Andy E. Nystrom wrote:

Not necessarily humorous, but there was that controversial retcon in the final issue of Mockingbird. While still acknowledging her role in Phantom Rider's death, she mentions that memory isn't perfect and that she recalls her sex with him as consensual. The problem with that is, if she wasn't raped then when she fought him and he died it was because she had consensual sex with him and then regretted it and/or wanted to hide this from her husband before bring brought back to the present. Even if she was raped but simply doesn't recall it, it's still a problem because then in her mind she was willing to kill a man over consensual sex. Either way it makes her seem like a bit of a sociopath, when I suspect that writer Chelsea Cain only wanted to have one fewer female character raped.

Yeah. Good intentions, but...

Andy E. Nystrom wrote:

Here's a more lighthearted example I mentioned years ago on WWtW. From Captain America #318. I was going to include image scans but I don't have an online pace to store images and max size for a post is 65 KB.
Page 1-2:Something happens to cause the Serpent Saucer to crash
Page 3: Death Adder, forced to make his way on foot hails a cab
Page 4: Only the driver turns out to be the Scourge of the Underworld, who no doubt had been tracking him and caused the saucer crash (unless another agent did the latter).
It's a nice well paced dramatic scene. So it was quite some time before I really thought this through and realized that in between shooting down the Serpent Saucer and killing Death Adder, the Scourge of the Underworld apparently decided to pick up a fare.
 

Heh. Gotta pay for those explosive bullets somehow.

Andy E. Nystrom wrote:

Another case: In The Thing #3, written by John Byrne, Quicksilver wants Luna to be exposed to the Terrigen Mists but Crystal doesn't. in order to help prevent this, Lockjaw reminds everyone present that he was born humanoid until he was exposed to the Terrigen Mists, much to the shock of the Thing. Most of the Inhumans present, including Gorgon, on the other hand don't seem shocked by this revelation, as if they already knew.

In a later issue of X-Factor, written by Peter David, who's normally better at thinking things through, Quicksilver tells X-Factor that this was a practical joke by the hidden Karnak and Gorgon. There are quite a number of problems with this. First off, it's unlikely that the whole idea of putting Luna through the Terrigen Mists was a prank, as this is was a major reason for Quicksilver and Crystal's marriage failing. Nor does it seem likely that the crisis was real but the Inhumans all decided to prank the Thing during the crisis, as this is what changed Quicksilver's mind. And had someone tried for levity during such a serious matter, someone would have called them out. And then there's the matter of the two Gorgons, the one who Thing saw and the one who was hidden. It could be an imposter but it's a reach. And even more so if you say that during such a crisis, Quicksilver would move Gorgon rapidly to have him seem to be in two places at once. There is one explanation that would work, that Quicksilver was trying to bury the Inhuman' dark secret, and if so that works, but should have been followed up on or at least made more clear to the reader that that is what Quicksilver was doing. However, that doesn't seem to be the direction that subsequent writers have gone. Even if you prefer Lockjaw to be a real dog, the retcon simply doesn't work.

Agreed. As a retcon it falls apart in a number of ways, most of which you have outlined. My personal pet theory is that Lockjaw isn't just an Inhuman, but he's one of the Royal Family. Additionally, even most Inhumans don't know he's one of them; heck, not even most of the Royals, at least not prior to him speaking to the Thing (which explains why they treated him like a dog). It's a deep, dark secret of the family kept quiet because it would shake the foundation of Inhuman society to the core. Lockjaw revealed his true nature in front of other Inhumans too, and that genie had to be put back into the bottle, hence the hasty and frankly poorly thought out cover story. It's not that he looks like a dog - other Inhumans have similarly extreme forms. It's that he was born in that form, because, like his younger twin brother Black Bolt, he was exposed to the mists in utero. He's not just a doglike Inhuman, he's the rightful king.

Andy E. Nystrom wrote:

I like that theory. It could also work if Lockjaw was Black Bolt and Medusa's son. It would give Medusa even greater reason to oppose Luna' being exposed to the mists (as per the Thing story) and explain why the two seem to be childless. There are probably Inhuman citizens concerned about the effects of cousins having a child together, and Lockjaw could reinforce any in-breeding related prejudices. With Lockjaw being one result, Black Bolt and Medusa might be gun shy about trying again.

A few problems with that one though - first, we've seen Lockjaw around in flashbacks to when Black Bolt and Medusa were young, so unless they had a kid very young and out of wedlock he can't be their child. Second, there was zero gun shyness about having their kid Ahura, on their part at least (the Genetics Council had major problems with it, not because they were cousins but because they were concerned about the child potentially having powers even more devastating than Black Bolt's). Third, to Inhumans marrying cousins is very normal - though to be clear, when they call one another cousins many of them aren't first cousins.

To explain that last: when we were trying to parse the Royal's family tree, especially trying to figure out how Dark Riders, Unspoken, etc., all fit in (as they too are Royals), there was a lengthy discussion with editorial. Attilan had a self-enclosed population (this discussion happened before the revelation of other Inhuman cities, but even with those, there was no real mixing of Attilan Inhumans with others, so their gene pool remained finite). I don't recall the exact figure given off the top of my head, but it's only in the lowish thousands. Karnak actually complains in the Inhumans Graphic Novel that "we're inbreeding so much now that the next generation will be born without tongues."

So everyone in Attilan is related to everyone else; it's just a question of how distantly. You've got to recall that even in a more open gene pool with many more people you can trace back family trees and find most people are distantly related - to cite a famous example, George W. Bush and Barack Obama are distant cousins (I'll come back to that). On the other hand, if you look at the established Royal Family's lineage:

you can see that apparently Black Bolt and Medusa aren't actually related, nor is Gorgon related to anyone other than Black Bolt and Maximus. And yet they constantly call one another cousin. One outcome of our discussion with editorial on this was that they are cousins, just not first cousins. Most people know there's something called second cousins, third cousins, cousins once removed, etc., even if they don't exactly know what that entails. We established that the Royals use "cousin" as a catch-all for any of these, because their family tree is so intertwined thanks to the small gene pool that it gets too confusing to calculate the exact relationship for anything further out than uncle, aunt, mother or father. Any relation who isn't in your direct lineage is a cousin to them. 

And to explain the difference between first cousin, second cousin, once removed, etc., because I learned that when working on the above (who says comics don't teach you anything?): People think of cousins as meaning your parents and theirs are siblings; your aunt or uncle's kids are your cousins. That's true, but it's not the best way to look at it. (First) Cousins share grandparents. Second cousins share great-grandparents. Third cousins share great-great grandparents. Etc. Once removed is a single generation shift; your first cousins once removed are your cousins' kids. Twice removed would be your cousins' grandchildren. Etc. In the real world example, apparently Obama and Bush are tenth cousins once removed. Related but only very distantly, and not entirely unlikely - when you go back that many generations you have 2048 potential great-great.... grandparents each (so 4096 between you), and you only need to have one in common way back around 270 years ago when the US population was less than a million people. It's not really surprising that they are related; it's surprising that they are that "closely" related.

This isn't really a comic example per se, but it involves comic characters. Overall, the Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends episode 7 Little Superheroes is a fun homage to Agatha Christie's Ten Little Indians/And Then there Were None (We can pretend not to notice that a kid's cartoon stoy was based on a book originally titled Ten Little N-Word as race doesn't really factor into the cartoon). In that episode The Chameleon manages to gather Spider-Man, Iceman, Firestar, Sub-Mariner, Captain America, Shanna, and Doctor Strange and play them off each other. However, what he didn't plan for is that Ms. Lion tags along and her (the cartoon version is female I'm pretty sure) presence saves the day. So you have some pretty heavy hitters in there (Doctor Strange and Sub-Mariner in particular) and even Shanna should be able to beat on the Chameleon on her own and yet they would have all been killed if not for an ordinary dog with at best slightly above average canine intelligence. This raises questions about their overall competency if even a pet would tip the scale. "Oh no, Dr. Doom is attacking. We have a bunch of powerhouses but who has a Siamese cat?" "Magneto's turned bad again! The X-Men, Avengers, and Fantastic Four are here but does anyone have a budgie?"

Andy E. Nystrom wrote:

The earliest issues of The 'Nam took a highly realistic approach to the Vietnam war, but later the series moved more to the fantastic and even featured the Punisher during his time in Vietnam. However, Marvel also had a sliding timescale to keep characters from aging too rapidly (in fact this is why the MAX version of the character was declared to be an alternate reality to keep him in Vietnam. The thing is, the issues of The 'Nam according to the Punisher Index depict the 616 version. This all leads to the conclusion that some issues of The 'Nam must now take place in a war that began and ended after the Vietnam war.

https://www.cbr.com/marvel-comics-vietnam-war-sin-cong/

Marvel Superheroes #1 1990. Brother Voodoo takes control of a woman who spurned him for an extended period of time before he feels bad about it and releases her from her control. Even at that it would be a story in pretty poor taste for a superhero. I'd love to see a story where the Avenges find out and ban him from being a member of the team again; this is far beyond anything Hank Pym pulled during any of his mental breakdowns.

But that in of itself is just a portrayal that makes him look really bad. What makes "They didn't think that through" to me is the way he controls people: by having the ghost of his brother possess them. So when he was sexually assaulting her, and likely raping her, for an extended period of time, he was simultaneously being intimate with his own brother.
 

Looks like I misremembered, but in a way the actual version is even worse: she did love him, but he didn't trust in her love so he had Daniel possess her anyway. One more question comes to mind: Does Daniel have the ability to make decisions himself or is he fully under his brother's control? If the former, then he's a willing partner too, if the latter, Jericho's even more of a monster.

The art is actually by Fred Hembeck in serious mode, and it's the probably the most redeeming aspect of the story. Written by Scott Lobdell.

https://www.supermegamonkey.net/chronocomic/entries/marvel_super_heroes_1.shtml
http://www.marvunapp.com/Appendix3/tateloralee.htm

 

Andy E. Nystrom wrote:

Looks like I misremembered, but in a way the actual version is even worse: she did love him, but he didn't trust in her love so he had Daniel possess her anyway. One more question comes to mind: Does Daniel have the ability to make decisions himself or is he fully under his brother's control? If the former, then he's a willing partner too, if the latter, Jericho's even more of a monster.

The art is actually by Fred Hembeck in serious mode, and it's the probably the most redeeming aspect of the story. Written by Scott Lobdell.

https://www.supermegamonkey.net/chronocomic/entries/marvel_super_heroes_1.shtml
http://www.marvunapp.com/Appendix3/tateloralee.htm

 

....Why am I not surprised?

Here's one that I half-thought was already posted, as it's been discussed elsewhere. This relates to Justice League of America #220, written by Roy Thomas, with art by Chuck Patton, Romeo Tanghal, and Pablo Marcos. In order to explain why Black Canary seemed so young, and lower the age gap between her and Green Arrow, the story established that she was actually the daughter of the original. It seems the daughter didn't have control of her canary cry as an infant and so the mother had Johnny Thunder''s Thunderbolt take her away to his dimension where she grew to adulthood naked and in suspended animation. The Thunderbolt noted that he could not bring her back after but one gets the sense that no one tried very hard. Then the mother was fatally injured so Superman and Thunderbolt went to the daughter and implanted the mother's memories on her, forgetting the mother-daughter aspect but recalling the mother's husband; and of course now they *could* retrieve her. Years later the daughter learned the truth. Now this story is messed up in all kinds of ways, but let's go with the younger Black Canary almost for sure recalling her father making love to her mother as if he was making love to her; after all, it's extremely unlikely that spouses.in love with each other would never do "it".