Also, I'm not in support of "the guy complained that he had shown her being hit in the face, which wasn’t true either". What happened on-screen/in panel is irrefutable. The perceived reality comes in what is not seen.

The entire point becomes mute if it was said by the character in-panel what did ot did not happen off-panel. If BC said in panel that she wasn't raped, then she wasn't. End of story.

People who "remember" seeing Canary raped (barely off camera? wha-huh?) or seeing her punched in the face are just like the folks who "remember" seeing Janet Leigh stabbed in Psycho - their minds filled it in based on what they actually DID see.

To increasingly crazy degrees, apparently.

Or one definition of it, anyway.

Not quite that bad - at least this one has some logic behind it...

Also, Grell didn't "come out with his version" "well after". His version was what he put in the comic, and he clearly didn't expect people would interpret it in that way. Nor did he wait a long time before responding--the issue where BC talked with a therapist, where he explicitly stated she wasn't raped, was early in the regular run of the GA. This was about as early as he could reasonably deal with it once he became aware that it needed to be dealt with. Grell shouldn't be taken to task for not being able to psychically predict how people would misinterpret his work.

Or for not writing the scene where GA rescues BC to have her falling into his arms and saying "Well, thank goodness I wasn't raped, at least", either. The original topic is plot twists, after all, and that's predicated on the idea that the author should be allowed to reserve part of the story to be revealed later, without unfounded accusations of retconning. (Carry that line of thinking to its logical conclusion and you wind up with Annie from "Misery," who got worked up into a homicidal range at the idea that the situation at the end of a chapter of a serial wasn't quite the situation at the beginning of the next one.)

If I read the first part of a story which ends with Batman's apparent death, and never read the second part which clearly reveals that he's not dead, am I allowed to go around claiming that Batman is really dead because that's how I perceive it? Am I allowed to claim that my perceived version of Batman's death supersedes both the printed page and the intentions of the author? Because it's ultimately the same thing as the BC situation; it's just that one is more obviously divergent from actual reality than the other.

(I don't have a problem with the idea of a personal perceptual reality; it's the idea that one's personal reality should be allowed to automatically supersede others', including the original creators', that I take issue with.)

Also, it doesn't really matter WHAT Grell says anymore. Weather it was his intention for BC to be done wrong off panel, or just to be roughed up, the fans perceive it how they collectively want to. If that differs from the author's intent, then the author should have been more clear. I'm a bog fan of the phrase "perception is reality." How a person sees a thing is reality for that person. There are just as many fans who think BC was raped as there are whose who will take the author's comments.

On a side note, isn't it convenient that Grell said AFTER the fact that she wasn't raped? If he didn't at least what us to believe she was, shouldn't he have had her say what really happened when GA found her? I've never read the books, so maybe someone who has can check on that bit for us. The fact that he came out with his version of what happened off-panel well after the consensus was rape seems like ret-con to me.

On another note:

"but no writer or artist gets to say what actually happens off-panel;"

Sorry, but that just doesn't make any sense. The writer / artist is the only person who can definitively say what happens in a story, on or off panel. They wrote it. Their intentions are what counts. A reader can put whatever they want in between the panels, but that doesn't make it accurate. Even if it's a thousand readers or ten thousand Internets. Grell wins.

It would have been ok for the twist to be so blatantly telegraphed if there had been more substance to #4. As it was, it just felt like the issue was devoted to cluing Dinah in on what everybody else already knew-- and confirming that she didn't get to be the hero of her own miniseries.

Whereas The Return of Barry Allen twist could have been deduced but still surprised most of us-- and there was no whole issue that felt like a waste if you already knew. One thing that helps: Wally figures it out before the reader does, so the hero gets to be the hero while the reader's still in suspense.

Mike Grell has said repeatedly that Black Canary was not raped - off or on camera - just, not raped, period.

And that doesn't matter.

Everyone agrees it didn't happen on-panel (see the Urban Legend Revealed where Mr. Grell was even nice enough to turn up and comment), but no writer or artist gets to say what actually happens off-panel; like a punch to the face that connects just outside the border of the panel, every reader's imagination fills in the missing parts.

We don’t know, but we’ve been watching it slowly happen for about 3 years. We knew it was eventually going to happen, and all we could do was watch and wait. THAT’S the swerve we need more of.

That's not a swerve, though - that's an arc. A swerve is, by definition, a fast change with little or no build-up.

Thunderbolts #1 actually got pretty much guessed by fandom, back in the day, even before the issue hit the stands. Mostly because of the various power sets of the characters.

And also because of intentional clues dropped in their first two (pre-book) appearances...

My complaint of late is that I'll read an issue, which ends with a big plot twist. No explanation, just a shocking last page. Then the next issue scrambles to explain it in an unsatisfactory way and I feel ripped off. The first example that comes to mind is from Civil war when Iron Man and company were losing that fight and Thor shows up, and it's like "wow, Thor's back!" But then the next issue includes the cloning/mind control BS and I quit reading it.

Since someone mentioned M. Night Shamlamadingdong's Sixth Sense, I'll bring up another example of his work.

The Village. The twist there was pretty much out of left field. Sure, they laid SOME ground work but it was in the most vague sense.

That left me feeling rather angry and empty at the end.

And I can't believe no one has said this yet in this thread but...

What a twist!

'The Prestige', for example, has a twist that when you're looking for it, could not be more obvious. It's set up thematically throughout the story, it's perfectly reflected through all the characters' points of views and dialogue--heck, Michael Caine even has a speech at one point in the film where he tells you exactly what the twist is, and nobody believes him. But does that make it a bad twist? No, that's what makes it a great twist.

A bad twist, by contrast, is in '28 Days Later'. It's definitely something impossible to predict, and it legitimately catches you off-guard...but that's because it directly contradicts information presented earlier in the film, and is a result of the film-makers having painted themselves into a corner, and then just breaking their own rules, calling it a "twist", and hoping that nobody notices the paint all over their shoes.

I was surprised about New X-Men's "Man in the iron mask" reveal. I kept hitting myself that I didn't put the clues together but then, I was enjoying the meat of the stories too much to wait for a bone.

The Ex Machina "twist" where the mayor supports gay marriage was fun too.

The perfect example is the Sixth Sense, which I think is a good movie without the twist, but once you see the twist you can re-watch the entire movie from a different point of view and its even better for it.