Retconn's good ,bad, or they a necessary evil

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Blazing Eagle

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#1  Edited By Blazing Eagle

This is an excerpt from my blog page. I thought it might generate discussion.

Dear Comic Fans,

As we venture further in to this new century and Marvel having over 40 years of continuity in place and DC having over 60 years of continuity are retconn's (retroactive continuity) a good thing or bad thing or are they a necessary Evil?

Is it the Retconn itself we may find annoying/harmful to continuity or just the means in how the retconn was accomplish in the first place?

Some worthing examples of retconn some readers have stated were DC's "Zero Hour:Crisis in time" "Infinite Crisis" and Marvel Comic's "The return of Reed Richards"

Some negative examples of retconn some readers have complained include "Spiderman:Clone Saga" and "Spiderman: ONE MORE DAY"

Do retconn's hurt continuity or do they bring a benefit to the story and characters we love for many decades.

Furthermore are retconn's done to attract newer and younger readers while disregarding current long term older readers? Like the old say goes "Out with the old and in with the New"

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Cosmic Sentinel

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#2  Edited By Cosmic Sentinel

I don't think a new reader has ever come to a book because of a retcon, at least not directly. No one has ever said, "Oh, they did away with twenty years of back story, I think I'll read it now."

Sometimes it's needed as things get cluttered and new stories start contradicting old ones. Crisis on Infinite Earths and the more subtle recent Green Lantern retcons are good examples of retcons that worked. They did what they needed and in both cases told good stories. One More Day gets negative criticism (at least from me) because it was a terrible story, Spidey was out of character and the things it aimed to fix (his marriage mainly) weren't broken.

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zero edge

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#3  Edited By zero edge

Sometimes it's necessary, maybe to go back and fix a mistake a previous writer made, or just to modernize it a bit more. There have been good retcons, like Batman's Year One stuff, Superman retconned a lot of stupid stuff that changed his birth out of his history some years ago. And just as CS said, Spidey's retcon were at stuff that weren't broken, they were just to please the chief editor, that includes the retcons in the Clone Saga.