Well, now you are defending comics continuity by using an example of Star Trek continuity. If there is any group of fans that are more insane about continuity than comics fans, it's Trek fans. If you haven't noticed, TPTB in Trek rewrite the past all the time, and the fans scream bloody murder about it. If you ask me, they could recast the Captain Kirk era Enterprise with new actors and make new episodes, like the James Bond Series. But then again, I'm a heretic.
Nobody is suggesting jetisoning the entiety of Superman's continuity. Superman is an alien from another planet with abilities far beyond mortal man. DC periodically makes a whole bunch of years of DC continuity disppear. Characters, situations, subplots comeand go. Remember WGBS? Steve Lombard? Cat Grant? Does anybody care today? Allegedly housecleaning, possibly effective. I have 1950's Batman comics where the man's jaw cuts my finger as I turn the page, and Superman comics with villains that Blue Beetle wouldn't break a sweat over. Those stories are so far out of current continuity that they are laughable, but I love them just the same. I'm not going to take a story where Superman fights a pro wrestler seriously. I'm not going to take Egg Fu and try and fit him into a continuous, logical history of the DCU. Some of the DCU past is STUPID. A continuity cop like yourself is trying to make the past fit the present and the future and in some cases it can't and shouldn't be done. yeah, by your lights some current writers have pissed on the past. Seen another way, they aren't handcuffed by a ludicrous past. How do you suppose some of the classic Superman writers and wonderful Superman artist Curt Swan felt when John Byrne complete a very successful revamp in 1986? At the very least, I'm sure they felt that their labors had been pissed on.
In every field, including non creative ones, policies change and evolve. Sometimes existing policies and ideas are good ones and are either retained and elaborated/expanded on, sometimes they are modified radiccally because situations and thinking have changed, and sometimes an idea isso out of date or stupid it's dumped entirely. My grandpa was a grocer, with a store so small it wouldn't even be considered a superette today. He sold his pickles from a big wooden barrel. By your way of thinking of not negating the past, pickles in grocery stores today should still be sold that way, we wouldn't want to step on the past. Well, times change, ways of doing things change, and the world changes. Why shouldn't comics?
DC will do another Crisis once they feel that the crap has to be rinsed off their heroes. Hopefully the new guys will be up to the task. The next crisis will be neccessary.
