Board Thread:Administrative/@comment-3048593-20131202020702/@comment-61371-20131203022950

Well, first off, I think we're confusing "rewriting" with "destroying." DC's various crises tend to rewrite their main reality. Events suddenly never happened because reality was rewritten. With Marvel, most events that get "rewritten" get shunted off to alternate realities. Age of Ultron shines brightly. House of M. Age of Apocalypse. Age of X. I think you get my point. All of these saw the mainstream MU be "rewritten", but ultimately the main universe was restored and all of these were shunted off to exist as alternate realities. They still exist, just elsewhere. Rarely, if ever, is a Marvel reality unmade. Destroyed, yes. But unmade? I can't think of any, aside from MAYBE some of the Enchroachiverses. Even Earth-82432, which saw every entity wiped from existence by Michael Korvac, didn't result in that reality being unmade...just destroyed.

I'd equate what DC does with retconning on a MASSIVE scale. Marvel loves its retcons, too, but usually it isn't universe-wide, and usually characters aren't completely wiped from existence (as, say, Wally West was by DC). Occasionally characters get combined (1940's Hurricane/Makkari), but rarely does one character get completely replaced by another character (again...rarely. I'm positive there's an example that's not jumping readily to mind) and it not end up as an alternate reality.