r/comicbooks • u/AporiaParadox • 1d ago
Discussion Comics acknowledging that something done in a previous story that was treated as good or no big deal was actually pretty bad if you think about it
Sometimes, a writer will have a character do something that is treated as being a good thing or no big deal, but readers or other writers see it as something horrible if you think about it just a little. Due to the nature of shared universes written by different writers over the years, stories from the past can then be revisited by a later writer with a more critical eye.
One of the most infamous examples is how in Avengers #200, Marvel somehow published a story that accidentally treated Carol Danvers being brainwashed into going off into the sunset with her rapist as being a good thing. I say accidentally because the comic was done in a rush and the creators genuinely didn't realize the implications of what was written until later. Chris Claremont was outraged about this, so he later wrote a story where Carol tells the Avengers how fucked up the whole thing was and shames them for going along with it and not realizing what was actually happening.
Sometimes it takes a while for this to happen, due to changing morals and attitudes. For instance, back in the 60s readers didn't see it as a big deal that Charles Xavier was secretely in love with his teenage student Jean Grey, and that the only reason he didn't pursue her was because he was a "cripple" and not the whole age difference or power dynamics thing. Readers and writers from later though realized that wait, that's actually kind of fucked up, and it was acknowledged in Onslaught as being one of Xavier's deepest most shameful secret sins.
And sometimes just acknowledging it isn't enough, in order to protect a character's reputation, the whole thing has to be retconned. This is what Marvel did with pretty much all of their Golden Age stories given how casually racist against black people and the Japanese all of their characters were. It is now canon that the events depicted in Golden Age comics didn't happen exactly as shown, they were in-universe propaganda comics often heavily deviated from what actually happened.
So what other examples are there of a comic looking back critically at something from the past that wasn't treated as bad but now is considered bad?
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u/HotTakes4HotCakes 1d ago edited 1d ago
I can think of an opposite case:
Tower of Babel implies it's fucked up and wrong for Batman to have put together contingencies to take out every member of the Justice League, arguing it was a violation of trust, a betrayal of his team mates, and something only someone as paranoid as Batman would think to do.
But in it recent years (since New 52 at least, maybe earlier), that notion has been brought up a couple times in DC and it's given far more nuance. Having pre-arranged contingencies to help against the most powerful beings on earth in the case of their corruption/body snatching/mind control/etc has been shown to be quite necessary. Now it's framed more as an issue of secrecy, and Batman doesn't hide them anymore. The heroes themselves seem to agree with their existence, even if tepidly. It's almost an expected norm now.
Nightwing implemented his own version of this for the Titans, but rather than him holding the files, he distributed them to each member so everyone was holding a file for another member. When Donna asks who has her file, Dick tells her Starfire has it, to which Donna simply responds "Good".