Now that season one of Wandavision has wrapped up, Marvel Comics is reprinting and re-releasing several Scarlet Witch and Vision books. Fans who may have missed out on the physical copies from back in the day can breathe easier now for these sought-after titles. House of M, Tom King & Gabriel Hernandez’s’ Vision and The Saga of Wanda & Vision were not direct adaptations into the Disney Plus series but rather served as inspiration for the show. The blockbuster movies and streaming weekly episodes have increased an appetite for graphic novels and monthly readers. I mean, comics have been in a precarious position for decades now—their existence threatened most of the time. If the options are “comics written for mass appeal, thus keeping them unprecedented levels of awareness” and “no comics at all because they went under,” isn’t the choice obvious?
Comics are hardly sacrosanct. Continuity in comics doesn’t really matter. I mean, I care about continuity inside a single story arc, sure. But for decade-spanning series, I don’t see that as the be-all or end-all of relevancy. The very stories we read are often just written setups done out of a wish for the publisher to change things in hope of selling more issues and getting a renewed interest in the eyes of fans. In the end, it’s just about money. It’s business.
I get it that fans can be upset about continuity, but I figured at some point in my life that it’s a lot more enjoyable to take everything for what it is, for what this particular iteration or story has to say, than focusing on this “continuity” thing and be upset about it. I see that the same way as when stuff is “adapted from” or “inspired by”. I agree that it’s awkward to change stuff so that it matches something else, but I don’t see that as being too different that all those “big event series that will change the face of the whole universe” or something. Which is also to ultimately change things in order to create a renewed interest, so they try to pen a story as an excuse to make it happen. These characters and stories change and are remixed/reimagined all the time; as long as the writing is good I don’t care about the catalyst.
You will always have something to come back too – all those issues that have been published before the change. All of those are immutable. They won’t change. You can still enjoy them as they were originally printed. Retcon is another myth – retcons don’t change old stories. They cannot, because those stories still exist as is. They simply create new stories based on different assumptions that don’t match with previous stories. So yeah, Marvel doesn’t rewrite any stories (i.e. issues). They just create new issues that don’t match with the previous ones. Which can make those new issues suck, but cannot make the old issues retroactively suck unless you let them.
–Dagobot
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