The post Zero-Hour “Archie” Legion was pretty obviously leading up to a reveal that R.J. Brande was the Martian Manhunter. Brande was very nostalgic about 20th century super heroes (including many artifacts from that era in his office); Brande named “Mon’el” based on a Martian name; Brande was shown to have some telepathic ability near the end of the run. Abnett and Lanning came on and all of that was forgotten and never followed up on, but it was pretty clear where the story was going. Wiki says something about JLA Dan Raspler vetoing the idea thus keeping the Manhunter idea from being official, but I don’t know if that ‘s true.

Ha! I just realized the RJ Brande thing was talked about by the author of this article in December 2008! I guess it IS true!

What about the Whole Chris Claremont Revolution run of the X-Men where Psylocke and Phoenix traded powers and markings?

That one still hasn’t been touched and wonder if it ever will.

I read list item #6 and thought “Mantis and the Scarlet Witch had kids together? How would THAT work?”. :-p

Anyone remember a storyline with the X-Books that had a group who were hunting mutants for points, kind of like a reality show. I think Grayton Creed was one of the contestants. It was run by someone named Gamesmaster or something (not the Elder of the Universe one).

That one, at least, got resolved. The Upstarts competition came to a head in the “CHILD’S PLAY” crossover between X-Force and New Warriors. The short version is that all the key players either got killed or got their butts handed to them, and the competition ended with no winner. Gamesmaster went on to vaguely menace Deadpool and Siryn in a few later issues of X-Force …. and hasn’t been heard from in a while.

Didn’t they not reveal who killed that politician named Creed in the X-Factor book? I heard that somewhere.

Bleedingcool.com just had an interesting article similar to these about a Superman story that would have been similar to the clone saga in the Spider-man comics. It’s just a theory but for the people enjoying these abandoned story lines it could be an interesting read: http://www.bleedingcool.com/2011/12/16/whatever-happened-1998-death-of-superman/ By the way these articles are great! Good job Brian.

What about Matrix/Supergirl? She’s been totally written out of continuity and ignored ever since Jeph Loeb and Michael Turner brought back the Kara Zor-El Supergirl.

Let’s not forget that the recent Annihilation Darkhawk mini series essentially wiped out a huge chunk of the original Darkhawk run, including his origin wherein his armor and power gem were the products of alien scientists commissioned by an alien warlord in order to gain more power for himself and his men, only to have the scientists rebel against him and hide on Earth and parts unknown.

@Stephen C. : the best part of the comments for that Bleeding Cool article were the links to CBLR articles effectively debunking that story. (side note to Brian, if you look at that link, the writer posits that Superman Annuals were not done too much between ’87 and ’90, which commenters questioned, and also that the Superman/Sand story came out a week before the Death of Superman, which doesn’t sound right. I don’t think either of those rise to the Legend level, but maybe…)

@Star Saber: Hey, the Matrix version of Supergirl was completely unmentioned in the short documentary on the Superman/Batman:Apocalypse DCAU DVD. So DC just doesn’t like her….

What about The Son of Bruce Wayne? Now it’s just assumed.

Probably not going to have this one address, but I would really like to know the back-story behind Dazzler seemingly being made immortal in Excalibur. They had a running story of Alison being killed in action and then springing back to life in a few hours. I don’t think it has ever been address in any of her appearances after the book was canceled.

Yeah, the “problem” is that it was never “forsaken.” It is just abandoned.

Graydon Creed’s killer was revealed to be his mother, Mystique, in X-Men Forever (vol.1). I think she did it while she was time-traveling, if I remember correctly. Prosh (Ship) sent Jean Grey, Juggernaut, Toad, Iceman, and Mystique on missions through time to correct/change certain things. I believe this is also where they established that her “default” look was now what Mystique looks like in the movies, with the blue scales and spikes.

Hey Brian, hope the new year is treating you well. Really liked the whole series of articles, thought it was a great idea for a run. Take care

- rick

Okay, some of these on the list had good reason to be overturned (Alex Power is a horse, Leslie Thomkins broke her Hippocratic Oath and let someone die just to prove a point to Batman) since they were bad ideas to start with.

But others … well, they’re just maddening. Don’t get me started on how Aunt May’s death was undone. The way they brought her back from the dead makes the whole ‘Bobby Ewing is alive and in the shower, and the whole last season was a dream’ thing on Dallas look like a work of genius. I could post a long, lengthy rant about it. But for now, I’ll just quote The Spoony Experiment.

“There’s suspension of disbelief, and then there’s insulting my f**king intelligence.”

Around issues #100 – 102 of X-Men vol 2 Kitty Pryde had to escape from a space station in some kind of battlesuit. The rest of the X-Men had intended to go in search for her, but were distracted by some other mutant crisis involving a group called the Neo. THEY NEVER RESUMED THEIR SEARCH FOR KITTY! Kitty then turned up randomly in an X-Treme X-Men annual a few years later. I have yet to see any mention of where she had been or what happened since she crash landed.

What about the whole X-Ternals thing in X-Force with Cannonball (and other mutants) being immortal?

@Adam Taylor The Cannonball Immortality thing has been largely forgotten and I think wiped out during the House of M. However, the X-Ternals thing was quickly resolved in the pages of X-Force with most of the group being wiped outby Selene (I think) before the book went “weird” with the X-Statix stuff….

Good list. You could’ve used a ton more X-crap here and it could have gone into the hundreds easily.

What about mark miller and hitchs run on the fantastic four where they meet dooms master?At the end of the storyline dooms power should be increased beyond anyones and yet it seems to be thrown away when thor can hand him his butt.

I’d like to propose the abandoned storyline of Power Girl’s true parentage, as hinted at in issues of Geoff Johns’s JSA title between about # 30 and # 50. After the Crisis, Power Girl was retconned into the integrated DCU as the granddaughter of Arion, Lord of Atlantis, and that her attachment to Superman was something he had programmed into her somehow. This was considered canon for about 25 years, and then Johns started hinting that her powers weren’t related to ancient Atlantean magic. Then, in the “Princes of Darkness” story, the soul of Arion says that he had lied about her origins a part of some promise made to her mother to protect her…and that’s all we heard of that storyline until Infinite Crisis brought back the Multiverse and she was revealed to have been a survivor of Earth-2′s Krypton all along. But it’s pretty obvious that that conclusion wasn’t Johns’s original intent, and the plans changed due to the editorial demands of Infinite Crisis. I would have loved to know where Johns was originally planning to go with that.

Of all the abondoned storylines in history, the Cannonball/External storyline burns me the most. Only because during this time in the early to mid 90′s they were positioning that story as integral to the whole defeat of Apocalypse and the X-Books, but they seemingly abandoned it and was confirmed abandoned when they ran the Apocalypse “The Twelve” storyline and Cannonball was nowhere to be seen. I can’t tell you how many conventions I’ve been to asking the question to Marvel representatives and they don’t even remember the series! Sure they kinda/sorta resolved the External storyline in X-Force vol. 1 #54, but that issue actually raised more questions about Cannonball in fact being an external from Selene.

What about that time prof x had a new team of x-men, during the bachelo run, when nighcrawler and kitty rejoined? And of course the whole Maggott, Celia Reyes, and Marrow members. They kinda just dropped off..

Would these count….

1. Wolverine’s adamantium’s skeleton came from Japan. In Daredevil, Bulleye’s travels to Japan to get the same treatment.

2. Jim Gordon’s son from Year One. I don’t know if I ever heard of his son before or after. And then Barbara became Jim’s niece who he ends up adopting.

Gordon’s son showed up last year during Snyder’s run on Detective Comics.

There is this cliffhanger in Daredevil just before Born Again with Black Crow, saying that he need to see DD (or whatever) or this mention by an elf in an early X-men story by Claremont/Cockrumm in the Bmack tom’s Castle where it is said that Wolvie is not human.

There is also all the subplot from Mark Gruenwald with Superia, Free Spirit… in Captain America when Waid and Garney Took aver ..

what aboout the Aquaman “Sub Diego” arc? We never did find out who was responsible for the sinking of half of San Diego or why? Who was Mr. J?

Another revised storyline from the Byrne FF: Sue Richards becomes so neurotic about her repressed resentments of Reed that she becomes the schizoid villainess Malice. Someone, possibly deFalco, didn’t like the foremost mother in Marvel Comics being a nasty nutcase, so Malice became an alien being hanging out in Sue’s head.

Perhaps not a retcon but anyone recall that Ben Grim at the end of Walt Simonson’s run voluntarily became the Thing again (after using the Thing suit for awhile)? To me, this would mean he likes being the Thing and has accepted the role. But we eventually come to a “Ben is bummed about being the Thing” story and it rings false if he chose to go back.

I would like to suggest the on-again, off-again relationship of Spiderwoman and Viper, and if they are or are not Daughter and Mother? There is a constant switch-off on that.

I completely forgot about the Spider Woman/Viper thing. I remember the only reason I bought my first issue of Cap was because Spider Woman was in it (logo and all on the cover, which now that I think about it was kind of weird).

I have one

1. In New Warriors #47 the Sphinx splits the New Warriors up through time and space sending them into the past or in Nova’s case an alternate timeline. Speedball gets sent into the “kinetic dimension” which is where his bubble powers come from. In New Warriors #49 Speedball reasons that this dimension and Speedball’s powers are a representation of time. Every moment that goes by more bubbles appear in the dimension by the billions but none of the old bubbles disappear. One bubble calls out to him and he muses that this bubble represents the exact moment in time he got his powers and he swallows it and experiences what appears to be a rather heavy epiphany. In issue 50 Speedball is rescued from the kinetic dimension by a new team of New Warriors and Speedball has forgotten whatever he learned about his origins. The New New Warriors rescue the New Warriors and defeat the time traveler known as the Sphinx…the Sphinx later merges with his distaff counterpart the female Sphinx into an androgynous being and they go back in time to live their lives over again. The Sphinx returns a year or so later to kill Speedball. At this time we learn that Speedball was replaced in issue 50 by a clone from the future with the buried memories of his descendant Darrion Grobe created as part of a plot to stop his insane time traveling father Ardent. The real Speedball was eventually freed from the kinetic dimension…and he also appears to have no memory of that secret the bubble showed him in issue 49.

@AdamWarlock

Ben didn’t go back to being the Thing because he really wanted to be the Thing again. At the time Sharon Ventura aka Ms. Marvel 2 was on the team as She-Thing while Ben had been turned human several issues earlier. Sharon had been unstable since being gang banged by the Power Broker’s Men and was becoming more and more bitter about being a Thing and where her relationship with Ben was heading now that he was human. Sharon betrayed the team to Doom so she could turn back into a human. Ben used Reed’s machines to do the opposite and turn back into the Thing because he didn’t want Sharon to be a Thing by herself. He did it out of pity for his mentally unstable insecure girlfriend.

That said Ben had come to peace with being a Thing when he and Sharon were Things together. Once he was back to being a Thing by himself again I think his insecurities came back. A part of me wonders if the reason he overcame his mind block and turned back into Ben when he was dating Sharon was a result of him actually overcoming the mind block instead of that accident that turned him human (maybe it was just a catalyst). He didn’t hate being the Thing any more and came to embrace it…once he found self acceptance he was cured.

I would like one article of this column regarding Jean Gray. At first, she became the Phoenix, went mad, destroyed a solar system and then suicided. Then, it was revealed that no, that the Jean Gray that was the Phoenix, was only a construct of the Phoenix Force and that the real Jean Gray was never the Phoenix.

But now? Even if nobody ever says something like “Remember the time Jean destroyed a star?”, Jean and the beings that share her DNA have manifested Phoenix powers multiple times. If they have access to that power, why was it a construct created by the Phoenix Force the Jean Gray that went mad? And why the real Jean Gray didn’t went mad when she really manifested Phoenix powers? It seems as if that her doppelgänger sometimes existed, and sometimes as if it was Jean herself doing stuff, even if comics have never said that explicitly. Nevertheless, at times it seems like the line get blurred between Jean Gray and her Phoenix Force created duplicate. So it isn’t exactly a Forsaken and Forgotten storyline, but it seems on its way to becoming one.

“what aboout the Aquaman “Sub Diego” arc? We never did find out who was responsible for the sinking of half of San Diego or why? Who was Mr. J?”

I think this was partly resolved later on–In Aquaman: Sword of Atlantis #56 [2007], Cyborg and Aquaman uncovered information about the sinking of San Diego. In that issue, readers are introduced to Greg Jupiter, Loren Jupiter’s previously unseen brother. Greg Jupiter ran Pro-Gene Tech, which was responsible for the sinking of San Diego and transforming its citizens into water breathers.

They change her into Generic Anime Ninja Chick 2.0 due to Elektra, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Ninja Gaiden, and G.I. Joe Ninjas.

A very bad snuff film is what this amounts to. Back to your daily lives, all of you! Shoo!

@Max_Power, the status of Jean Grey’s connection to the Phoenix has changed many times over the years. Originally, Jean evolved into the Phoenix after dying during and being reborn as a being of psychic energy. Her new powers were simply the ultimate extension of her telepathic/telekinetic abilities. After Jean died in Uncanny X-Men # 137, Marvel wanted to use her for their new X-Factor book, so they decided to explain away the whole thing as an entity–the Phoenix Force–that merely copied Jean’s form and memories and took her place while the real Jean was in suspended animation. Eventually, that retcon was retconned as well; the back-up. Feature in Classic X-Men # 8 revealed that the Phoenix Force bonded with Jean in a new form that was a perfect duplicate of Jean’s body. A small spark of Jean’s soul remained in her original body, and it was that Jean that returned to life after the events of Avengers # 263 and Fantastic Four #287 (which lead into X-Factor # 1). X-Factor #38 sees the Phoenix Force restore the half of Jean it was bonded with.

It is also eventually revealed that Jean is the Phoenix Force’s Prime Host, the White Phoenix of The Crown. In Phoenix:Endsong, Jean states that she has always been Phoenix, and the end of the mini-series seemed to imply that Jean and the Phoenix Force were now fully merged into one Entity.

Didn’t the Kents adopt somebody BEFORE they found Clark? Wasn’t Bruce actually Thomas and Martha’s second child? Didn’t Lex Luthor (pre-Crisis) destroy an entire planet, with his wife and child? (Around the same time he got the armor look?)

Fortunately, no one will ever abandon or forsake Mopee.

They really need to explain the Jean/Pheonix thing. Especially since this AVX thing is happening, but judging by the past few years of Marvel, they won’t explain anything.

@blackphoenix77: The Phoenix Force was a thing long before Jean came back in X-Factor. It had shown up (and possessed Cyclops) in Claremont’s X-Men/Teen Titans and Rachel became it’s host in X-Men #199 (iirc).

Please someone tell me, did i dream that captain america once had super strengh?

Sorry that should have read ‘strength’. I gave up on the X-Men because of all the loose ends but did they ever explain who was Erik the Red when he wasn’t Cyclops?

@ogeorge: Yes he did, in Englehart’s 70′s run. I remember him tearing down a steel wall with his bare hands (though it was obviously difficult and took time). It was around the time the Falcon got his wings (early 70′s). I missed a few issues after that, but I don’t think they ever resolved it. It was just ignored afterward.

In regardds to the Ben Reilly Spider-man article. Having read some of the BND stuff and the Ben Reilly solo Spider-man stuff when he donned the new costume. I have to say, the Ben Reilly stuff IS IT. It’s not the fact that he wasn’t on 3 different teams and changed costume every few issues. Stuff could still happen. No doubt he’d ended up working for Jonah and only Robbie would have a clue what was going on. He was Spider-MAN and not reduced to jokey guy.

Oh… Aunt May was dead. Can’t complain about that.

Did they ever reveal what was up with Gambit and Sinister regarding that little package he was given?

@Alex: Well, in What If 100 they *kinda* revealed the Gambit/Sinister package, in a pretty neat little story. Maybe the creators, Ivan Velez or Klaus Janson will pop in to say something about it. I don’t know what the “real” solution to it was, though.

I think that in Gruenwald’s run on Cap, he asserted the strength boost had worn off.

“Fred le Mallrat
February 27, 2012 at 2:18 am

. . . or this mention by an elf in an early X-men story by Claremont/Cockrumm in the Bmack tom’s Castle where it is said that Wolvie is not human.”

At the time, I believe they were toying with the idea that Wolverine was, in fact, a wolverine that had been mutated into human form by the High Evolutionary.

How about when Tony Stark was brought from the past and became teen Iron Man, shuffled off to the reborn universe and when they returned to regular continuity, he was grown up Iron Man again.

We need another category: Comic Artists and writers that draw themselves (ie star as a cameo) in the books where they are the writer/artist.
I have definitely seen Walt Simonson, John Byrne and Chris Claremont make appearances.

Mike

G’nort’s survival is something that keeps being abandoned. He was hinted as being killed off-screen in an issue of Guy Gardner Warrior (when Guy rescues a group of former Lanterns, they talk of the horrible things done to “the dog”), then he shows up alive and well in a Green Lantern Secret Files, then there’s a gravestone with his name in Guide to the DC Universe 2000 Secret Files, then he’s alive again but now a Darkstar in I Can’t Believe It’s Not the Justice League, then he’s a GL again in the Guy Gardner Collateral Damage mini but made grim and gritty, and finally treated as “presumed dead” in the GL Sinestro Corps Secret Files. Now he doesn’t even exist in the NuDCU! Poor guy, he’s certainly been abandoned and forsaken.

And what about Batman’s “simple” brother ? Now, that’s a story that should be retold (yes, I know, Earth-B, but still…)

the one i have been wanting to see a end to sub plot is the deathwing Storyline from team titans and Titans storyline. orginally he was a future version of dick but was corrupted by raven and then i have never seen a resoultion to this storyline.

Jacob, I don’t believe there was a resolution. In fact I’m certain of it. Given how little I cared for Titans at that point, I doubt I’d have liked it anyway–but yeah, I’m curious too.

Oh, now here’s an abandoned storyline of sorts. Dr. Strange finally retires in the early 1970s having decided he’s done enough he can walk away. Then a few months later, he’s forced back into action by an attack by Baron Mordo–I’ve always assumed this was because Roy Thomas had to substitute him in the Defenders for the Silver Surfer in Titans Three.

Can anyone tell me the issues of that Dr. Strange retirement (and also his comeback) story?

I always wonder what happened to the ultra rocky Ben Grimm & She-Thing….

With the reboot we’ll never know what the deal with Deathwing was. Was Deathwing still around after the last issue of Team Titans? I just assumed he was one of Extant’s army and disappeared with the rest.

@Gerard Morvan – check out the new issues of Batman. # 10 answers your question I think regarding Bruce’s ‘brother’ (Assuming you mean Thomas Jr.)

Sherman, Deathwing did survive: As pointed out in the post on the second Terra, he, Mirage and Terra were all taken from the present by the Time Trapper and inserted into Extant’s alt. future as sleeper agents among Extrant’s sleeper agents. Later, after he’d fallen in with evil Raven, Deathwing tells Mirage that he’s learned who he really is and she’d completely freak out if she knew the unbelievable truth. But Wolfman never got around to revealing it and nobody else was interested in following up (not that I can blame them–Deathwing never impressed me).

I always thought that the Answer to who Deathwing was would be a good way to return Jason Todd to the DCU and how they could explain the similar look to Dick and the easyness in how he turned bad. And also explain how raven was familar with him since jason was with the titans on a few missions before he died.

Jacob, I like that a lot better than the resurrection of Jason Todd we actually got.

There should be one about is Polaris Magneto’s daughter or not? At one point she thought she was because of the similar powers and some other stuff, then supposedly there was some proof they weren’t related (and later for a while even her powers changed and she was apparently Zaladane’s sister) then suddenly without any real explanation that I’d ever seen she was claiming to be ol’ helmet head’s kid again (but also sort of gone crazy around the time).

@ Frank Rook: I share your confusion, etc. regarding G’Nort. He should’ve been as important a fun character as was Ambush Bug. However, as seen by Dan Didio’s reign @ DC, it’s not fun unless *they* think it’s fun. Thank god for all the pre-Didio trades of DCU stories..

What about Sunspot being Reignfire?

What about the whole Avengers: Timeslide storyline?

“At one point she thought she was because of the similar powers”

No, JD at one point she thought she was because in her founding storyline in 1968 Magneto says she is his daughter and that was the central theme of the storyline which was undone in 1969 in a very poor manner and I am not just talking about her parentage, but also that the Magneto in the storyline was retconned into a robot. Honestly, the whole thing read more like a bad editoral intervention then a planned decision by the writers from early on.

I did have a question. At the end of Marvel’s House of M, after the Scarlet Witch said “no more mutants”, apart of the earth was missing. Was that missing part of the earth ever explained?

That was just the dark side of Earth. The side not facing the sun. It was not a missing part of Earth. The last page was just to note that there was now this collection of energy that was loose as a result of the Scarlet Witch’s “no more mutants” deal. That bundle of energy showed up in X-Men: Deadly Genesis (it awoke Vulcan) and in the New Avengers (where it powered a mutant named Michael Pointer with all the powers of the de-powered mutants).

Thanks for the answer.

Hey Brian,

What about Shatterstar’s origins. They have said he had DNA identical to Longshot, then did the thing with Benjamin Russell, but he also comes from 100 years in Longshot’s future. I also second the Cannonball thing, but they reason they abandoned it was because they were afraid of lawsuits from Highlander.

The trouble with Cannonball is that I don’t believe they ever actually forsaked it. Just abandoned it. And as for the Highlander thing, you might want to check out the Comic Book Legends Revealed archive.

You should add everything Geoff Johns was going to do after Flash Rebirth.

What happened to MJ’s baby?

On Earth-616, she apparently died; on another Earth, she grew up to be Spider-Girl and had her own series for more than ten years!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spider-Girl

I’m pretty sure Spider-Man’s daughter was still alive before Parker made the deal with Mephisto.

If I remember right, Mephisto was interacting with Parker with the appearance of his daughter. After he sold his marriage, Mephisto revealed to him that he lost her.

Now, she never existed.

I believe that was the daughter he would have had with MJ in the future. Why would he show the baby that Norman apparently kills. This is so skewed.

I’d really like to know the back story on WHEN the Punisher offed himself and became an avenging angel. I know that during the beginning of Ennis’ run, someone on the letters page asked what the thing on the Punisher’s forehead meant. The answer was, “Mistake”.

I’d like to see a spotlight on one of the most famous abandoned storylines I can remember … Steve Gerber’s murderous elf story in Defenders. When he left the series the next writer had the little guy run over by a truck, as I recall. Would be nice to find out what Gerber planned to do with said elf!

I think Brian covered that somewhere–the gist of it was, Gerber never planned to do anything but leave it as a loose end, or am I misremembering?

What about Cyclops containing a portion of the Void in his own mind pre-Phoenix five?

[...] have missed the entire world. Well CBR knows exactly how you feel, and have put together a list of forgotten story-lines that will help you remember and hopefully give you some insight. Via Comic Book [...]

heres an abandoned retconned thread. at the end of batman long shadows dick finds a usb drive in jasons memorial case that has info on his parents death. we never find out what was up with that

Mysterio committed suicide in Daredevil….oh wait no he didn’t!?

This column needs a special devoted to all the stories dropped with the advent of the new DCU

It would be an idea to reverse-number the countdown on this page so the newest entry is first. It’s a little annoying clicking the link and having to scroll down to the end of the page to find and click another link that leads you to eventually read what you wanted to see in the first place. Just a thought.

I remember reading the story revealing Ned as the Hobgoblin and thought it made no sense, pretty much for the same reasons that Mary Jane lays out in “Hobgoblin Lives”. How in the world would four regular men take him out so easily when he could fight Spider-man to a standstill? And, here he was this big master criminal and he becomes this big whiner? And, how lame to reveal that this big villain that’s been getting all this build-up was killed off in a separate one-shot that had nothing to do with his ongoing storyline. “Hobgoblin Lives” I thought reconciled straightened out a lot of inconsistencies and lame storytelling with some enjoyable art.

Here is a great one I have been wondering about for years. Where was Dazzler for all those years. She popped up in the Xmen one day and joined Jean’s Xmen (with Northstar, and some new mutants including a brainwashed Frenzy). THey have never discussed what was going on there.

@Edlove:I agree with you. I have just read it.
I just want to say thanks for the poster! Looking forward to your next posts.