ISC pre-arming

djdood · Post by **djdood** » Wed Jul 16, 2008 4:18 am

Mike -

On further thought, you are absolutely correct.

I think you're right about comics being the original place for the term too (how may times have Batman and Spiderman's origins been tweaked, era-shifted, etc?)

junior · Post by **junior** » Wed Jul 16, 2008 5:02 pm

Surprisingly enough, Spider-man's origins haven't been ret-conned. There was an attempt at one point, but fans so strongly rejected it that it was ignored. Spider-man ret-cons have been limited to more recent things, such as bringing back Norman Osborn from the dead, or having Peter Parker cut a deal with one of Marvel's stand-ins for the devil to make it so that Peter Parker and Mary Jane were never married. The core of Batman's origins have remained the same, with the interval of what he did between the death of his parents and when he finally adopted the cape and cowl having changed whenever a writer feels like it.

Superman has had his origin change on two (possibly three now) different occasions. First was the well-known "baby sent from Krypton to Earth" story that we're all familiar with. Apparently during the '80s, John Byrne (who is particularly notorious when it comes to ret-conning) changed this to "Superman was born from a birthing matrix sent to Earth". Then a later story changed things back to the "baby sent from Krypton to Earth" background. DC's recent "Infinite Crisis" event may have changed Superman's background yet again...

mjwest · Post by **mjwest** » Wed Jul 16, 2008 6:50 pm

This is ridiculously way off-topic. So I will stop it ...

After one more post ...

junior wrote:The core of Batman's origins have remained the same, with the interval of what he did between the death of his parents and when he finally adopted the cape and cowl having changed whenever a writer feels like it.

The big thing about Batman's origins that keeps getting changed is the guy who killed his parents (forget his name; Joe Chill?). Who he is and what happened to him is different in each retelling.

junior wrote:Superman has had his origin change on two (possibly three now) different occasions.

Superman's origins and early history (along with all those around him) are constant fodder for retcons. It is so bad that I bet any two editors would give you different stories on what the current version is. (I have no idea what the current story is because I haven't actively read comics in years.)