Fanon Discontinuity/Comic Books



"It's always a Doombot."

Discontinuity happens a lot in comic books, due to the many different writers that end up making stories for them, but there are just certain things that don't gel with their audiences to be considered canon.

Note 1: If you're going to list the events from a specific run on a certain comic, please list the events that you are ignoring, not the actual person writing for it, which would being ignoring real life events.

Note 2: Do not add examples personal examples. Examples should only be of groups of fandom.

DC Comics

 * Many fans rejected the Character Derailment of Dr. Leslie Thompkins, ultra-pacifist doctor and well-loved member of Batman's supporting cast, and decided that she absolutely did not allow a teenage girl to die an agonizing death in order to teach Bruce some sort of lesson about the dangers of vigilantism. It was later retconned out of existence with the revelation that Stephanie Brown didn't actually die. Leslie just lied about it and smuggled her out of the country.
 * Not sure if that really qualifies as an author's saving throw, as it's still pretty far removed from how the character has behaved at any point in time prior to that story arc.
 * One of the writers of the above events snapped at fans and told them that "You're going to buy the comics anyway!" Probably true, but it increased their disgust.
 * Go talk to many diehard fans of DC's Young Justice and they'll tell you that Robin, Superboy and Wonder Girl's personalities weren't completely rewritten, and Bart Allen is still Impulse, and the Secret is still... the Secret. And Slobo was never put into any kind of And I Must Scream situation.
 * Many Hellblazer fans--including, it's becomingly increasingly clear, several of its writers--reject much of Brian Azzarello's run. Constantine was not removed completely from his usual setting simply because Azzarello couldn't be bothered to research that setting. There were no story arcs largely revolving around Prison Rape, no underground redneck pornography rings, and no sadomasochistic gay revenge fantasies designed simply to shock. And that bit with the dog during Azzarello's run didn't happen, either.
 * As far as some fans are concerned, Jason Todd is STILL DEAD. End of story.
 * For others, Jason Todd is alive and well and in no way threatened with the impending Moral Event Horizon of shooting his "replacement".
 * Due to DC writers' efforts to make the Joker "legally" sane via Grant Morrison, the Batman Confidential series, and Joker: Devil's Advocate, it's easy for fans to assume that any previous origin stories told about the Joker through his own point of view (such as in The Killing Joke) are lies, because he tells the story different every time.
 * While not officially retconned, the old Legends of the Dark Knight clashes horribly enough with the Batman Confidential series to be considered Elseworlds.
 * Archie Goodwin, who was editor of Legends of the Dark Knight for a while, liked to interpret the title of the series literally; if it happened early in Batman's career but had technology that came out last week, it was because it was an interpretation of something that did happen. Other times, LotDK depicted alternate futures; for many it was the ideal series, where they could write and publish stories that, if well-liked, were canon, and if everyone hated them it hadn't really happened so there were no worries. Some people just like to disregard everything that's happened in the Batman comics since Grant Morrison's "Batman & Son", or even earlier than that, since Infinite Crisis. The character derailment might not be apparent to newer readers (newer, in this case, including people who started reading even as far back as the 90s), but compared to some of the most iconic Batman stories of the past it's like none of the current characters have any resemblance to who they're supposed to be. Some readers hoped that after the constant bombardment of crossovers and crises going on at DC right now ends, they'd just reboot the entire DC Universe... and Be Careful What You Wish For.
 * A lot of Batman: The Animated Series fangirls who do not read the comics like to deny events from the Harley Quinn series and the official split-up of Harley and the Joker in Batman #663.
 * Most Green Arrow and Black Canary fans prefer to ignore the Wedding Special and the following Green Arrow/Black Canary monthly title for a variety of reasons:
 * Chief among these was the fact that the whole wedding plot was the result of Executive Meddling, as DC was desperate to win back the long-time readers who were leaving Green Arrow in droves. The problem was that the rekindling of the relationship was brought about in record time and many of the fans who were reading Green Arrow didn't like how abrupt the romance was. And even the fans who liked the idea of Ollie and Dinah getting back together hated the execution due to massive amounts of Character Derailment.
 * Birds of Prey fans consider the book an extended nightmare sequence for Black Canary in which she's been reduced to being Green Arrow's sidekick... AGAIN.
 * Of course both title characters were forced to play second-fiddle to Batman, who appeared as a special guest in most of the issues written by Judd Winick.
 * Green Arrow fans hated the book because Judd Winick - building upon Brad Meltzer's Archer's Quest story - took as canon the idea that Oliver Queen was a dead-beat dad who abandoned his son Connor at an early age. Ignoring the fact that this totally ignored the continuity put forth in Connor's original origin story, this story raised (and then ignored) numerous logical questions about how Connor's mother was able to track Ollie down to tell him about her pregnancy to ask for help yet never felt compelled to sue him for back child-support.
 * Connor Hawke, the second Green Arrow and Oliver Queen's son, was reduced to a shadow of himself, with every single unique aspect of his character (vegetarian, devout Buddhist) removed after a bout of Amnesia. He was last seen heading into Comics Limbo, after telling off his father and rejecting every single value he had.
 * Mia (Speedy II) left home to hook up with a costumed criminal called Dodger, to the protest of no one in the family.
 * And, of course, there was the fact that Roy Harper's arm was cut off and Lian was violently crushed to death in Cry for Justice, which was part of the restructuring of the Arrow Family after the GA/BC marriage failed so dismally.
 * Some fans of Amethyst, Princess of Gemworld INSIST that it was cancelled immediately after its original creators left. Any stories tying Amethyst in to Dr. Fate's Lords of Order or the Legion of Super-Heroes are just the work of crazy fanfic writers who like to cross over everything. What really happened was, Amethyst returned the youngest Princess Emerald to the Gemworld, sent Carnelian to a Gemworld jail, got over Topaz and let him and Lady Turquoise marry, and returned to Earth. And she was never involved in Crisis on Infinite Earths or anything else that had to do with the DC Universe, either.
 * Of course Any stories tying Amethyst in to Dr. Fate's Lords of Order or the Legion of Super-Heroes are just the work of crazy fanfic writers who like to cross over everything, but that doesn't mean they're not cannon.
 * The events in Teen Titans Go may or may not be in the same continuity as the show, depending on who you ask.
 * Fans typically ignore the confirmation that Terra is a Shippers often ignore Sara and Cyborg too.
 * Many, many fans of Batgirl III, Cassandra Cain, wish that her Face Heel Turn stint becomes retconned out of existence. Considering her massive Character Derailment was made by a writer that Did Not Do Any Research About The Character At All, that is understandable. This has partially retconned by saying she was under the influence of drugs, but things like "Why does being on drugs teach you Navajo?" still stick out.
 * Wow... a lot of these are about the Bat Family, aren't they? Here's one more: Selina "Catwoman" Kyle's daughter, Helena. Born during the One Year Later gap, the writers initially dropped hint after hint that Helena was Batman's kid (the biggest being her name: The Pre Crisis Huntress was Helena Wayne). Then, as little Helena was turned into the kidnap magnet all children in the DCU seem to become (a Wall Banger itself), we find out that Helena's father is Slam Bradley's newly-introduced son, Sam, Jr. The Bat-Fandom, by-and-large, rejects this reveal as the Editorially-mandated Ass Pull it was, and firmly believes that once little Helena is (inevitably) re-introduced (Selina gave her up for adoption for her own safety), Bruce Wayne will be revealed as her real father. Of course, little Helena may not exist in the post-Flashpoint DCU.
 * This is actually given further weight in the favor of the fans, in that prior to little Helena's birth, Bruce Wayne and Selina Kyle decided to have a night to themselves, without their masks, eventually leading to them taking their relationship to the next step. Selina and Sam had... not quite as much to suggest he was the father by comparison.
 * Here's another Selina one: Selina has two possible backstories. Either she's the daughter of an alcoholic Irishman with a Cuban mother who committed suicide, or she's the daughter of Carmine Falcone, an Italian mob boss who was put up for adoption. The Irish/Cuban backstory is technically canon, but an awful lot of fans greatly prefer the other story, as it removes the needless drama from her backstory. Currently, the Falcone connection has been hinted strongly at again, so hopefully that turns out to be true. Who knows, maybe she really is a Falcone but was taken in by her supposed other parents?
 * Even more Bat-wanking...for decades there has never been an official origin for The Joker, which fits in with his chaotic nature as he himself says he remembers the past differently each time. So you can imagine the fan outcry when in 2006 DC announced they were giving The Joker an official canonical origin story. You can imagine the further outcry when said story turned out to be terrible, reducing The Joker to a generic mafia hitman named Jack whose war with Batman is sparked when he injures Bruce Wayne's girlfriend, and Batman retaliates by disfiguring his face with a Batarang. Fans loathed it, and many refuse to acknowledge the story's existence. While DC has never officially retracted the story, all subsequent Joker tales have completely ignored it, and Joker's official profile on DC's website currently gives him no definitive origin.
 * Yet more Bat-wank. A lot of fans - especially female fans - really hated what Frank Miller (and then his followers) did to Catwoman. The best Fanfic resulting from this is Chris Dee's Cat Tales, which retconned the whole thing as bad publicity from tabloid newspapers, which Catwoman deals with in her own inimitable style.
 * The events in Teen Titans, wherein which two of the Titans' home support, Wendy & Marvin adopt a "Wonder Dog", contemplate their roles in the team and then are attacked by said Wonder Dog (who was really a demonic thing) which leaves Marvin dead and Wendy in a coma. She has since awaken from said coma, only to discover that she is now paralyzed and is being taken under Oracle's wing. Many people prefer that this had never happened. The Wonder Dog thing, not so much the "Oracle's protege" thing.
 * DC Nation, a roleplaying site set in The DCU, is hoping to generate this via Word of Dante. The moderators cheerfully admit that much of the point is to salvage what works, and give a middle finger to what doesn't. Because it's been going on for six years, it's build up a solid Alternate Continuity.
 * Bob Ingersoll notes that he believes Question # 26 didn't happen with the well deserved reason of a hero letting someone guilty of "two counts of aggravated murder" free because it's Christmas.
 * Many fans of Captain Marvel and the Marvel Family try to ignore what's happened to them since Infinite Crisis, given that the Marvels have basically been DC's punching bag since then. The series The Trials of Shazam is an especial sore point for the fans. Basically:
 * The Marvel Family's ancient and powerful mentor, the wizard Shazam, was apparently Killed Off for Real during a battle with the Spectre to further the plans of the villains of Infinite Crisis.
 * Captain Marvel was Put on a Bus and made caretaker of the Wizard's power, forcing him to spend virtually all of his time sitting inside of a mountain at the heart of time and space and being unable to really interact with the outside world much at all. This was supposedly to let him deal with mystical threats beyond those of normal superheroes, but when a threat comes along that was intended to literally reshape the nature of magic in the DCU, Cap's involvement was essentially to sit down at a table and chat with some people for one issue and do nothing else.
 * Captain Marvel Jr. was Brought Down to Normal, then underwent The Hero's Journey in an attempt to make him the new Champion during the aforementioned Trials of Shazam. The problem was the series itself was so poorly written that not even the excellent artwork could save it, making everyone doubt that this will be a true case of a Sidekick Graduations Stick. To make matters worse, the idea of the series was to make Junior, now called Shazam, a hero that only dealt with magical problems. The creator actually said "Why is someone with the powers of the gods stopping robbers?" to which this troper can only reply "Because he's a HERO you idiot, and when a hero sees someone doing something evil, they DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT."
 * Yeah, you can thank Judd Winick for that. Putting aside the fact that it is incredibly stupid to fundamentally change a character/superhero "team" that, by and large, hasn't been changed since they were created back when Winick's father was a child, the "justification" is even worse: it is equivalent to saying that since Superman is the strongest hero on Earth, there should be no reason for him to stop common criminals and non-powered supervillains.
 * Mary Marvel was Brought Down to Normal as well, and was not allowed to go on The Hero's Journey that Captain Marvel Jr. did, and instead wound up seeking out Black Adam, both a Fallen Hero and Evil Counterpart of Captain Marvel. She convinces Adam to give her his power, which gives her a brand new tight black costume complete with super-short skirt. Naturally, superpowers taken from someone evil results in Mary having a Face Heel Turn as she slowly decides that Evil Feels Good, after using her powers to turn two security guards into statues. Eventually she has a This Is Your Brain on Evil realization, rejects her powers, and goes on another quest to atone, eventually getting her original powers back at slightly reduced levels. Then Darkseid shows up and offers her Black Adam's powers again, but clearly this quest has taught her that evil superpowers are bad, accepting power from evil beings is also bad, and so she'll just punch him in the face, right? Nope, instead she apparently suffers a case of Aesop Amnesia, accepts the power and not only becomes evil of her own free will, but goes all out Drunk on the Dark Side, complete with an even more Stripperiffic outfit. Countdown to Final Crisis happened, but unlike most of the stuff that was declared Canon Discontinuity, Mary still had to be evil. She was supposed to be merely possessed by a New God, but had to be reworked after Final Crisis was over. So she's now evil because of Black Adam's Bad Powers, Bad People. Some of the worst examples of Corrupt the Cutie and Character Derailment. EVER.
 * JSA writer Geoff Johns, in an effort to Must Make Amends, started trying to undo the above mess, though the results are still mixed. Captain Marvel was Brought Down to Normal by Black Adam and his resurrected wife Isis, leaving him in his mortal form of 16 year old Billy Batson. Billy went to the JSA for help, and when a big fight erupted, was forced to accept Black Adam's power by way of Mary Marvel and joined The Dark Side against his will. Shazam (the wizard, not Captain Marvel Jr.) got better and promptly depowers EVERYONE, leaving Billy and Mary normal teenagers, but thankfully no longer evil (Mary having a My God, What Have I Done? moment) and turning Adam and Isis into stone statues. Shazam then leaves in a huff, ticked that Billy had failed in his position as the new Wizard, that Mary had become evil and that Captain Marvel Jr. was now going around using Shazam's name and using different powers. So to sum up, Captain Marvel Jr. is the only active Marvel Family member at the moment and he's barely shown anywhere at the moment. Is it any wonder fans like to pretend the last several years never happened?
 * The latest revamp of Captain Marvel (now known as Shazam) following the recent DC reboot is proving to be just as unpopular with fans: Billy Batson is a rude little jerk, and Shazam now wears a hoodie.


 * Amazons Attack is often considered one big example of Fanon Discontinuity, but it gets a special notice for the Supergirl and Wonder Girl plotline, which involved them siding with the genocidal Amazon invaders, taking down Air Force One, and leading the President into an ambush. As they never faced any consequences for what certainly amounts to high treason (beyond some mild public displeasure), it seems even DC probably considers this Canon Discontinuity.
 * Captain Atom fans generally disregard the existence of Countdown: Arena.
 * Aquaman fans are widely divided over what is and isn't canon, but the two most likely candidates for being ignored are the Erik Larsen run and the whole "Sword of Aquaman" era.
 * There is a Silver Age story of The Flash that may be one of the earliest examples of Fanon Discontinuity according to Mr. Silver Age. It retconned in an origin for the Flash involving some kind of tiny genie named Mopee causing that fateful lightning bolt to strike the Flash. It was not labeled as an imaginary story or dream sequence. It was not Canon Discontinuity until Crisis on Infinite Earths.
 * Quite a number of the Teen Titans fandom ignore the fact that Terra II is the same Terra as the original. The writer of Terra's original arcs also dislikes this, saying that it went against his story (saying she died and was meant to stay dead).
 * Many fans are determined to ignore the DC reboot, which seems to be going for Darker and Edgier and Whichever Characters Our Writers Like Best How the Writers Want Them. Before it happened, there are people declaring that:
 * Barbara Gordon is still in the wheelchair/Stephanie Brown is still Batgirl.
 * Cyborg is not an insanely important member of the League that WE COULD NOT DO WITHOUT!
 * Dick and Damian aren't being split up from being partners.
 * The Teen Titans have not been screwed over entirely.
 * Wally West is still the Flash, not the dead-for-20-years-real-time Barry Allen.
 * They will, however, admit that ditching the costumes that look like they have underwear over leggings (like Superman and Batman) for costumes without that feature is a good thing.
 * Some think the new look is worse, particularly on Superman, whose revamped costume is jeans, T-shirt with the Kryptonian logo, and cape.
 * However that is only his first costume, in a comic set at least five years before the rest of the new DCU. His real costume is the one seen in SUPERMAN and JUSTICE LEAGUE.
 * Harley's costume had an extreme backlash. It seems no one likes it, saying that they completely missed the point of her persona and that it doesn't work realistically for an acrobat like her.
 * AMANDA WALLER IS STILL A FAT WOMAN!!!
 * Starfire still has her memory. Which... is turning out to be true.
 * Well let's just say Stormwatch/The Authority fans were not too pleased with the redesigns... is that a SPIKE? On his CHIN???

Marvel Comics

 * The Marvel Civil War spawned a massive Dork Age, what with Robbie Baldwin ditching his Speedball identity to become the Wangsty Penance because of an explosion that wasn't even his fault, Iron Man becoming a major-league Jerkass, and Spider-man willingly unmasking himself on national television. Hence, some fans have decided that Civil War never happened. There was a fan parody called "I Don't Need Your Civil War," created from leaked pages for some aborted project or other. The reasoning behind the name is a Shout-Out to Guns N' Roses.
 * The assumption of Fanon Discontinuity has become so prevalent that many Marvelverse fanfic writers don't even bother to add a disclaimer mentioning that the writer is ignoring Civil War in a particular fanfic, as it's pretty much implied.
 * Ask Spider-Man fans who liked the marriage, and they'll tell you that Mary Jane and Peter Parker are still happily married. One More Day was a rejected idea by a fan who hated the last 30 years of Spider-Man.
 * There was a period in the '90s where someone had the bright idea to get MJ on a plane and have her Killed Off for Real when it exploded; after the revenge-and-grief subplot was over and readers were told that she was really, truly dead, Spidey immediately became swingin' single - hanging out with his friends in clubs, having a new roommate, being flirted with by new women. It didn't work. The outcry prompted an Author's Saving Throw, MJ came back, and if the entire storyline happened at all, it was simply that there was a brief scare where she was thought to be dead.
 * It's easier to just say the entire time Joe Quesada worked at Marvel as Editor-In-Chief never, ever happened. He's just some random internet troll who insults the fanbase of the characters for enjoying the past 30 years of Spider-Man comics, and he never put Warren Ellis in charge of Iron Man: Extremis so Warren could not do the research and basically wipe out all of Iron Man's past storylines and characterizations, nor did he allow Iron Man to be further derailed in Civil War or for Spidey to become a slut after retconning his marriage to MJ. Everything that happened in Iron Man's third volume starting with issue #26 and his Mask in the Iron Man Y 2 K story never happened, either.
 * This whole Totem concept introduced by J. Michael Straczynski, which has been disregarded by many. Spider-Man did not get his powers from a spider-totem; Morlun suffered from a case of Mistaken Identity in going after Spidey; Spider-Man never died after getting his eye ripped out before coming back from the dead to eat Morlun alive; and he never got any new powers.
 * Other products of Spider-Man's Dork Age that many fans write out of their version of 'canon' include these:
 * Sins Past. Gwen Stacy never had a one night stand with Norman Osborne, nor did she ever give birth.
 * The Gathering of Five/The Final Chapter. Aunt May never returned from the dead after her moving death scene in Amazing Spider-Man #400. Anything to the contrary was just Peter fantasizing about scenarios in which she might somehow still be alive, the way many of us do when a loved one dies. There's certainly no way Peter would have been fooled by a 'genetically re-engineered actress' posing as Aunt May - his Spider-Sense would have told him something was up. And there's no way the actress could have faked Aunt May's personality that easily, and no way would she have stayed in character even on her deathbed.
 * Worst of all, while OMD/BND would have been a perfect place to erase these from continuity... nope.
 * Fans of Captain America (comics)'s partner The Falcon insist that he was never revealed to have been a pimp. And the less said about "Iron Cap", the better.
 * Due to the massively unpopular rewrites of canon history and the characters themselves, most fans of Malibu Comic's Ultraverse tend to ignore the books written after Marvel Comics bought the rights to them in the mid-90s.
 * Dr. Doom has been through a number of Character Derailments over the years, causing many fan rejections. Fortunately, the concept of the Doombot has already been introduced: Doom uses a lot of robots, some of which don't quite act right. This conveniently lets fans and (and future writers who want to make an Author's Saving Throw) explain away any drastically inconsistent appearance of Doom as a Doombot:
 * Dr. Doom most certainly did not get his ass handed to him by Tony Stark's new team of fascism-abiding "Avengers" in a flagrant violation of international law against a sovereign nation, and to suggest that he was then subsequently imprisoned by said miscreants is just laughable. Such libelous poppycock is beneath the notice of Doom.
 * He also absolutely did not, at any time during this clearly fictional sequence of events, ever lapse into speech patterns whose vulgarity, crudity, and misogyny would have shamed both the intellect and character of your average gang-banging crack addict.
 * Hilariously, Doom himself is known to indulge in exactly this sort of historical revisionism. He keeps an official Editor on staff to remove or improve the records of all his embarrassing moments. The above items are probably that Editor's work.
 * He was beaten by Squirrel Girl, though. That was written by Steve Ditko! That's so in continuity!
 * Doom's 'Master Planning' also includes that racist Doombot from the recent Black Panther issues. Fans still aren't sure how that one made it past the quality control, but a racist Doombot has to be a part of Doom's master plan rather than some sort of twisted out of character moment on a horrible writer's self-insertion fantasy.
 * There's a Victor Von Doom who was raised by the Red Skull that was tossed into the Multiverse. It happened in A-Next. He's probably racist.
 * A lot of us try and make others wake up and smell the coffee in that DOOM would not make a Deal with the Devil in order to go after that infernal Richards, after what happened to his mother dearest. No matter what Mark Waid would think.
 * Many things from Chuck Austen's run on Uncanny X-Men are worth denying. Many fans agree to dismiss the following: Nightcrawler's father is not a demonic mutant. The Church of Humanity did not try to turn Nightcrawler into the Pope and then kill people with exploding Communion Host. There are no parrot wolves of doom. Warren Worthington the Third CERTAINLY knows what businesses he owns and would never bang some jailbait in front of her mom. Havok never offered to reform Iceman's body by peeing or fell in love with his nurse in his dreams. Sam Guthrie's family was NEVER in a bad Romeo and Juliet ripoff facing rednecks with super-armor.
 * Some X-Men fans have had this reaction to Reginald Hudlin's work on the Black Panther comics, including the retconning of the nation of Wakanda into a Straw Utopia that is intentionally keeping high technology (including the cure for cancer!) from non-natives, and Storm stepping down as one of the leaders of the X-Men to marry T'Challa in the sake of a Token Romance.
 * Don't get X-Fans started on House of M and the Decimation that resulted. Wanda Maximoff's depowering all the B-list and lower mutants in the Marvel Universe simply by saying 'No More Mutants' is just too ridiculous a Diabolus Ex Machina to be accepted as canon, and it's a textbook case of Writer on Board. Many fans still curse Brian Michael Bendis' very name to this day.
 * And many general-Marvel fans go further by refusing to accept Disassembled, the arc that came before House of M. Though far from being the biggest problem with the arc, a good number have cited some of the author-induced sheer stupidity that Doctor Strange displays when he shows up as a reason, and this was one of the biggest things dealt with in the subsequent "What If..." story based on the arc.
 * Submitted for your consideration: The Crossing, The Avengers crossover where Iron Man is revealed to be a sleeper agent working for Kang, commits cold blooded murder and attacks his fellow Avengers. The Avengers desperate to stop their rampaging teammate recruit a teenage Tony Stark from an alternate universe to help them defeat his older, more experienced counterpart. This teenager then takes over the role of Iron Man and fights crime as the new Iron Man. Kurt Busiek tried applying Canon Discontinuity in Avengers Forever to wipe away this stain on The Avengers mythos, but it was totally unnecessary. Nobody at Marvel will ever admit to remembering teen Tony.
 * The above image is the prequel to Heroes Reborn, a series most have trouble accepting: no one believes that the Fantastic Four, Iron Man, Captain America (comics), and The Avengers were saved from imminent destruction by being whisked into a pocket universe created by Franklin Richards. And the idea that they were gone for about a year, having Darker and Edgier adventures that were almost but not the same as their established histories (often with ridiculously grotesque anatomy and excessive scowl marks), then conveniently return to the original Marvel U with nary a glance back sounds more like bad fanfic (or a cynical marketing gimmick) than anything plausible.
 * Runaways fans are divided on who tends to disregard Joss Whedon's run, Terry Moore's run, Kathryn Immomen's run . Furthermore, although the Secret Invasion crossover with Young Avengers is generally accepted as canon, the Civil War crossover has less luck.
 * The "reveal" in the "Illuminati" mini that The Beyonder was "actually" a mutant Inhuman is ignored not only for the plot holes it creates (how does that explain his link with the Molecule Man?) or for the sheer stupidity of it.
 * Actually, that "reveal" was merely the Beyonder fucking with their heads -- by making the Illuminati think that they'd "solved" the mystery of who and what he really was, and how he supposedly wasn't actually that powerful, he guaranteed that the Illuminati would stop looking for a way to defeat him. (And given that the Illuminati had access to the Infinity Gems, tricking them into letting their guard down is a valid concern!) Its actually referenced in-issue.
 * There was a Usenet meme: "Jean Grey is dead on the moon." The theory was that Jean Grey being resurrected for X-Factor, the Retcon's effect on the original "Dark Phoenix Saga", and the Character Derailment inflicted on Cyclops and his marriage was where the X-Men franchise Jumped The Shark.
 * Yet two wrongs don't make a right, and the Emma Frost thing doesn't sit too well with some fans either.
 * Then again, Jean even dating Scott is Fanon Discontinuity for the Jean/Logan fans, so there seems to be a line where this goes too far and just makes for messy fanon.

Titan Books

 * In an inversion of the trope, numerous Star Trek fans accept the comic "Countdown" (a prequel comic to Star Trek) as Canon. While it has been touted as the "official movie prequel" it should be noted that Roberto Orci (one of the writers of the film) has stated that it is not canon, and Paramount's studio policy only takes the television series and films as canon. Reasons for this, apart from the false impression that it's canon, include explanation of Nero's backstory and motivations, and a Retcon of Data's death in the previous film Star Trek Nemesis.

Image Comics

 * Many fans of Image Comics like to pretend that most of the early stuff was never written, and that the characters were never Nineties Anti Heroes. Quite understandable.

Archie Comics

 * Typically, you can break the Sonic the Hedgehog comics into three distinct eras: the Ken Penders era, the Karl Bollers era, and the Ian Flynn era. Fans of the first pretend the latter two don't exist; fans of the last pretend the former two don't exist; there are no fans of the middle era.
 * Then there are the fans that ignore the comic all together, saying it's a bastardization of SatAM.

Franco Belgian Comics

 * Asterix: Most fans prefer to pretend Asterix and the Falling Sky never was (the villagers get their memory erased in the end, so it can actually be considered as such), and hope the next album will give a chance to the series to not end on a bad tune. Other fans prefer to think that the series died with Goscinny, and ignore all the Uderzo-only books (the ones from Asterix and the Great Divide onwards).

Other Comics

 * Sonic the Comic fans do this to comics that are just considered Mind Screw's or otherwise poor. Amy's Secret Past, which is extremely inconsistent with canon (and the "She's not naturally pink" thing pissed off some fans), and Bravehog (which is also extremely inconsistent and had horrible artwork) come to mind. There's also a select few fans who ignore the Sonic Adventure arc, or at least.
 * You'd be hard-pressed to find a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles fan that will accept that or that Rat King, instead of an insane homeless guy.