Ruined FOREVER (Darth Wiki)/Comic Books

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.



  • Comics were always better when you were a kid. Every age since then has been a Dork Age.
  • In DC Comics, Final Crisis saw the return of Barry Allen to the main DCU, as well as the Flash Rebirth miniseries in 2009. Cue cries about how the impact of said character's original death has now been rendered completely meaningless and that this is proof that DC hates change and panders to the Silver Age.
    • There are a number of fans who called this trope when Young Justice folded into the Teen Titans, and then Identity Crisis occurred, exacerbating the situation. This has lead to said fans declaring that most, if not all, of the titles by DC have been stopped as of June 2003. While there have indeed been horrible plots and decisions by DC in recent years, declaring that they consider most of DC's Modern Age discontinuity because of that is just bewildering. The first bullet on this folder sums up what the situation really is.
  • Marvel hasn't escaped this either, most notably a similar reaction to the aforementioned example concerning the return of Colossus to the X-Men lineup, and even earlier, Jean Grey and the whole Phoenix Isn't Her Retcon (as though not having her being a mass murderer was bad thing, and wasn't all a dream like Dallas).
    • And the number of people who hate the Scott Summers/Emma Frost relationship to the point of vowing never to enjoy/read X-Men again until Jean returns and gets back with Scott is quite large (which is less ruined forever and more ruined until it gets set right).
    • Two words: Civil War.
    • One Word: Siege. Civil War began the greatest period of Marvel Comics, Siege closed it.
    • M-Day and Utopia have perverted the entire premise of X-Men.
    • Ever since the recent Marvel Anime project started, people have been throwing around death threats, cursing Japan for "raping Wolverine". Apparently, the Nazis are also involved.
  • Though Spider-Man and Marvel have had to weather any number of these moments with varying levels of justification, One More Day seems to have been the mother of them all.
    • There are some who thought the revelation that Gwen Stacey and Norman Osborn slept together and had two super-powered, illegitimate children completely ruined Gwen's character forever. People also thought the fact that Mary-Jane knew but didn't tell Peter made it all the worse.
      • Blame it on Quesada. They were originally supposed to be Peter's kids, but about halfway through, Quesada thought that would have made him too old. Which also implies that would somehow not apply to Gwen, even though she's roughly the same age as Peter. It would have made more sense if that had been something like Ultimate Black Cat but Gwen? Nope. Not happening.
  • Disney just bought Marvel and it's already RUINED FOREVER!!
  • The Watchmen fan community had some rumblings of this over the movie, for various reasons.
  • The 2010-2011 Wonder Woman reboot provoked a reaction like this; partly due to the costume redesign which gave Wonder Woman pants rather than her traditional star-spangled panties (which also introduced a bit of Unpleasable Fanbase, since the previous looks had frequently been criticized for being Stripperiffic), and partly due to the nature of the storyline, which saw Wonder Woman's past continuity rebooted into an Alternate History, removing many of the traditional elements of her backstory and canon. Despite the fact that it was acknowledged upfront that this timeline was an aberration to what was supposed to happen and that the plot was to involve Wonder Woman Setting Right What Once Went Wrong, a lot of fans still complained about how they'd changed everything.
  • When news broke in 2011 that DC Comics were going to reboot their line of superhero comics back to #1 issues[1], the prevailing fan reaction was essentially this trope.
    • It's only gotten worse with revealed costumes, the confirmed return of Rob Liefeld as artist on Hawk And Dove, and the short character blurbs that indicate that a lot of history is gone forever (the Teen Titans costumes in particular have invoked horror and also parodies).
      • With Barry Allen, the issue is how much of the Flash legacy survives - he'd already returned to being the Flash before the relaunch. Bart Allen is still Kid Flash, but there is no news on the fate of Wally West.
      • All that said, some legacies look to have made it through relatively unscathed, the Green Lanterns and Robins most notable among them.
      • This reboot seems like another nail in the coffin containing the relationship between Green Arrow's first sidekick Roy Harper and his daughter Lian. After the latter was killed in Cry for Justice the treatment of Roy descending into drug-fueled anti-heroism managed to get worse and worse. At first, fans were a little relieved when they learned that Roy would be getting his right arm back in the reboot, then it was announced that Lian would no longer exist.
      • One change that's gotten major criticism from the fans is making Barbara Gordon Batgirl again, by taking her out of her wheelchair. The wheelchair she's been in for over twenty years now. The fans got even angrier when DC revealed that in this new universe, she was still shot and crippled, but came right out of it. After several years, but the point still stands. Many fans consider this blatant sexism and ableism[2], believing that Barbara was much better as Oracle, as both a superhero and an icon, than she ever was as Batgirl.
    • But the thing that set the internet on fire was the new interpretation of Starfire in Red Hood and the Outlaws. Even though fans have been told it gets better in later issues, they don't care and have dropped the character after the first issue. It's easily gotten twice the backlash of Batgirl, though both controversies died down significantly after a month or two.
      • This is the same with all of the books written by Scott Lobdell, especially Teen Titans.
  • The beloved, retro Belgian comic Tintin has been made into an English movie by Steven Spielberg, with realistic motion-capture CGI animation, and in 3D.
  • Serious Internet Backdraft over the guy who's supposed to replace Thor after Fear Itself (but it looks like some other characters might get new people in their roles too so he's not the only one), despite the Thor books being the best sellers of Marvel right now. Also, the guy he's replacing hasn't even died in-story yet, and won't until October/November (posted first day of September), so it feels like a slap in the face.
    • Also because he and the other 2 replacements (going by the promo material for "Shattered Heroes" aka the November line) looked like they went to the Nineties Anti-Hero school. Just when Marvel was easing off the Wangst after Siege!
  1. ↑ yes, even those series that have upwards of 800 issues by now
  2. ↑ discrimination of the handicapped
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