In this feature we examine comic book stories and ideas that were not only abandoned, but also had the stories/plots specifically "overturned" by a later writer (as if they were a legal precedent). Click here for an archive of all the previous editions of The Abandoned An' Forsaked. Feel free to e-mail me at bcronin@comicbookresources.com if you have any suggestions for future editions of this feature.
Today, based on a suggestion by a few different readers (the last two I saw were Joe D. and percane), we look at the Beyonder's history with retcons...
The Beyonder first showed up in the first issue of Marvel Super Heroes Secret Wars #1 (by Jim Shooter, Mike Zeck and John Beatty), where he's basically literally the Deus Ex Machina of the story, explaining why a whole bunch of heroes fight a whole bunch of villains for 12 issues...
Towards the end of the series, Doctor Doom actually succeeds in taking over the Beyonder's powers, but he ultimately loses them and the Beyonder leaves everyone alone as the series comes to an end.
He shows up a couple of years later in Secret Wars II #1 (by Shooter, Al Milgrom and Steve Leialoha), where he now wants to experience what it means to be a human...
After creating a body based on Captain America's body, he adopts his most familiar human shape, that of a Michael Jackson (circa 1985)-esque looking dude...
At the end of the series, he is seemingly destroyed...
A few years later, though, in the pages of Fantastic Four #319 (by Steve Englehart, Keith Pollard and Joe Sinnott), we basically got Secret Wars III, as the FF and Doctor Doom team-up to find the Beyonder, but once they do, two other cosmic beings show up!
After a brief fight (which seems mostly designed to show that the Beyonder ISN'T more powerful than them), they basically explain to the Beyonder that he and Molecule Man or each one half of a cosmic cube...
They ultimately agree to form the cosmic cube...
While that isn't the end of their story, precisely, as future writers couldn't just leave it well enough alone, so both the Molecule Man and the "Beyonder" (quotes because now the being is given other names) were brought back for stories repeatedly, but the Cosmic Cube part was kept standard. It was just a case where they routinely split FROM the shared Cosmic Cube for misadventures.
So that was the case, until New Avengers: Illuminati #3.
Read on to see the surprising new origin for the Beyonder...
New Avengers: Illuminati was a five-issue mini-series by Brian Michael Bendis, Jimmy Cheung and Mark Morales that examined the untold history of the Illuminati, a small group of superheroes who, in effect, secretly control the Marvel Universe from behind-the-scenes.
In #3, Professor X reveals that he read the Beyonder's mind at the start of Secret Wars and he discovered a secret...
They go visit the Beyonder in outer space and he more or less confirms this new origin...
In the end, Black Bolt basically told him to go away, and he did so (presumably this was an alternate take on the ending of Secret Wars II)...
Recently, in the long story leading to the current Secret Wars storyline, Jonathan Hickman revealed that the people behind the destruction of the multiverse was specifically a GROUP of beings known as the Beyonder. He explained in an interview that the New Avengers: Illuminati story was just a construct of the Beyonder (which is a pretty clever solution, to be honest) and in New Avengers #30 (by Jonathan Hickman, Dalibor Talijac and Rick Magyar), Yellowjacket reveals that the Beyonder the Marvel Universe has been dealing with was actually just a child version of the Beyonders...
An interesting aspect of this retcon (or reversion of a retcon?) is that it returns the Beyonder to the extra-special powerful being that he was early on and not just "one of many cosmic beings."
Okay, that's it for Abandoned an' Forsaked! Feel free to drop me an e-mail if you have an idea for future installments. My e-mail is bcronin@comicbookresources.com.