didn't follow the regular series.

 

[Tatsumaki Senpuukyaku!]

Also I ignore everything in X-Men continuity that happened after Claremont left. I'd also like to ignore the Resurrection of Jean and X-Factor but it became too intertwined with the Claremont run to ignore.

 

[IrishNinja]

does anyone else remember when wolvy would suffer mortal injury and have to fight general lazer or someone dumb like that to come back? also that time they destroyed that bit from Earth X by saying he, sabretooth, wolfsbane, wildchild etc were actually ancients or some such

man, you can toss out the latter half of jeph loeb's work and nothing of value would be lost

That Gwen Stacy story still doesn't exist in my universe, and you can't convince me it does.

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literally every post mortem story involving gwen - that awful JMS one, the recent clone conspiracy shit - have been atrocious

 

[IrishNinja]

Also I ignore everything in X-Men continuity that happened after Claremont left. I'd also like to ignore the Resurrection of Jean and X-Factor but it became too intertwined with the Claremont run to ignore.

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...why
age of apocalypse, morisson's new x-men run, peter david's x-factor, wolverine & the x-men, even messiah war

x-books haven't been good in years but those stories are fantastic and you slept on them for no reason

 

[Tatsumaki Senpuukyaku!]

...why
age of apocalypse, morisson's new x-men run, peter david's x-factor, wolverine & the x-men, even messiah war

x-books haven't been good in years but those stories are fantastic and you slept on them for no reason

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I've read them all. Something feels off about certain X-Men characters voices unless Claremont is writing them.

Storm, Wolverine, Rogue, Kitty, Magneto (WAY off in Morrision's case), etc...

They can be good stories but something doesn't feel quite right about them.

 

[CoolestSpot]

Yo, for those that make someone making sense of X-Men continuity, try reading X-MEN GRAND DESIGN. It's a great book (well, imo) by an Eisner winning writer that tries to sort out of the X-Men lore and is sort of a "best of the best".

 

[mrmoose]

I still like Astonishing. And I like Peter coming back and Kitty being a mainstream X-man again (although I also liked Alan Davis's Excalibur).

That JMS Gwen Stacy/Osbourne thing is the first thing that came to my mind too.

Clone Wars includes Peter hitting his pregnant wife, so yeah, that too.

The Bill Jemas/Mark Millar project "Trouble," which detailed how a teenaged Aunt May cheated on her boyfriend Ben with Ben's brother Richard. First off, who asked for a miniseries about Aunt May as a teen sleeping around (drawn by Terry Dodson as well). Second of all, the revelation was that Peter was actually her child from that affair. I have no idea if it's in continuity but it should be sandblasted off the face of this earth and I'm sorry for reminding everyone that it was once published.

Most recently, the revelation about why Cyclops was considered a mutant Hitler, which made absolutely no sense and just made me hate the Inhumans even more, and the X-men for letting them kill Cyclops (or so they thought) who was just trying to save his own race.

James Robinson's Cry for Justice and the follow up run in Justice League. I like James Robinson a lot, and I realize there was a lot of editorial interference with the characters he chose, but we finally got a legacy Justice League and it just completely fell apart.

Identity Crisis.

Tarantula raping Nightwing.

Reign and the fate of Mary Jane (not in continuity though)

that Carol Danver's pregnancy story is all kinds of messed up. Kudos to Claremont for wiping the slate clean there.

There are problems with Alan Moore's Killing Joke, but then Bruce Timm doubles down with the animated feature and the relationship between Barbara and Bats. This is after we find out how messed up he made their relationship in Batman Beyond. This is not comics, but as a fan of the Timmverse I choose to ignore that part of the continuity entirely.

 

[Harken Raiser]

This is not real in my head. Not at all.

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[IrishNinja]

I've read them all. Something feels off about certain X-Men characters voices unless Claremont is writing them.

Storm, Wolverine, Rogue, Kitty, Magneto (WAY off in Morrision's case), etc...

They can be good stories but something doesn't feel quite right about them.

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i mean, i can kinda get that angle, yeah
x-men always struck me as a cool team that largely can't work as solo series (or in many cases, even carry a mini)...closest i'd seen for many was when cleremond might do a solo issue back then.

getting the voice right in team books is something i rarely ever see, to be honest: to this day, i think it was bendis' greatest weakness. and i love a lot of stuff by warren ellis but fuck, his x run was so bad it might as well have been youngblood characters talking, for me.

 

[Nerfed Llamas]

CS's random pitch:

Black Cat opens a "villain rehabilitation program", and runs a team of bunch of d-list villians turned heroes in manner similar to Thunderbolts. Their missions can be more Ocean's 11 then anything though, requiring sleath and style using their oddball skills over direct fighting.

That's what I'd do with her; heck maybe spidey sends baddies he beats up that want redemption her way.

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It'd be a damn sight better than what they are doing with Black Cat presently. I'd read that series.

Hell, if we are pitching ideas for Black Cat, here's mine: Her criminal organization has crumbled. She is wanted by a number of Spidey villains that she ran afoul during her latest criminal escapades. Someone with deep pockets is financing them and simultaneously cutting off her ability to defend herself or flee. With no one else to turn to, she goes to Spider-Man for protection. The 2 start to repair their fragile friendship and with the help of a few friends that Peter has picked up along the way recently (Mockingbird, Prowler, and Human Torch) they slowly get to the bottom of who is trying to snuff the cat. On top of this, SHIELD's investigation into her criminal organization cracks down, and Peter helps her broker a deal that captures bigger criminals using Black Cat as bait. Black Cat goes along with this plan, allowing Spider-Man and SHIELD to catch Tombstone (the man responsible for her empire's downfall) and his lieutenants. SHIELD had planned to keep Black Cat on a leash to bring down the other members of her defunct organization (The Enforcers, Scorpion, Maniac), ultimately wanting to catch an ex-associate of hers, Janus Jardeesh, so that they could try to bring down the Kingpin. Black Cat has no intention of being anyone's bait anymore, and with the immediate threat to her life gone, she leaves during the chaos of Tombstone's detainment. Later, we find out that Spider-Man and Black Cat have remained in contact and that he has agreed to let her do her own thing, just so long as she doesn't build another criminal empire. Black Cat promises to be good-ish, and goes back to Misty Knight to plan a new group of underground heroes similar to what they did as the Heroes for Hire.

 

[Slayven]

Nah, I accept and relish in it all

 

[Nakadai]

Well there is a lot I hear from comics I refuse to read that I completely ignore. Damian Wayne. One More Day. Magneto in the Morrison run. Etc.
But in comics I've actually read? Scarecrow becoming Scarebeast, for sure. Mr. Freeze being a dickhead flunky in most comics. Joker's backstory in Killing Joke. Anytime Batman is written like a killer or a crybaby hardass. When Spider-Man grew four arms. Love Secret Six, but the part where Catman fought Batman to a standstill was unbelievable. I'm sure I can think of more, but those jump out at me.

 

[Yossarian]

Doomsday Clock and Before Watchmen.

 

[Shig]

I choose to ignore what the comic companies are likely to selectively ignore and recant. Which is to say, pretty much everything.

You can only really take these characters as hazy archetypes that are playing whatever part the current story is having them play, and nothing beyond that. Character development, significant events, deaths, everything can and will be undone if the current writer deems it convenient.

To borrow a phrase from a friend, big superhero comics are just doing eternal donuts in the parking lot. I enjoy 'em, but you just gotta know that pretty much nothing will ever go anywhere.

 

[Nerfed Llamas]

Is there a common thread then in Slott's handling of the characters/story that makes it so bad for you? His long run seems to be pretty divivise. I've actually wanted to read some of these (like Superior) but I mostly stay away from Spidey because it's all so mired in continuity I don't have a clue of. That's why it was so much fun to read Bendis' Ultimate run. It felt like a best-of Spidey for people who didn't follow the regular series.

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If you want to read Spider-Man with a clean-ish continuity, start with Brand New Day (which Slott wrote the first story for). It picks up after the continuity bending events that led up to One More Day (which you shouldn't read, for any reason). If you start at Brand New Day, you will be in a great place to understand the modern Spider-Man's continuity as most of it was re-written at that point.

To answer your question about Slott's run on Spider-Man. I did not care for his handling of the supporting characters in the comic book (some of them are essentially forgotten, or completely altered just to fit the hackneyed needs of his plots), as well as the absurdity of many of the arcs that he pushed through after a couple of years of writing the book. I won't spoil anything for you, but the quick breakdown is as such for me: Superior Spider-Man was hard for me to read, as it lasted way too long it caused way too much damage to the people that Peter Parker loves (also, it's just really bad b-movie sci-fi, the kind of stuff that gets made fun of on Mystery Science Theater 3000). Spider-Verse was a convoluted mess that introduced about a billion Spider heroes from all over the multiverse for a story that required a ton of side comic reading and frankly ended with a whimper. Parker Industries basically turned Peter Parker into a goody two shoes Tony Stark, and by extension turned Amazing Spider-Man into this weird book where he went to outer space, under the sea, to foreign countries... pretty much everywhere but New York. I'm not a fan of Slott's run, because it feels like he took everything that I like about Spider-Man (the strong supporting cast, Parker's relatability, his connection with New York, and the day to day struggles of being poor in a big city) and threw them away... for a decade. Some people love Slott's run and the changes he made. I, and many others simply don't.

 

[Rangerx]

All of Morrison's X-Men run.

 

[Kazoku_]

Arisia and Hal in GL... yeah, that never happened guys

 

[Assisted Living Dracula]

Pretty much damn near everything. I stopped trying to keep track of continuity back in the late '90s when the X-Men were the most popular shit on the shelves. Now I just read stories or arcs as one-offs and consider them all separate or, at the very least, barely related. Shit changes so much that I can't keep track of any of it.

 

[It’s Time To Go]

I think so. I remember the storyline in the Essential Spiderman trades that collected like 500 issues. It's just like c'mon, you're having problems with a normal karate guy, a guy with a regular lasso, and your basic brute that's not actually superstrong.

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Aye that's fair. I always thought it was funny. Maybe showing what a dumb arse he is at first.

 

[IrishNinja]

All of Morrison's X-Men run.

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boo this man

 

[Yossarian]

To borrow a phrase from a friend, big superhero comics are just doing eternal donuts in the parking lot. I enjoy 'em, but you just gotta know that pretty much nothing will ever go anywhere.

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That's precisely why I can't get behind Doomsday Clock. Part of what made Watchmen different from typical superhero comics and the events actually impactful, was that it ended.

 

[Creamium]

If you want to read Spider-Man with a clean-ish continuity, start with Brand New Day (which Slott wrote the first story for). It picks up after the continuity bending events that led up to One More Day (which you shouldn't read, for any reason). If you start at Brand New Day, you will be in a great place to understand the modern Spider-Man's continuity as most of it was re-written at that point.

To answer your question about Slott's run on Spider-Man. I did not care for his handling of the supporting characters in the comic book (some of them are essentially forgotten, or completely altered just to fit the hackneyed needs of his plots), as well as the absurdity of many of the arcs that he pushed through after a couple of years of writing the book. I won't spoil anything for you, but the quick breakdown is as such for me: Superior Spider-Man was hard for me to read, as it lasted way too long it caused way too much damage to the people that Peter Parker loves (also, it's just really bad b-movie sci-fi, the kind of stuff that gets made fun of on Mystery Science Theater 3000). Spider-Verse was a convoluted mess that introduced about a billion Spider heroes from all over the multiverse for a story that required a ton of side comic reading and frankly ended with a whimper. Parker Industries basically turned Peter Parker into a goody two shoes Tony Stark, and by extension turned Amazing Spider-Man into this weird book where he went to outer space, under the sea, to foreign countries... pretty much everywhere but New York. I'm not a fan of Slott's run, because it feels like he took everything that I like about Spider-Man (the strong supporting cast, Parker's relatability, his connection with New York, and the day to day struggles of being poor in a big city) and threw them away... for a decade. Some people love Slott's run and the changes he made. I, and many others simply don't.

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Okay thanks. I understand because what you describe as the strengths of Spider-man I also found in Bendis' USM and loved that because of it. For instance my favorite issue in that run is #13, where he tells MJ he's Spider-Man. That's it, I think that entire issue is just them talking and it was done really well. You definitely didn't sell me on Slott's stories :p I guess I should read Miles Morales Spidey if I want more of that.

 

[Contramann]

That stupid god awful Captain/Miss Marvel story involving the pregnancy and the kid from the future who was the scumbag who got her pregnant.

 

[Pau]

Nah, I accept and relish in it all

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How can you accept a the continuity of character it you can't remember them? :(

 

[It’s Time To Go]

The way some of you guys go on about Brand New Day. Its not that bad.

 

[Harken Raiser]

It's all cannon to me. Not just the comics either: every tv show, cartoon, movie continuity, and videogame version of a character is cannon simultaneously. Adam West Batman and Ben Affleck Batman are the same Batman at different points in his superhero career as far as I am concerned.

 

[Parch]

Pretty much damn near everything. I stopped trying to keep track of continuity back in the late '90s when the X-Men were the most popular shit on the shelves. Now I just read stories or arcs as one-offs and consider them all separate or, at the very least, barely related. Shit changes so much that I can't keep track of any of it.

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That's pretty much my philosophy too. I can enjoy each story arc or miniseries as their own thing. Who gives a crap about continuity conflicts written years before.

I always though an obsession with continuity makes readers cynical and nit picky. I can't be like that and still enjoy it.

 

[Froyo Love]

Whenever you date something, you just fucked up.
You fucked up whenever I pick this comic in the future and no longe makes sense. You fucked up right now because when I read a comic from the 70s or 80s, it probably doesn't make sense.
You simply fucked up.
...
So I guess I rather have time not make sense than in-universe continuity not make sense.
Let's some some genius writer decides Captain America defrosted in 2002. That just fucks up the entire Nomad storyline from the 70s where he gave up being Captain America with Watergate being cited directly as a reason.

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Huh? Why aren't you mad at the writers of the Nomad storyline for dating the comic by tying it to Watergate and then-contemporary political events? What's the difference between that and saying Ben Grimm served in the Gulf War?

You can't escape comics being timestamped products of their era, just look for the cell phones.

 

[Parch]

The way some of you guys go on about Brand New Day. Its not that bad.

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Year after year after year after year. Endless arguments about Brand New Day is the reason I stopped visiting comic discussion boards. Dead horse beating is just a grease spot on the ground now, but they gotta do what they gotta do.

 

[Deleted member 12352]

If Straczynski or Meltzer wrote it, it didn't happen.

 

[2th]

Sins Past, the Spider-Man story that revealed that Gwen Stacy was seduced and impregnated by Norman Osborn. Which is somehow still canon, apparently.

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Between that and One More Day, Straczynski and Quesada have done more harm to Spider-man than any other writer and editor.

 

[Sblargh]

Huh? Why aren't you mad at the writers of the Nomad storyline for dating the comic by tying it to Watergate and then-contemporary political events? What's the difference between that and saying Ben Grimm served in the Gulf War?

You can't escape comics being timestamped products of their era, just look for the cell phones.

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Because one happened in real time and the other was a retcon that screws up continuity.
The Nomad storyline happened during Watergate because it was written during Watergate and it doesn't mess anything up. Everything that happened before, still happened.

Now, if Ben Grimm served in the Gulf War, that means, that he wasn't The Thing in the 60s, which means that those stories either didn't happened or that we are supposed to imagine them being retroactively modernized, which, in my opinion, robs the continuity of a lot of its charm.
The FF is a product of the cold war and the space age. Remove the cold war and the space age and they are stealing a spaceship to go into space... why? (so now you start a rabbit hole of rewriting a lot of things)
-
We basically have to choose because both the facts below are true:
- Peter Parker was a college student in his 20s during the Vietnam War
- Peter Parker was still in his 20s when the twin towers fell.

So we have to choose between two sets on crazy silly nonsense:
- One of those two things never happened because the chronology is impossible; but then we are basically erasing stories from the continuity or doing a headcanon where they are very different. Both those choices I find unsatisfactory
- Time is weird, comics are crazy la la land, everything happened: this is what I want. Peter Parker was, indeed, in college in the 70s, and in those 50 years since, he aged almost nothing and that's ok, that's fine. We sacrifice a concept of time, but we keep our stories in continuity.

Now, if a writer comes out and have him say: "When I became spider-man on 1998..." that ruins everything (EVERYTHING!) because he can no longe could have been already spider-man in the 70s. A sense of real world time is preserved at best for 5 years at the expense of everything else. It's a mistake, imo.

 

[Deleted member 2085]

Nah, I accept and relish in it all

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only sensible thing to do

 

[Slayven]

How can you accept a the continuity of character it you can't remember them? :(

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Stephanie , Misfit, and Helena fills so much of my heart

 

[ssnick37]

Ya I just forget about all that stuff and read runs and just try to keep runs separate in that sense.

 

[Aftermath]

Thats Why more people should read Judge Dredd from 2000ad Comics (Not ones published IDW tho) if you care about & bothers you when Timelines and stuff get dated or retconned.

Dredd comics have never rebooted, just one long contuation and he is about 70 in the books, cos he has aged as if in real time though it's set in the future, The best thing is you can jump on pretty much anywhere, but there are some good jump on points that can be reccomended

 

[The Vathlonian]

Anytime someone is talking to Superman, or Superman himself is talking, and says anything like "Martian Manhunter is the most powerful being on the planet", "Kal-el, your son is more powerful than you on your best day" or "He's stronger than Superman". Because its always some bull. Prove it, bitch! Let your feats and enemies you've conquered tell the tale.

 

[mrmoose]

Anytime someone is talking to Superman, or Superman himself is talking, and says anything like "Martian Manhunter is the most powerful being on the planet", "Kal-el, your son is more powerful than you on your best day" or "He's stronger than Superman". Because its always some bull. Prove it, bitch! Let your feats and enemies you've conquered tell the tale.

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I mean, they're not saying he's better than Superman, just stronger.

There were a few years where they kept repeating that for MM, and well, he basically has all the powers of Superman plus telepathy, can go intangible, and can change shapes. It's just that he doesn't normally take the shape of a white man so he was never going to be the frontrunner of the JL, he has an unnatural love for suspenders and oreos, and his weakness, while psychological, is pretty easy to produce compared to Kryptonite (same thing with Mon-el, with the exception of the Supergirl show he's basically got all the Kryptonian powers, but his weakness is just too common on Earth).

 

[AquaRegia]

So we have to choose between two sets on crazy silly nonsense:
- One of those two things never happened because the chronology is impossible; but then we are basically erasing stories from the continuity or doing a headcanon where they are very different. Both those choices I find unsatisfactory
- Time is weird, comics are crazy la la land, everything happened: this is what I want. Peter Parker was, indeed, in college in the 70s, and in those 50 years since, he aged almost nothing and that's ok, that's fine. We sacrifice a concept of time, but we keep our stories in continuity.

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Isn't there a page in the Ultimates run where option #2 is basically confirmed? I feel like Captain Marvel was upset about it.

Edit: Ultimates #5 (2015)

 

[Daitokuji]

Bone claws

 

[The Vathlonian]

I mean, they're not saying he's better than Superman, just stronger.

There were a few years where they kept repeating that for MM, and well, he basically has all the powers of Superman plus telepathy, can go intangible, and can change shapes. It's just that he doesn't normally take the shape of a white man so he was never going to be the frontrunner of the JL, he has an unnatural love for suspenders and oreos, and his weakness, while psychological, is pretty easy to produce compared to Kryptonite (same thing with Mon-el, with the exception of the Supergirl show he's basically got all the Kryptonian powers, but his weakness is just too common on Earth).

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Right but its the ultimate example of show don't tell. Don't tell me how great a character is with a list of powers, potentials, or whatever. Just show it. A list of powers doesn't speak to degree of power or actual skills. If MM were really more powerful than Superman, even though Doomsday put him down in like 2 seconds, then he is who people would count on in a pinch to save the day. But he's not. Silly writers are just trying to punch above their weight.

 

[Maximum Spider]

Bone claws

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This has to be it for me. That and giving Wolverine one of he most fleshed-out and over explained origins ever still rubs me the wrong way.

 

[Saifu]

This is partly what kills my enjoyment in continuing reading Marvel and DC.
I'm just gonna stick with the movies and tv shows sooner or later.

 

[Sadist]

I just shrug my shoulders really.

I got into comics in 2008 and read lots of classic stories, but being in my early twenties helped me realize that with characters and teams being handled by so many writers, I accepted everyone has their own vision of those characters. So I don't choose to ignore, I just laugh and think "Comicbooks you are so crazy".

Sure Norman x Gwen is gross and Mephisto wanting Pete and MJ's marriage is dumb, but it is just hirlarious when you think about the Spider Queen taking control of Peter, kissing her, forcing him to turn into a giant freaking spider and afterwards he bursts from the spider as a human and sees he went through all of that just for... organic webshooters. Priceless.

 

[BKatastrophe]

Quicksilver and SW now being Inhumans who are no relation to Magneto. (which will inevitably get re-re-retconned anyway.)

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I don't care what Marvel says: Magneto was on drugs the whole time during Morrison's run.

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That's literally what it was. He was taking MGH which was called Kick and ended up being Sublime who took over Beast's body and caused an apocalyptic wasteland.

The weird part is that Astonishing is held up to be some sort of amazing comic, but it's actually shockingly terrible most of the time.

I suppose it's because it's the establishing comic in the post Jean Grey era.

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I'll forever hold it up as my favorite comic of all time, because it's not shockingly terrible because it's not terrible.

I always seen the Inhumans as this eugenics utopia where people are genetically born into their destiny and fuck free will or even freedom in general in that society. The mists geve you wings, so now your job is flying and lol at thinking you have a choice.

So in my headcanon, Ms. Marvel is genetically engineered to be a PR stunt. I love the character, but that's it, her genetic role in inhuman society is to be an awersome superhero so regular people does not catch that their society is a caste-based eugenics monarchy that done away with the concept of pursue of liberty.

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Well yeah. Read Inhumans By Right of Birth, Young Inhumans, or Inhuman. Attilan was ruled by a Genetics Council, with the king as a figurehead. They decided bloodlines and who got terrigenesis and what their role was.

Post-Genetics Council, which was overthrown in Atlantis Rising, this was no longer the case. However it was still the cultural standard: people's roles were largely defined by their abilities, and they required heavy education before getting terrigenesis, so very few were able to get it. No longer was it based purely on genetics, however.

Post-Terrigen Bomb, even that standard was thrown out the window, since Inhuman activations could no longer be controlled as they once were.

So Kamala is just who she is.

Nah, I accept and relish in it all

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Yup. It all happened. Love it all. Continuity makes it so much fun.

 

[Soj]

Spider-Man since the end of Revelations.