New Brevoort Formspring

Retcon? It’s a story. You can’t retcon within a story–only a later story can retcon a previous one.

And obviously, your reading experience is going to be your own. But that tension you’re talking about exists largely within your own head.

Quite often, our fans decide that they “know” what’s going to happen, and they trot out their expert and cynical opinions–which then get revised when they don’t quite line up with expectations. Right now, there are some SUPERIOR SPIDER-MAN readers who are triumphantly crying, “Called it!” because Peter Parker is back-never mind that they predicted he’d be back in 6 issues, then 12, then definitely by issue #25, and so forth. So much energy devoted to not enjoying the stories that you’re reading. And all because of cynicism.

I would point you towards Rick’s run on UNCANNY X-FORCE, a series that was highly regarded for the duration of its run, as evidence of how even bits of plot and character that seemed like throw-aways or inconsequential at the start came to be essential by the time of its climax, and how those eventual pay-offs were worth it for having been built on a long-established foundation. Rick is constructing in no different a manner here, so any expectation that what you’re reading is somehow filler, or that you can just cynically take the position that, “Ahh, it’s all going to be retconned” is maybe missing the forest for the trees.

Plus, and this is pretty basic: I haven’t seen CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE WINTER SOLDIER yet, but I feel relatively confident in my supposition that Cap probably survives it, and emerges victorious. And that, along the way, the filmmakers are going to put Cap in peril or jeopardy repeatedly. That first knowledge doesn’t take away from the second bit, though. Tell me a story! Let me get caught up in it as a viewer and feel concern or dread or fear or exultation at how Cap, or Falcon, or Widow, or Fury move into and out of danger, and in the end save the day. if you can’t make that most basic pact with your entertainment: “I agree to suspend disbelief for as long as you keep me engaged” then what’s the point of even reading stories in the first place? They all end the exact same way: everybody dies in the end. Crap, now I’ve spoiled life for everyone.