10. Sentry – The Sentry was invented to be the forgotten Superman of the Marvel Universe. With insane power levels and great potential as the great hero no one remembered due to his evil Void side, he was unfortunately misused by everyone but Dan Jurgens (original series) and Jeff Parker (Age of the Sentry). Bendis did most of the writing on Sentry and rarely seemed to have much of a consistent plan, at least until Dark Avengers, when the character changed drastically. Still, the original concept and retcon were great…if only someone like Parker or a Grant Morrison or Jonathan Hickman had gotten a high profile job with him.
9. Spoiler Returns – Spoiler, Stephanie Brown, was originally killed as part of Gang War in a terrible, character destroying plan by Leslie Thompson. The retcon reveal that Stephanie was alive and Leslie not a complete jerk not only got rid of an ugly continuity mark, but led to the great Brian Miller new Batgirl title.
8. Time Trapper’s Multiple Identities – Time Trapper, the Legion of Superheroes villain, is a background manipulator who the Legion must constantly uncover the plot and identity of to defeat. Because of Legion’s insane continuity and that he’s a time based villain, Time Trapper is constantly retconed into different characters as the story demands, which is quite the cool gimmick.
7. Spider-Man the Spider-god Avatar – Apparently Peter Parker was destined to become Spider-Man, be bitten by a Spider, as JMS wrote the Other, showing a Spider-god choosing Spidey as his avatar. A lot of people hated this and still complain, but what I like about it is that it wasn’t intrusive. Future writers could embrace it, opening up new story opportunities, or ignore it, since it didn’t change any of what actually happened. That’s a good retcon.
6. Hawkman’s Many Backstories – I don’t even know where to begin with this one, as Hawkman had at least four different distinct identities and stories attributed to his past. Geoff Johns came along and… if not simplified… retconed them together into something that finally let the character move forward.
5. Brainiac the Green Alien – Since Crisis, Brainiac has been a machine that catalogues the universe, then destroys what it has catalogued. Well, recently, Geoff Johns told us we never saw the real Brainiac, who was now back to being a Coluan and the ancestor of Brainiac 5. This added an element to the story again, without taking away from the deadly robot minions of yesteryear.
4. Weapon X = Weapon 10 – Grant Morrison decided during his epic New X-Men run that the X in Weapon X was really the roman numeral for 10 and Wolverine was the 10th weapon assassin made, of which Captain America was first, and the awesome-tastic Fantomex came after.
3. Parallax is a Space Bug – Hal Jordan is not a character I particularly love, but he had enough personality and backstory that him becoming Parallax was completely absurd. The Space Bug explanation was, at first, seemingly silly, but supplied a whole extra dimension to the Lantern mythos and ended up leading to both the emotional spectrum and Green Lantern being one of the top selling books in comics.
2. Crisis on Infinite Earths – Also known as the time DC retconed everything in their history and started fresh. Hey, comic fans, nothing before this matters. Let’s see what’s next! Damn, that took gumption.
1. Bucky is Not Dead – The only two deaths that were inviolate for my whole childhood in Marvel were Uncle Ben and Bucky. Everyone else could and usually did come back. So, when Bucky came back, I didn’t view it with trepidation, I hated it. I was also dead wrong. Ed Brubaker turned Bucky into one of the best new characters (and he is for all intents and purposes a new character) of the past 30-years and made Bucky a star capable of heading a top selling comic that’s not only fantastic, not only got media coverage, but also won numerous awards due to it’s outstanding quality.
