Harsher in Hindsight/Comic Books

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • In an issue of Uncanny X-Men from 1986, we get a flashback (-forward?) to Rachel Summers' Crapsack World of her Days of Future Past, where it's revealed that among the other actions to happen in the war against the mutants, someone destroyed the World Trade Center with a bomb (one panel shows the Twin Towers in ruins). Unthinkable in 1986, but cringe-inducing after 1993 and absolutely eerie after 2001. Bear in mind that, if not for Comic Book Time, 2001 would likely be the actual year that the World Trade Center was destroyed in Rachel's timeline.
    • Similarly, one issue of Wolverine's own comic book featured an enemy flying a plane into him. While he was standing on top of the World Trade Center.
  • On the subject of 9/11, the Transformers Marvel Comics featured Galvatron visiting an alternate universe, where New York had been devastated and Rodimus Prime's corpse was strung up between the smoking stumps of the Twin Towers.
  • More fun with 9/11 in the 1995 Marvel Comics tie-in novel Spider-Man: The Octopus Agenda by Diane Duane: the book's climax features Spidey's attempts to foil the plans of Doctor Octopus, who's planted a bomb in the World Trade Center.
    • There was also the Spider-Man/X-Force crossover where The Juggernaut destroyed one of the twin towers in the course of his brawl with the heroes.
  • 9/11 times four, and this time not from Marvel: An issue of Superman sent DC into a panic, when the LexCorp Towers (Metropolis' version of the Twin Towers) were shown to be in a state of near total collapse after being hit by an alien spaceship. The day that comic was due to hit newstands? September 12, 2001. DC assured retailers that they would be allowed a no-fault return for the issue, given the situation, and encouraged them to make use of it. Few, apparently, did..
    • It's worse than that: The issue, taking place after a global invasion, had several pictures of buildings in ruins...Near the picture of the LexCorp building was one of the ACTUAL twin towers, with blast holes at roughly the SAME place as where the planes had hit in real life!
  • But topping them all would have to be The Dark Knight Returns by Frank Miller. Published in 1986, the story involves Two-Face plotting to blow up "The Twin Towers" in Gotham. Luckily, he's stopped by Batman. Shortly thereafter, an electromagnetic pulse caused by the detonation of a powerful nuclear warhead in the western hemisphere knocks out all power to seemingly the entirety of America. A 747 then falls out of the sky and crashes into the Twin Towers, blowing them up and setting all of Gotham on fire.
  • A 1995 Judge Dredd arc had Dredd travel back in time to prevent an alien disease from spreading. To do this, he had to blow up a plane...over New York...in 2001. The twin towers are visible in the background as the plane crashes into the river. The scene was even on the front cover with the caption "Airport 2001".
    • In a one-off story from 1978, a criminal demonstrates his power by causing the World Trade Center to collapse. Ouch.
    • Alan Grant said in a lecture several of the jokes he wrote to demonstrate how oppressive Mega City 1 was had since become reality, specifically comparing the Smokatorium to widespread smoking bans.
  • V for Vendetta features a futuristic dystopian Britain. Full of surveillance cameras...
    • It also features a pedophile priest who's disappointed at the idea of bedding a girl who's as old as 15. Already creepy at the time, it takes on a whole new layer of uncomfortableness with the Catholic child molestation scandals that have broken out since -- there have been accusations for centuries, which probably inspired the character, but they really hit broad public awareness in The Nineties, although in this instance it was an Anglican priest...who's interested in female children.
    • The surveillance cameras can't really count as Harsher in Hindsight. The CCTV program was around more than a decade before V for Vendetta was written.
    • The ending of the graphic novel (where thanks to V's actions, it is heavily implied that Great Britain descended into complete and total Anarchy after too much government control) becomes even more harsh when taking into account what is currently happening in Great Britain.
      • Assuming thats a reference to the 2011 London riots, it would have had similar harsh connotations in the Brixton Riots of 1995, and the Brixton Riots of 1985 took place while the original run was still being published, making the ending both this and a Funny Aneurysm Moment, and possibly even Too Soon. Britain seems to like the anarchy, it seems.
  • The scenes in Uncanny X-Men #101 where the space shuttle breaks up on re-entry and crashes in New York and the similar sequence from the 1990s Spider-man animated series were intended to be merely dramatic when they were created, but some find it difficult to watch them without thinking of the Columbia tragedy.
    • The Spider-Man episode is the most similar to the real disaster, which makes it really creepy, especially if you're a John Jameson fan. (Yes, John Jameson has fans. Shut up.)
  • An in-universe example (or in-multiverse, anyway) from an issue of the early 80's Marvel Star Trek comic, where the Enterprise is on a mission to help evacuate a world that's about to die:

Kirk: But, these people will have lost their world! Imagine how they feel!
Spock: Captain... at times like this I am most thankful that a Vulcan cannot!

  • One Wonder Woman comic had a fake newspaper on its cover with headlines proclaiming Wonder Woman's death and referred to her as Princess Diana. Guess who died a week later.
  • Back to Marvel: there's a late 70's issue of Marvel Two-In-One where the World Trade Center (maybe just one tower) catches fire. Just looking at the cover can induce that deep, nausea/wince.
  • The illustration on this page, by way of reference, was based on a previous incident in which, believe it or not, a B-25 crashed into the Empire State Building in 1945. In the early 70s, this was long enough ago to be safe.
  • A while ago, DC published an Elseworlds joke comic starring Mr. Mxyzlplk and the Bat-Mite. One of the first scenes in the book is Superman holding Batman's smoldering skeleton. This is played for laughs.
  • The Batman storyline A Lonely Place of Dying has a scene where Two-Face almost decides to blow up the twin towers just to piss the dark knight off. This is made worse by Bruce Wayne simultaneously considering holding a massive charity event there to provoke him into attacking.
    • He was also thinking about stealing one of Princess Diana's necklaces on the same page.
  • Another 9/11 one: The Big Book Of The Seventies (published in 2000) had a section on the rise of terrorism, which ended with the first WTC bombing. All they have to do to make it a little more relevant is flip the last picture upside down.
  • One Nintendo Comics System issue from 1990 had an establishing shot of the Twin Towers with a dark cloud looming above.
  • On the penultimate pages of Transmetropolitan, Spider Jerusalem puts a cigarette in his mouth for One Last Smoke, draws a handgun, puts it under his chin, and it turns out to be a lighter. Sad part? Three years later, Spider's inspiration, Hunter S. Thompson, did the exact same thing...except the gun was real.
  • One of the very first Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Mirage comics had the bad guy threatening to collapse the Twin Towers if he wasn't paid a ransom of thousand of dollars. This troper bought a new re-print, which had a note at the very edge of the paper "(Remember this comic was released a long time before 9/11)"
  • An in-universe example for the Marvel Universe. One issue of the late 90s Captain America (comics) comic had Cap foiling a plot by a Skrull to impersonate him and cause widespread chaos in the United States. What does he say upon defeating the Skrull?:

Cap: Next time, take over a planet without me on it.

    • Cue 2008's Secret Invasion, in which the Skrulls do take over the planet Without Cap on it, as he had been supposedly dead at the time.
  • More 9/11 references, this time the Spanish series Mortadelo Y Filemon showed a plane crashing into a Twin Tower as a joke in the cover for the book named El 35 aniversario".
  • In Ultimate X-Men, mutants are more discriminated than ever before and can be held without a trial even if they didn't do anything wrong, and you can even legally kill them. At the time when it was written, it was meant to show how Ultimate Marvel is different from Earth-616. And then the National Defense Authorization Act came.
  • The Choose Your Own Adventure Dole-Playing Game You Are Maggie Thatcher was a Character Exaggeration of the much-reviled prime minister, and yet the whole thing did not look all too implausible in real life. For example, one of the options was to privatize the police force, which David Cameron actually proposed years later.
  • An in-universe one DC one: Issues #20-#21 of the New Teen Titans comic (May-June 1986). The Titans were (temporarily) mostly broken up after incidents involving or happening roughly around the time of Crisis on Infinite Earths. Wonder Girl, who is left in charge with an empty nest, calls in Aqualad, a newly-minted Flash, a Hawk without Dove, Jason-Robin and Speedy. At the request of King Faraday, they help to protect a peace conference which is being threatened by Cheshire. This was where it was discovered Speedy and Cheshire had a child together. Issue #21 closes on some supposed to be heart-warming reconciliations between Terry Long and Wonder Girl and also Speedy and Cheshire, including him getting to hold his daughter for the first time. Also, Wally getting to explain his new role as The Flash to his hero-avoidant then-girlfriend Francis Kane. Now, look at these events through the lens of:
    • Speedy still apparently having strong feelings for Wonder Girl, well after their teen romance fizzled according to later comics.
    • King Faraday being the (possibly mind-controlled) villain, Gamemaster.
    • Wally-Flash not knowing what he's doing and trying to imitate Barry Allen, and somewhat losing his sense of self. Then, when Barry came back and reset reality, creating the nu52, Wally was gone for good.
    • Jason Todd being the voice of reason among his older, more experienced peers and then not receiving a statue in the memorial hall upon his death for this and the work to free Raven as if they were embarrassed.
    • Having Speedy, Wonder Girl and Flash return to Cheshire, Terry Long and Francis Kane with the idea that this is a relief to them. All three of these couples later go nuclear, one of them literally.
    • Having Hank Hall (Hawk) be a nearly-murderous bastard as a hero, when later he becomes the JSA villain Extant.
    • Realizing that Cheshier's daughter would have been concieved just about the time of Wonder Girl's wedding to Terry Long with the compressed timeline.
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