10 Most Hated Retcon Changes In DC Comics

7. Your Favourite Heroes Are Actually Awful - Identity Crisis

identity crisis comic
DC Comics

No Crisis seems to have more of a divisive reputation than Brad Meltzer's Identity Crisis. It was the first to boast no distinctive cosmic influence, but its retcons were no less seismic.

Meltzer's comic is a curious one, and certainly a book that has its positives, but it wielded a certain kind of cruelty that proved too much for some of DC's readers. The story was effectively a murder mystery centred around the death of Sue Dibny, the wife of the Elongated Man. The Justice League tirelessly pursue every lead they can find, but only a select few know who the prime suspect actually is - Doctor Light.

Meltzer revealed in his comic that, back during the League's heyday, Light was considered something of a serious threat. For the majority of his existence the Teen Titans villain was portrayed as bumbling and incompetent, and Identity Crisis decided to account for this change by explaining how, after Light raped Sue Dibny in the Watchtower, Zatanna and a small number of Leaguers, among them Green Arrow, Black Canary and Barry Allen, conspired to magically alter Light's personality. He would have no memory of the event, but Zatanna's tinkering resulted in a complete change in the villain's mind, transforming him into the joke character seen up until that point.

Batman, who protested his colleagues' decision, also had his mind-wiped.

Whether you think Identity Crisis added some much needed ambiguity to some of DC's heroes or altered them for the worse, there's no denying just how controversial Meltzer's comic was upon release.

Advertisement
Content Producer/Presenter

WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well. In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.