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Post by foxley on Jan 25, 2016 19:29:12 GMT -5
I don't read Spider-man but I thought the "deal" was a reset that no one remembers. The deal was that Mephisto would save his Aunt May from dying if they gave up their marriage. Which is what happened. Yes no one remembers but that was only part of the deal. Remember kids. Divorce is wrong, but making a deal with Satan is perfectly fine.
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Confessor
CCF Mod Squad
Not Bucky O'Hare!
Posts: 10,049
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Post by Confessor on Jan 25, 2016 19:31:53 GMT -5
Peter Parker making a deal with the devil so that he was never married to Mary Jane. Wait...what? It still wasn't retconned? That's right...I'm still waiting on that. Well, it was complicated, but I think that has sort-of been, if not retconned exactly, sort-of rewritten/expanded. The twist is that some element of time was changed so that the marriage didn't happen, which elimated the timeline leading to the deal, so it had never happened. But the elimination of the timeline that featured a married Peter Parker is what cooper (and I) would like to see retconned. I know that the deal never actually happened now, as per standard time travel tropes, but we want our old timeline back, dammit!
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Post by Nowhere Man on Jan 25, 2016 19:42:03 GMT -5
I have a theory that the original Marvel Universe ACTUALLY ended at the conclusion of the original Infinity Gauntlet story. Thanos didn't kill half the universe, and it wasn't all restored, rather he wiped out the original reality and replaced it with a similar one but with many hidden flaws. This basically explains Marvel's craptastic output (with a few exceptions) circa 1992-1997.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 25, 2016 21:30:30 GMT -5
Well, it was complicated, but I think that has sort-of been, if not retconned exactly, sort-of rewritten/expanded. The twist is that some element of time was changed so that the marriage didn't happen, which elimated the timeline leading to the deal, so it had never happened. But the elimination of the timeline that featured a married Peter Parker is what cooper (and I) would like to see retconned. I know that the deal never actually happened now, as per standard time travel tropes, but we want our old timeline back, dammit! EXACTLY. THIS.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 25, 2016 23:47:26 GMT -5
I have a theory that the original Marvel Universe ACTUALLY ended at the conclusion of the original Infinity Gauntlet story. Thanos didn't kill half the universe, and it wasn't all restored, rather he wiped out the original reality and replaced it with a similar one but with many hidden flaws. This basically explains Marvel's craptastic output (with a few exceptions) circa 1992-1997. Except the original Marvel Universe ended in an issue of Dr. Strange in about 1974 when Doc failed to save it and everything except he and Eternity was destroyed. Doc convinced Eternity to recreate an exact duplicate of it all, but he and Eternity remembered what had come before. Of course Marv Wolfman tried to retcon that all out after he drove Englehart off the book with a Dallas it's all a dream redux, which really just points out the fact that trying to fit every story published by a company into a single continuous sandbox and have it all work is a fool's errand, and a lot of people waste a lot of energy and story pages trying to "fix" things in other people's stories they don't like instead of just telling a good story themselves. -M
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Post by realjla on Jan 26, 2016 0:14:12 GMT -5
I have a theory that the original Marvel Universe ACTUALLY ended at the conclusion of the original Infinity Gauntlet story. Thanos didn't kill half the universe, and it wasn't all restored, rather he wiped out the original reality and replaced it with a similar one but with many hidden flaws. This basically explains Marvel's craptastic output (with a few exceptions) circa 1992-1997. Except the original Marvel Universe ended in an issue of Dr. Strange in about 1974 when Doc failed to save it and everything except he and Eternity was destroyed. Doc convinced Eternity to recreate an exact duplicate of it all, but he and Eternity remembered what had come before. Of course Marv Wolfman tried to retcon that all out after he drove Englehart off the book with a Dallas it's all a dream redux, which really just points out the fact that trying to fit every story published by a company into a single continuous sandbox and have it all work is a fool's errand, and a lot of people waste a lot of energy and story pages trying to "fix" things in other people's stories they don't like instead of just telling a good story themselves. -M One of the last issues of the original WHAT IF revisited that Strange and Eternity scenario. It was a sequel to their 'Avengers vs Korvac' issue, rather than a take on the story you mentioned, but it still came down to Eternity denying Strange's request to restore everything. Phoenix and Silver Surfer(like Strange, cast off by Korvac) took the opportunity to travel to other realities, but Strange elected to stay in the 'voided' universe, in a permanent trance.
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Post by tingramretro on Jan 26, 2016 2:10:22 GMT -5
I have a theory that the original Marvel Universe ACTUALLY ended at the conclusion of the original Infinity Gauntlet story. Thanos didn't kill half the universe, and it wasn't all restored, rather he wiped out the original reality and replaced it with a similar one but with many hidden flaws. This basically explains Marvel's craptastic output (with a few exceptions) circa 1992-1997. Nah, Fred Hembeck destroyed the Marvel Universe in 1989. It even said so on the cover.
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Post by Nowhere Man on Jan 26, 2016 6:27:55 GMT -5
My theory is based only in my personal desires, I must admit. The problem I have with the Steve Englehart Dr. Strange story is that Eternity wasn't affected by the "destruction of the universe" so was it ever what it seemed?
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Post by dupersuper on Jan 26, 2016 7:38:45 GMT -5
Green Lantern (Hal) came back and the reset button was hit. They just blamed a yellow fear monster. Don't try this in real life. Trust me, it does not work.
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Post by dupersuper on Jan 26, 2016 7:39:21 GMT -5
The yellow fear monster was more believable than him just murdering the other Green Lanterns because of he had a bad day. Once DC committed to writing that story, they should have stuck with it. They were moving on from Hal to another version Of GL on earth. It's kind of a cheat when they want a Do over. It was quite a bad day...
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Post by Deleted on Jan 26, 2016 7:52:38 GMT -5
Green Lantern (Hal) came back and the reset button was hit. They just blamed a yellow fear monster. Don't try this in real life. Trust me, it does not work. Well of course a yellow fear monster is so much more believable than someone having a psychotic break after witnessing the destruction of an entire city and everyone he cares for, because trauma never causes any kind of personality damage on people but yellow fear monsters show up all the time. Don't get me wrong, GL 48-50 was a poorly conceived and executed story written in a ham-fisted fashion, but that kind of emotional trauma is still more believable than a yellow fear monster being at the root of it all. But again that's what you get when the impetus for your story is to fix what you don't like about someone else's story instead of just telling a good story yourself. -M
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Post by Icctrombone on Feb 3, 2016 12:38:38 GMT -5
The reveal that Alicia was a Skrull in FF #358 retconned Johnny's back stabbing marriage In #300. I enjoyed the Lyja/ Johnny conflict afterwards.
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Post by dupersuper on Feb 3, 2016 20:47:52 GMT -5
The reveal that Alicia was a Skull in FF #358 retconned Johnny's back stabbing marriage In #300. I enjoyed the Lyja/ Johnny conflict afterwards.
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Post by Icctrombone on Feb 3, 2016 21:54:12 GMT -5
The reveal that Alicia was a Skull in FF #358 retconned Johnny's back stabbing marriage In #300. I enjoyed the Lyja/ Johnny conflict afterwards. Fixed it, duper.
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Post by lordyam on Oct 5, 2020 18:26:42 GMT -5
Don't try this in real life. Trust me, it does not work. Well of course a yellow fear monster is so much more believable than someone having a psychotic break after witnessing the destruction of an entire city and everyone he cares for, because trauma never causes any kind of personality damage on people but yellow fear monsters show up all the time. Don't get me wrong, GL 48-50 was a poorly conceived and executed story written in a ham-fisted fashion, but that kind of emotional trauma is still more believable than a yellow fear monster being at the root of it all. But again that's what you get when the impetus for your story is to fix what you don't like about someone else's story instead of just telling a good story yourself. -M Sorry to Necro: Personally I always saw it as Hal being in a traumatized state of mind and while he was in said state Parallax subtly whispered in his mind at JUST the right moments to cause his . Dresden Files does something similar in that when Harry's in the pit of despair a fallen angel whispers "and it was all your fault Harry". Harry still makes his bad decisions but the whispering in a suggestible state gives the other side the chance to step in slightly. Hell TvTropes actually sums it up brilliantly. This example is more of an example of “Nightmare Fuel In Hindsight”, if there’s such a thing. At the time when Emerald Twilight was written, “Parallax as a giant yellow space bug cosmic entity” hadn’t been conceptualized yet. He would be introduced later in the mythos as a living, walking retcon to explain why Hal was acting the way he was after Coast City got destroyed and why Green Lanterns were weak to the color yellow. Now, if you read all the stories about Parallax being revealed as the true mastermind behind “Emerald Twilight”, then go back and read “Emerald Twilight” a second time, it gets much creepier and you start to notice some odds things about Hal, his behavior and the behavior of his constructs. By interpreting it differently, you could easily see it as Parallax deliberately manipulating Hal by psychologically tormenting him, by talking to him in the form of his own constructs and taking advantage of his doubts, guilt and insecurities to mold him into an ideal puppet host. It gets even worse with the Narrator. At times, the Narrator almost sounds like he’s whispering to Jordan to slowly push him over the edge...and on top of that, his speech boxes are YELLOW. Of course, this was obviously not intentional, because as we’ve said, Parallax hadn’t been fully conceptualized yet. Still, knowing what we know today,...How much of what happened in “Emerald Twilight” was Hal deliberately torturing and hurting himself out of guilt and self-blame and how much of it was Parallax slowly driving him insane and torturing him by manifesting itself via Hal’s energy constructs? We’ll never really know for sure. But one thing’s for certain: when you go back and read it a second time, you can practically “see” Parallax breaking Jordan and driving him to the edge of madness...and taking immense pleasure while doing it too.
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