10 Unbelievable Retcons That Made Comics Worse

7. Daredevil's Identity Gets Made Secret Again - All-New, All-Different Daredevil

There's plenty to love about All-New, All-Different Daredevil, and it would be blatantly erroneous to suggest that it didn't try new and exciting things. Writer Charles Soule utilised his experience as a lawyer to tell a fantastic story about the Man Without Fear campaigning to allow superheroes to testify under their secret identities, and it was clearly one of the better Marvel titles of the last five years.

But (and this is a big but), did it really have to come at the expense of one of the more important changes in the character's recent history? I'm of course referring to the decision to erase the events of the Murdock Papers from active Marvel continuity, which resulted in Daredevil's true identity being revealed to the public.

Said story, helmed by Brian Bendis and Alex Maleev, went on to inform the next decade of Daredevil comics. Ed Brubaker and Michael Lark had to factor it into their run, and so too did Mark Waid and Chris Samnee. Daredevil's double life being public had become a key pillar of the character in the modern day, but then came the 2015 Daredevil Netflix series, which obviously started off with Matt's secret identity firmly in place.

In what was likely an attempt to link the comics up with the show, Marvel outfitted Murdock in a black costume and put his identity back in the bottle, courtesy of some assistance from the Purple Children erasing the world's memory of his alter-ego - including his closest allies. When DD met up with said allies again, it felt like watching conversations that happened decades ago. Without that shared history, those team-ups were nowhere near as interesting.