10 Comic Book Supervillains Improved Through Retcon

Peter Merkel was triple-jointed, meaning that he could bend and contort his body into impossible positions. Throughout the Golden and Silver Ages, he bedeviled both the Flashes and was often a member of the Secret Societies. Finally, years of contortion took their toll and the elderly Merkel was in extreme pain.

Locating in Opal City, Merkel began to gather the homeless, lost, and disenfranchised to him. Using his skills at hypnosis and the promise of better days to turn the discarded into a cult that would commit evil in his name. Opal City was under fiery siege from the cult and the aging elder Starman Ted Knight could not handle it alone. He called in several of his Justice Society friends and they stemmed the tide. The captured Ragdoll gloated that he could run his cult from jail and that he would target all the loved ones of the assembled heroes. As the heroes pondered this, Ragdoll slipped his bonds and the heroes all fired at once, killing him.

Somehow surviving, Merkel was approached by the demon Neron, who gifted him with youth and mobility for his soul. Ragdoll turned up next in another incarnation of the Secret Society but was seemingly killed for good when he double-crossed the Society in an attempt to acquire the mask of Johnny Sorrow.