Board Thread:Policies/@comment-16461120-20161107075255/@comment-4651179-20161108235611

Nausiated wrote: If we're speaking strictly from a 616 standpoint, these later tellings usually update dated references and sometimes add embellishments that expand on events. A lot of it just reframes the story to fit the era in which it was written, usually putting the points that were changed in the history into the realm of topical references. Things like how much money Peter Parker could have won fighting Crusher Hogan and where the Fantastic Four were travelling on their space flight are perfect examples.

Those changes are besides the point I was making. I'm talking about something like the differences between Iron Man's origin in Tales of Suspense #39 and his retelling in Iron Man #267, which feature such things like Stark getting ambushed by enemy forces instead of just directly tripping the booby trap, or Yinsen being by Stark's bedside when he wakes up in Wong-Chu's camp instead of being brought to Stark later on, or even the retelling from Iron Man #1 that changes quite a lot of the dialogue.

The comparison with movie adaptations comes from one bit I recall from that has the scene of Peter Parker trying to call MJ and the scene of Peter realizing that his costume ruined his laundry combined by having Peter call MJ while doing his laundry (manually, too, instead of in a laundromat).

Nausiated wrote: Again, I'm not necessarily seeing the need to bandy the phrase "retcon" and just move on.

Also the analysis on Ulysses Klaw doesn't necessarily negate one profession being valid over the other or creates any continuity issues. In that, Dutch is merely a language, not a nationality. The Dutch language is a commonly used language in Belgium.

The fact that one story presents him as a physicist and another depicts him as a hired assassin don't truly negate themselves either. The idea that a character could shift professions does require a bit of suspension of disbelief, but certainly given the fictional works we are speaking of here, it's not so outlandish to consider. Another, more plausible, explanation could be that perhaps Klaw was merely posing as a physicist. The Marvel Universe is rife with examples of characters posing in professions while really being hired mercs, spies, or other neer-do-wells.

The differences between Klaw's origin go further than simply his profession. One origin has him kill T'Chaka at the Bilderberg conference for political reasons while other has him kill T'Chaka because he refused to give him Vibranium. It's not just readers being given contradicting facts but also contradicting events.