10 Unbelievable Retcons That Made Comics Worse

4. Erasing The Vietnam War - The History Of The Marvel Universe

Sliding timelines can be a tricky thing to navigate. On one hand they can afford writers a degree of freedom to not stress too much over continuity; on the other they can sometimes make things even more confusing than an old fashioned linear model, and can even encourage publishers to maintain the status quo at the expense of actual development.

Still, it's only recently that Marvel have attempted to address their own sliding timeline by providing a definitive chronology of the Marvel universe as it exists today. In 2019, seemingly vexed at having to constantly retcon what conflicts the likes of the Punisher and Iron Man fought in to maintain their age (both famously got their start during Vietnam, but have since appeared in the Gulf War and later the War on Terror), Marvel introduced something known as the "Siancong War."

Designed to replace the Vietnam War and give Marvel a semi-timeless conflict from which to draw from, this particular retcon basically flies in the face of the publisher's age old commitment to reflect the world outside our window. It sanitises the Marvel universe on one hand, and bizarrely reiterates the publisher's old fascination with anti-Asian imagery.

A weird and unnecessary change, all things considered.