The superhero Wolverine time travels and changes storylines. On
Torchwood, there's a pill popped to alter the past. The narrative
technique of retroactive continuity seems rife lately, given all
the world-building in comics. Andrew J. Friedenthal deems
retroactive continuity, or "retconning," as a force with many
implications forhow Americans view history and culture. Friedenthal
examines this phenomenon in a range of media, from its beginnings
in comic books and now its widespread shift into television, film,
and digital media. Retconning has reached its present form as a
result of the complicated workings of superhero comics. In comic
books and other narratives, retconning often seems utilized to
literally rewrite some aspect of a character's past, either to keep
that character more contemporary, to erase storiesfrom continuity
that no longer fit, or to create future story potential. From
comics, retconning has spread extensively, to long-form,
continuity-rich dramas on television, such as Buffy the Vampire
Slayer, Lost, and beyond. Friedenthal explains that in a culture
saturated by editable media, where interest groups argue over
Wikipedia pages and politicians can immediately delete questionable
tweets, the retcon serves as a perfect metaphor for the ways in
which history, and our access to information overall, has become
endlessly malleable. In the first book to focus on this subject,
Friedenthal regards the editable Internet hyperlink, rather than
the stable printed footnote, as the de facto source of information
in America today. To embrace retroactive continuity in fictional
media means accepting that the past itself is not a stable element,
but rather something constantly in contentious flux. Due to
retconning's ubiquity within our media, we have grown familiar with
narratives as inherentlyunstable, a realization that deeply affects
how we understand the world.
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