Having recently raised an eyebrow at a Defenders tale which featured the return of Dracula to the land of the (un)living--the sight of which registered hardly any shock at all with Dr. Strange, even though the sorcerer had believed he had seen to Dracula's final death in a prior encounter--writer Roger Stern's later "fix" for that slight oversight brought to mind a number of other instances where writers were obliged to be creative in convoluted plots that were rather difficult to accept at face value, or, as was the case with Strange, a character needed to be extracted from a "tight spot" that was inadvertently left hanging and never resolved.
Following are a few such instances that sprang to mind for me, and I feel certain that many of you have some of your own to share, so please feel free to put on your thinking caps along with yours truly. :D
In terms of convoluted plots, it's hard to top this little gem, which opened the door to a virtual tsunami of clone convolution that went on for decades.
Send in the clones--and send them Marvel did, starting with Gwen, who turns out to be the creation of the Jackal, a.k.a. Prof. Miles Warren, who took the original Gwen's death quite hard and decided in his deranged mind that it need not be the case.
How a clone of Gwen emerged with all of the original's memories is anyone's guess; it certainly qualifies for an entry in the PPC's Weird Science category, to be sure. The success of the Gwen-clone (and, hard on her heels, the Peter-clone) storyline spawned clone stories ad nauseam. Gwen's clone even caused a little convolution of her own down the line, giving birth to twins who were manipulated into seeking revenge against Spider-Man for their mother's death. And the identity of their father? Norman Osborn. That's right, you heard me.
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