Biggest fucking copouts of all time

[anarky]

Spawn's suit:

Remember the original premise for Spawn? A dude who was screwed over by the devil, and came back with a limited amount of power. Once he used it, he was the devil's slave? And he kept using pretty large amounts of power, because he wasn't fully aware of this?

Sound familiar?

Then, suddenly, it dawned on McFarlane (shortly before he lost all semblance of sanity) that the book was popular. He couldn't have it ending! Now, Spawn finds out his suit has an unlimited amount of power, and he can use it freely.

Way to fuck over the entire basis of the book there, cocksucker.

"That wasn't really Magneto":

So Grant Morrison has one of the single greatest runs writing an X-Men title. He spends almost the entire time setting up a mysterious character named Xorn, who turns out to be Magneto. Magneto is absolutely insane at this point, and he takes over New York and starts killing off humans. He kills Jean, and is in turn killed by Wolverine.

Only thing is... the minute Morrison left, the entire story was retconned. Sure, Manhattan was still taken over, and Jean is still dead. Only it wasn't Magneto. Worse than the retcon itself, Marvel still can't actually say what supposedly happened.

Why bother bringing in a guy like Morrison, whose track record of great, but extremely edgy, stories is well known, if you're only going to undo it all (literally) the first issue after he's gone?

I hear that people were disturbed by the death camps, claiming Magneto would never resort to Nazi tactics, being a Holocaust survivor himself. Dude, it's called irony. The guy's a fucking megalomaniac who has said he wants to kill all the people. What, one writer in the history of the character has the balls to show him trying to do it, and that's a big no-no?

Jean Grey and Onslaught:

Bishop came to the past from one of the billion or so futures in the Marvel Universe. Shortly before arriving, he found the ruins of the X-Mansion, and saw a staticy recording of Jean Grey. I don't remember the exact wording, but she says the X-Men are all dead, and "We never should've trusted--SKRIK--had no idea--SKRIK--you!! ARRRRRGH!" Then she's killed by a purple bolt of energy from offscreen.

After he sees the video, but before he comes back in time, it's established that not all the X-Men were killed. Remy "Gambit" LeBeau still lives. A shady mutant with a questionable past. A mutant whose powers involves bolts of purple energy.

So, Bishop confronts Gambit in the past, and the big question is set up. There's no question the murderer was intended to be Gambit. But now, we're wondering: will he go through with it? Has he even intended to do it prior to Bishop's arrival? Will Bishop's presence change his mind (or prevent him from deciding to kill them later)?

But then the creative teams went bye-bye. Now, this ridiculously convoluted story about how Magneto's mind survived in Xavier and created the Onslaught persona shows up. We're supposed to believe that several minutes of monologuing about the effects of Xavier shutting down Magneto's mind fit into the second or two of static in the recording we saw in Bishop's future. Oh, and the X-Men aren't dead. Jean's just been misled. Oh, and she doesn't get killed by the seemingly fatal blast, either.

That insult to my intelligence, coming on the heels of Age of Apocalypse and the Spider-Clone fiasco, made me stop reading comics altogether for several years.

[Diabolical]

I thought the whole Bishop/Gambit was really going to end up all sorts of awesome too. Then came Age of Apoopalypse which was when I stopped collecting X-Men until Astonishing came along.

What about Civil War, which was supposed to drastically change everything...forever! Is there even anything about the whole registration of the heroes going on anymore?
Now we just have nonsense like a dead Captain America, The Punisher sucking in the M.U. again and The Initiative nonsense.

[Eternal Padawan]

Tony Stark has been Kang's pawn for DECADES

Right before Hero's Reborn, most of the Avengers titles were sucking it pretty hard, so they had this huge crossover/murder mystery where a bunch of Heroes and supporting characters were killed. It turns out the killer was Tony himself who had succumbed to implanted hypnotic suggestions by Kang from basically their first battle with the time traveling Despot. In the climax of the storya rc, Tony fought back and disrupted Kang's evil scheme at the cost of his own life, and was replaced with I SHIT YOU NOT a time traveling younger version of himself from an alternate timeline. This lasted about six issues or so, until all the titles went back to #1 with Hero's Reborn. Then when they all returned a year later, Tony was plain old Tony again with no mention of the teen version or his murderous rampage. What the fuck?!?

[jjreason]

Ummm... Peter and MJ had a baby at one point, does that count?

[Eternal Padawan]

Ummm... Peter and MJ had a baby at one point, does that count?

Did they? I know a couple of alternate realities have spawned Spider-Babies. That's what the Amazing Spider-Girl comic is. But I didn't know the 616 Peter and MJ ever had a baby. I think she was pregnant after the whole Clone Fiasco, and when Norman Osborn returned from the grave he did something that caused her to have a miscarriage and thats as close as they've come.

BTW, Gwen Stacy having Osborn's babies is probably the dumbest retconned history EVER. The only way to top that is to reveal Steve Rogers was secretly a Nazi double agent this whole time.

[anarky]

The best retcon ever:

Simply ignoring the fact Frank Castle had been an undead avenging angel for a few years.

[Eternal Padawan]

See, I totally missed out on all this garbage from the mid and late 90's. Marvel must've been a real sewer back then. Bob Harras really fucked the company into the ground. What is that douche doing nowadays?

You know what would be crazy? Bring back Shooter for exactly ONE YEAR as Editor In Chief and see what kind of editorial shenanigans he could cause. Then either reinstate Quesada or bring in someone new.

[jjreason]

They really did, EP, within a year before the relaunch and renumbering. I'll try to find an issue number or something.

EDITED: Here's some info on MJ from another Spidey database. There's a blurb about the missing baby.

http://www.spiderfan.org/characters/mary_jane.html

[Eternal Padawan]

I read about "miscarriage" in quotes and an alleged abduction by Norman, but nothing definitely saying they had a baby. I prefer to think that they actually had a miscarriage, rather than a mysterious Spider-Baby living somewhere being raised by Osborn. See, the Richards managed to have two children and still have a viable comic series, why does everyone think that Spider-Man couldn't be a spider-daddy? The guy's been married twenty years! Seal the deal already, Petey!! I think it's part of his story from child to man that he get to have a kid.

[jjreason]

She actually delivered though, that's the rub. I guess it could have been stillborn, but I don't remember getting that from reading the book - just the baby getting wheeled off through the hospital doors and never being heard from again.

[vynsane]

norman had the real baby replaced with a stillborn to make them believe that the child was dead. hasn't been revisited since.

in the MC2U may parker is the same child, but norman didn't abduct her.

[jjreason]

Do you have the title/issue# handy, Vyn? I'd like to go back and read that again, now that we're on the topic.

[Eternal Padawan]

Do you have the title/issue# handy, Vyn? I'd like to go back and read that again, now that we're on the topic.

Yeah, me too.

Oh wait. I don't own any of that trash from the late 90's.

But issue #s would be useful so I can pick up some back issues at SDCC next month.

[Diabolical]

The best retcon ever:

Simply ignoring the fact Frank Castle had been an undead avenging angel for a few years.

Not totally ignored. In the first Ennis issue, he addresses it:

I caught a glimpse of heaven once.
The Angels showed me.
The idea was I'd kill for them.
Clean up their mistakes on Earth.
Eventually redeem myself.
Tried it.
Didn't like it.
Told them where to stick it.

It goes on for a little longer, but that was the gist of it.

[Eternal Padawan]

I had a chance to buy the complete run of Ennis' MK Punisher series at SDCC last year, and I passed because it was late at the end of the last day and I already spent too much. But the guy wanted $50 for the whole kaboodle. I regret snagging it.