10 Worst Retcons in DC History

DC Comics created the superhero as we know it, and was the biggest superhero publisher for years. However, when they decided to reboot their superhero universe, they did it in the most complicated possible way. Instead of saying the Golden Age adventures happened in the past, they created an entirely new Earth, and so was born the history of DC’s retcons. “Retcon” refers to “retroactive continuity”, meaning changes to the past made in the present to make stories work. Over the years, DC has used large-scale retcons way more than Marvel has, changing their entire history multiple times and having to remake their pasts. In some ways, many of the coolest parts of DC come from retcons, and there are many fans out there who like the way DC uses retcons.

However, even for those of us who enjoy DC’s tendency to completely reboot everything, there are some retcons that we hate unconditionally. While DC has definitely done some great retcons, they’ve also created some legitimately terrible ones as well. These ten DC retcons are the worst of the bunch, their changes actively damaging the DC Multiverse.

10) Sue Dibney’s Assault in Identity Crisis

DC has published some of the best events ever, but there’s one that has aged terribly since it came out. I’m speaking of Identity Crisis, by Brad Meltzer and Rags Morales. This story was a murder mystery that began with the death of Elongated Man’s wife Sue Dibney. As the heroes started looking for clues, a group of Justice Leaguers — Elongated Man, Black Canary, Zatanna, Green Arrow, and Hawkman — know to go after Doctor Light. Why? Because years ago, he snuck onto the Justice League satellite and sexually assaulted her. Identity Crisis actually has some cool stuff going for it — I will stand by the idea of the Justice League mindwipes — but this retcon has caused all of the good stuff in the story to get thrown away. It was a bad idea; while making the DC Universe darker has been pretty good over the years, this wasn’t the way it should have been taken.

9) Everything About Post-Crisis Krypton

Post-Crisis DC made the publisher competitive with Marvel in a way it hadn’t been in years. DC changed so much of their past in the reboot, with some heroes getting more changes than others. Superman was the recipient of some of the biggest changes, and Krypton was the place where some of the worst ones were. Krypton was changed into a cold, science based society, one where children were created in “birthing matrices” and love was verboten. Jor-El and Lara did actually love each other, but they were outliers. This Krypton was a terrible place, and I think DC did that on purpose, because they were trying to make Superman into a more all-American hero than he was before; pre-Crisis Superman was quite proud of his Kryptonian heritage and writer/artist John Byrne wanted to do without out. Also, for a long time, Superman was actually the only Kryptonian that survived the planet’s destruction, which meant that we were robbed of many of classic Superman characters. Post-Crisis Superman has a lot of problems, but Krypton was the biggest one.

8) Wonder Woman In World War II

So originally, Wonder Woman fought alongside the Justice Society of America in World War II. All of this was changed when the heroes of the Justice Society were relegated to Earth-Two. Now, there were two different versions of Wonder Woman, one who fought in WWII and one who didn’t. Post-Crisis, the original Wonder Woman would be taken out of continuity, so no Wonder Woman ever fought in WWII. However, for some reason over the years, DC has tried to re-establish that Wonder Woman fought in WWII. The first time was in the late ’90s, when it was revealed that Diana’s mother Hippolyta acted as Wonder Woman in the ’40s and fought alongside the Justice Society. In recent years, DC has tried to establish that Diana was much older than we thought and that she fought in WWII, possibly because of the movies. Regardless of the why, this is a bad retcon. There’s no reason to put Wonder Woman that far back on the timeline, and every time DC tries it, they basically undo it themselves at some point because it never makes any sense.

7) New 52 Superboy

The New 52 was a mess. DC tried to recreate the success of Crisis on Infinite Earths by rebooting the universe and making everything more modern. You’re going to find a decent amount of New 52 stuff on this list, and the first retcon misstep is the New 52 Superboy. So, in the post-Crisis DCU, Superboy was a clone of Superman created by Cadmus just in case Superman was killed, made with a combination of Superman and Lex Luthor’s DNA. It was a cool idea, creating one of the coolest young heroes in DC history. The New 52 did something similar, creating a Superman clone, but instead of Cadmus, it was NOWHERE that did it, and he wasn’t the cool ’90s teen, but an edgy quasi-bad guy created by the government to do their bidding. When that wasn’t successful, they revealed a new version of Superboy that was from another Earth and was actually the son of Superman. It just got ridiculously complicated, and DC swept the whole thing under the rug because it was so terrible.

6) Replacing “Batman: Year One” With “Zero Year”

“Year One”, by Frank Miller and David Mazzucchelli, is widely considered one of the greatest Batman stories of all time. It was the new origin of Batman for the post-Crisis DCU, and it was perfect, mixing crime noir with superheroes to create something special. The New 52 came along and changed a lot of stuff, but kept other things. No one would have minded if DC kept “Year One” as Batman’s origin, but that wasn’t the way they went. Instead, Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo gave readers “Zero Year”, a story that told about the beginning of Batman in the New 52. Now, I want to be clear — “Zero Year” isn’t a bad story. It’s actually a really good story. However, it’s not as good as “Year One”. “Year One” isn’t just one of the best Batman stories ever, it’s one of the best superhero origin stories ever, and “Zero Year” wasn’t really needed.

5) The Three Jokers

Batman: Three Jokers, by Geoff Johns and Jason Fabok, is a gorgeous looking comic with a story that can best be described as pointless, and can be at worst described as trash. So, the story explained the differences in the Joker over the years by establishing that there were three of them, and it just doesn’t work at all as a concept. Fans never really knew if it was truly canon, but the recent “Joker: Year One” talked about the central idea behind it, so it was retconned into canon. It’s such a bad idea that makes Batman look terrible — somehow a detective of Batman’s stature couldn’t tell that he was fighting three different people over the years. There’s just so much wrong with this idea and we all would have been better off it had been ignored.

4) Zero Hour‘s Hawkman Fix

In the Golden Age, Hawkman was the reincarnation of Prince Khufu in the modern day. In the Silver Age, the new Hawkman was from the planet Thanagar. Crisis on Infinite Earths merged the two histories of the character, but that was a huge problem, especially when DC created a new Hawkman origin in Hawkworld. Everyone tried to ignore it, but it was far from the only problem left over from Crisis. So, Zero Hour was made, a story meant to fix the problems left over from Crisis. In the story, the various versions of Hawkman were merged together into one, but no one ever really explained how it worked. Hawkman became altogether too confusing and fans abandoned the character. DC quietly packed Hawkman for almost a decade, before Geoff Johns came in to fix it all. Years later, Robert Venditti would perfect Hawkman, and Hawkman is a better character than ever. Hawkman fans mostly just pretend that the Zero Hour merger never actually happened.

3) The New 52’s Treatment of Wally West

Wally West was the best Flash, but former DC head honcho Dan DiDio didn’t really like Wally. So, first, Barry Allen was brought back to life. Then, the New 52 happened and Wally West was completely taken out of continuity. Now, there was no reason for this to happen. Wally could have been rebooted to a teen, becoming the Kid Flash again. However, DiDio didn’t want any kind of Wally West around and fans were outraged. They demanded Wally back in some form, and DC sort of listened to them, mostly focusing on the “some form” part of the request. They introduced Wallace West, a black version of the character that was a completely different Wally West, and fans were still unhappy with the whole thing. Eventually, DC brought Wally West back as the Flash, and fans have started to like Wallace, showing that their original disdain for the character had nothing to do with bigotry, but everything to do with not getting the character they wanted.

2) New 52 Amazons

Wonder Woman was changed from the ground up in the New 52 and the biggest change was to the Amazons. It was established that the Amazons were populated from the Well of Souls in the post-Crisis DCU; women that were killed by men were resurrected on the island, their souls put into perfect bodies. However, the New 52 took this away. Instead, it made the Amazons into what amounts to rape pirates. They would attack boats seduce or force the crew to have sex with them, and then kill them all. It made the Amazons into monsters in a way they never were before. On top of that, Wonder Woman’s origin was changed; Hippolyta had an affair with Zeus and Diana was the result. The New 52 basically broke the Amazons as a concept and DC has backpedaled hard on this retcon, changing it almost immediately after the New 52 ended before completely blasting it away in recent years so there was no question of whether it happened or not.

1) The New 52 Superman Armor

Superman’s costume is the most iconic costume in superhero media. There’s just something about it; the bold primary colors, the S-symbol crest, the lack of the mask, the flowing cape. It’s a gorgeous design that is truly timeless. It also has a cool origin story behind it, as it was created by Ma Kent for her son to fight evil in. There’s love attached to it that fits the character perfectly. And then the New 52 happened. Superman’s costume was changed into armor for some reason. An invulnerable hero was given armor. Let that sink in. Now, yes, it was made into part of his Kryptonian heritage and all that, but it was still a really bad retcon that took away an important part of Superman’s costume — the love.

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