beardedinlair, retconned, new origin

[bearded]

it seems the writers of beardedinlair have decided that he's no longer a skinner, he's now a mesher, and has been since the beginning.
i don't know who to blame, quesada or bendis.  i mean, golden age bearded was a marginal skinner at best, and the whole kitbashing backstory never got resolved at all.  now we are supposed to ignore all that and pretend he's been trying to mesh all this time, and for freedom force, no less!
at least the writers are consistant with his jumping from project to project, and only finishing half what he started.

[Alaric]

I was always more of a fan of the original, Pulp-era beardedinlair- the one who was a freelance fence-painter-for-hire, and whose fence-painting exploits often carried him to far-off, exotic parts of the world, where strange events occurred, and thrilling adventure could be found.

[Sword]

Sure the pulp stuff was good, but what about Beardedinlair, master thief, or the 1980's grim and gritty BiL?

[Previsionary]

I think the Best Bil was the "what if/else world" Bil. The Bil that was really an animated statue that came to life thanks to the powers of a magical spoon to end the rule of "Teh Milk Men ten-10 (silent)".

Yep...definently the best. He even had a milk blaster ray gun destroyer beam (full name).

[tommyboy]

The Beardedinlair character was created in 1918 by Chester J. Lampwick as a means to sell war bonds to the germans, but Lampwick lost the character to Roger Myers Sr. in a vicious drunken all-night parchesi tournament.
Myers used the character as a mascot for soap powder but his popularity soon led to his own 5 page comic strip in "Moribund Funnies" an anthology Myers co-published. From there the strip expanded, becoming "Bearded's Moribund Funnies" and then the spin-off "Li'l Beardlessinlair" followed by the dubious "Lady Bearded".
Most of the things we now associate with the character, such as Beard-onite (the substance made from beard clippings that could kill him), the Beardcave  and Ace the Beard-hound Detective Dog originated in the popular 1930s radio serials, where the voice of Beardedinlair was played by an amnesiac Gary Cooper.
By the end of WW2 Beardedinlair was beginning to be less popular, and was briefly relaunched as Mustachio, spyhunter, as reimagined by Simon and Kirby. This lasted for three and a half panels till poor sales caused its cancellation.
In the 1950s the trademark was bought by EC comics and he became the host and narrator of "Hirsute Horror Tales", an unlikely anthology of stories concerning beards and facial hair in general.
Following the collapse of EC comics there was a period of confusion in the early sixties when both Marvel and DC thought that they had the rights to the character, leading to his appearance in the Justice League of America #12 as the champion of Earth-Beard in the slightly less popular than usual "Crisis on Earth Beard" crossover, whilst simultaneously debuting as the Bearded Surfer in Fantastic Four Annual 2. In response to reader apathy, both the DC and Marvel versions were killed off, by runaway combine harvester and falling down a lift shaft soon after.
In the seventies Atlas comics published The Iron Beard, a re-imagining of the character as a ghostly alien barbarian monster superhero with an iron hand, which suprisingly lasted until 2006.
It was then that the now notorious retcon "Crisis of Infinite Beard Wars inati" told us everything we had ever known about everything was wrong! It split the internet into 32 segments, then joined it back up again when they realised that wouldn't work. throwing away everything that had come before, including all known human languages, it dealt with the death and degradation of everyone who had ever lived, in an epic story told entirely without captions, thought balloons, pictures, page numbers, footnotes, words, sound effects or punctuation. It was a massive best seller, remaining at the top of the charts and spawning a feeding frenzy of imitation.
Beardedinlair was bacK!
....or was he?

Next: the story they didn't want me to make up..

[The Phantom Eyebrow]

Well so long as they keep something of the spirit of the original then I'm okay with this retconning.  I mean to say, it wasn't easy setting out as a facial hair themed hero, but the influence of Bearded (knowing that he had been there, done that and bought the trimmer) was a great help to a young, neophyte Phantom.

[ow_tiobe_sb]

a great help to a young, neophyte Phantom.

"Neophyte phantom?"  Was that before or after TPE was retconned for the third time into that brawny lass with the hair extensions and a penchant for sitting on landmines?  I believe I started reading TPE comics in the late eighties, when the various Eyebrow titles ("The Incredible, Amazing, Fantastic, Edible Phantom Eyebrow," "Eyebrow Presents...," "What Eyebrow?" et al.) were in a period of serious transition, not to mention soul searching.  I still miss the blue and gold outfit s/he used to wear, but I suppose the latest coral and mauve unitard (now apparently a gift from the mysterious benefactor, Richard-Simmons Man, not, as we originally were told, a little number that TPE stitched together in his olde magical curiosity and barber shoppe back in tha day) has begun to grow on me.

ow_tiobe_sb
Phantom Bunburyist and The Prat in the Hat

P.S. Tommy's post deserves its own FR retcon thread in the Abattoir.  I fell out of my chair reading it. :lol: