This question arises quite frequently in comics and I always think it's a bit of a false opposition. Obviously everyone wants a good story first and foremost, but when you're trying to attract reader interest on the basis of established characters, part of being a good story is capturing the essence of what makes the reader interested in those characters in the first place.

But even that's not absolute: it's always possible a writer might come up with something so exceptionally good that even the most diehard fan of the established version will accept this new version on its own merits. Moore's Swamp Thing might be the best example of this. Maybe Miller's Daredevil.

Of course, that's where it gets tricky, because readers will disagree over which reinventions attain that level of excellence.

There are down sides to both, sure, but do you what we have now is Doctor Who-as-Silver-Surfer, a Tony Stark that's exactly like his villains, Avengers with no soul, and alot of other bad things.

The problem with Continuity is it only works well if the story is a growing, developing thing.   In today's market of making sure everything looks the right way for a movie, you can't change anything for long, so we get 'events' that 'change everything' than another event that changes it back, and no one grows and develops.

Stories like 'Legends of the Dark Knight' only work because there is a Dark Knight to begin with, with a set of characters, situations, etc, (that is, Continuity!) that we enjoy.   

That's not a good example, though, the Wake isn't a shared universe.

Are you saying you don't have favorite characters?  I'll give you a good recent example... I just read about 2 years of mid-90s X-Force.  I'd classify it as medicore in a vacuum.  However, since it was dealing with several characters I enjoy (Sunspot in particular), I was amused to see the next part of their stories, and thus I was happy I read them.   Had I never read anything about those characters before, I'm sure I would have dismissed them as a X-Men money grab and probably not even bothers.

THAT'S why continuity is good.

One huge problem with continuity is that some of these characters' histories are so self-contradictory that it would be impossible to stay true to each and every part of it.

For me, it's often only one or two versons of a particular character that I really care about reading, and if the writer isn't doing that I'm not interested - unless of course they unexpectedly come up with something new that happens to be really good. More often they just use one of the other previous versions I don't like or some new one that's equally boring. So I can't think of any series right now that I'd buy for a favourite character.

I basically agree, I just don't think that shared-universe comics have EVER had that much growing-and-developing - it's not that I disagree with your assessment of current comics, but you seem to think that things were better in the past continuity-wise, which just seems like rose-colored-glasses to me.   The Teen Titans, the Metal Men and Wonder Woman become more realistic and "relevant" but all the changes are undone around 1970. The Human Torch has pretty much always restarted from "cocky teenager" at the beginning of everyone's run.

Which means that the Silver Surfer will be back to Shakesperean whiner and the Avengers will be back to the classic team before too long and Iron Man....

Well, has always been kind of a dick, really.  It's always been Tony vs. his own neurosis, control freak tendencies and addictive personality.  (Not that I've read any recent Iron Man, but this doesn't sound TOO far out of line...) 

But it's superhero comics.  New ideas are tried - some are a NEW X-MEN style huge success - a 90% are eventually discarded and the status quo returns. 

Side note:  I will bet money that Dick Grayson will return as Robin in the next 15 years. 

And you've read Shaxper's Batman thread, right?  Batman continuity at the time of 'Legends of the Dark Knight' was a mess! 

I'd actually be interested in a shared universe with tight, inter-title continuity, but that's never happened.  And probably never will. 

Where's tolworthy when you need him?

For me, continuity is an illusion that only exists in the minds of hardcore comics fans (some of whom are also professionals creating comics). It doesn't actually exist. There is no way every Spider-Man story published fits together into a single seamless story )or Batman, or whatever). Heck even the Ditko issues themselves didn't hang together seamlessly, and how many people refer to Bruce Wayne's fiancee when he debuted as Batman or the fact that he and Jim Gordon were society pals who hung out together and that was how the Batman got a lot of his leads as was the status quo in the earliest Batman stories in 'Tec. What happens is that people pick and choose what to keep and what to discard. Sometimes by creating alternate earths, sometimes by retconning, new revelations, everything you thought you knew was wrong stories, etc., sometimes by relaunching, sometime by just sweeping things under the table. The idea of a real continuity is largely a fallacy, there;s what is retained and what is discarded, which is exactly what publishers and creators are still doing today. Retaining some and discarding other. What continuity buffs seem to have issue with is the choices of what is being discarded or retained, because there was no time ever where everything was retained. What is being kept or discarded doesn't match what they would keep or discard, so continuity is ruined. Except no two people would ever keep and retain the exact same material, so there can never really be a canon continuity that is sacrosanct. If you have to create an alternate world or a retcon to make the stories work together, there is no real continuity. It is merely an illusion or a fervent fan wish. If there were real continuty in the MU and DCU we would be on the third or fourth generation of heroes and the early heroes would have long since retired or died, but that's not good business for the publishers, so we have a group of stories, some of which inform future stories with the same characters, some that do not.

With that said, give me good stories. If to tell a good story you retain something that came before, good on you. If in telling a good story you discard something that doesn't fit, so be it.

Continuity is a fan exercise to make their favorite stories fit together, not a concern of storytellers looking to entertain. I always turn to how Robert Howard approached his Conan stories. There were a collection of campfire tales. The fact fans wanted to make a chronology of Conan's life and how they fit together was flattering to him, and he supported their efforts, but he never let it affect how and what Conan stories he told...because it was a fan concern not a creative one...

-M