For all the "If a good story means contradicting some offhand remark Batman made 40 years ago about being Gotham's marble king when he was 11 then we'll willingly contradict that story" talk DC used to deliver when it was still keeping up the pretense of even having some sort of continuity, I think only the most anal of fans would have been bothered about such lapses (a group which, admittedly, probably once included myself).  However, ignoring Batman's marble king status or the middle name of Green Lantern's fourth girlfriend or the number of times Superman's been exposed to Red Kryptonite didn't result in the mess DC's in now (or was in 25 years when I stopped paying attention). 

If nothing else, from a cold, Vulcan, practical perspective, it makes sense to have some sacred cows in place.  Max Allan Collins (yeah, yeah - everyone's favorite Batman writer, I know) once expressed his disbelief and frustration when he took over Batman following Year One only to discover that editor Denny O Neil had nothing to give him by way of a "Bat Bible" - a sort of guide to the character that he was now in charge of.  I don't know exactly what Collins was hoping to find in such a guidebook but I suspect trivial minutiae wasn't it.  Collins hasn't been the only person to remark that such a laissez faire approach hardly spoke well of O Neil's professionalism (I suspect that Shaxper won't mind if I mention that he too has expressed feeling the same consternation with O Neil) but these days, it seems par for the course.  Could a new writer hopping onto the Batman titles get a direct answer as to whether or not, I don't know, Batman ever caught the man who killed his parents, for instance?  If so, under what circumstances?  If he asks how Batman and The Joker met, could an editor point to less than five stories released in the past ten to fifteen years for guidance?  Could an artist get a definite 'yes' or 'no' as to whether Dick Grayson ever wore the pixie boot Robin outfit?  Did Luthor and Superman meet as adults in Metropolis or as kids in Smallville?  Are Ma and Pa Kent still alive?  It's possible that some or perhaps all of these questions do have definite answers - I don't want to go close enough to new comics to find out - but I'm betting that for a lengthy period of time (years) every one of these questions would have drawn a blank from an editor.  Why?  Because "if a good story means contradicting some offhand remark Batman made 40 years ago..."

A good example of a major change to a character's history which benefited stories going forward?  Alfred's origin.  Introduced to add comic relief to Batman's adventures, Alfred was little more than a buffoon who bumbled into Batman and Robin's lives several years after their stories began - a sort of cross between Vitamin Flintheart and Lou Costello.  The character evolved beyond that after a while of course, but he never penetrated that barrier which existed between himself and "Master Bruce".  How could he?  He was a fellow who stuck his foot in the door of an adult, fully matured Bruce Wayne one day and practically ordered him to accept him as his new butler - an outsider whom Batman eventually got to know and love, but still an outsider (as late as 1984, Alfred had no idea what the significance of June 26 meant to Batman - it was the anniversary of his parents' murder).  Frank Miller threw this out the window and established that Alfred had been there since Wayne's boyhood and in so doing, completely altered the character for the better.  No longer was Alfred a background, sideline character, but someone who - since he was practically family - could offer his little witticisms and criticisms in a manner which would have been wholly inappropriate for someone who was more an employee than surrogate uncle.  

Still, Miller's gift to continuity wasn't without danger.  A Batman who hadn't had to raise himself as the pre-Crisis guy did, ran the risk of regressing into a sort of man-child who never really matured into a fully functioning adult.  Thankfully, despite Miller's little eviction of that particular piece of history (and I do like that "Here Comes Alfred!" story a lot - I just like what Miller did more) enough continuity seemed to remain to establish that whether or not Alfred was always there to cook his meals and tie his ties, Batman was still the same guy he had always been.

Except...

There came a time when there really weren't.  And this is where I think the sacred cows have to come in.  You need some benchmark's in place to keep characters rooted to who they are.  At some point, every flashback to Batman's early days seemed to include a scene where Alfred had to rein in a nearly out of control Batman.  To point out that he can't just think with his fists, especially when he's lost four pints of blood to an ax wound to the head or whatever.  The latest retelling of Batman's first encounter with The Joker has just such a scene and I'm willing to bet that whatever motivated DC to publish yet another retelling wasn't "to tell a good story".  Those Year One annuals DC released in the mid-90s had such scenes, Legends of the Dark Knight was replete with them, those 75/80 years of Batman specials DC puts out ostensibly to provide readers with an all-encompassing look seem to use them as their standard openings for their "early days" tribute to Batman.  Why not select just ten or so stories from Batman's entire history (and not just Killing Joke and Robin Gets Hit with a Crowbar A Lot) that act as a sort of guide to the character so that any time a writer wants to be the one to write the latest "Batman is a crazy nutjob" 20 part story, he has to accept that, well, these stories say differently?

And, I mean, if nothing else, doesn't Bill Finger deserve to have, I don't know, at least half a dozen Batman stories that count?  Siegel and Shuster a few?  Not even out of pity or even respect (although respect should be part of it) but because hey, these guys truly were damn good writers.  Seems weird to me that amongst the writers whose stuff does get continually referenced throughout the various reboots, the actual creators generally aren't amongst them.

This is a story that made good use of the Multiverse.


(SPOILERS OF COURSE)

Yep, I do remember reading this one! The other version I think classic MOTU fans should check out is the "200x" cartoon from 2002. Of all the attempts to modernize a bit but still feel in the ballpark of the old, I think that series did it well.

Can’t argue with more choice, eh?!

(I hope a wrestling multiverse exists, I want a world where Bret Hart wrestles Frank Gotch)

I mean, I prefer Serpentor’s origin in IDW. I never was a fan of that whole “cloned from history’s dictators” angle (too unrealistic for G.I. Joe, I feel). I prefer that IDW’s Serpentor has a real name and is a little more grounded in reality.

I like the character of Grizzlor in the MOTU/She-Ra universe. Those mini-comics and the cartoon could only really pay lip service to origins of henchmen and the like, but the UK comic came up with an origin for Grizzlor, everything from his home planet to age (he’s 400+ years old).

Like I said, choice is good. I’m almost certain the more barbarian-like He-Man - who seemed more stoic and remote - was in the mini-comics, and it was a different approach to the friendly, affable He-Men of the cartoon.

The Transformers does have multiple versions, even predating the original Marvel Comics as the toy line itself was basically a collection of various different Japanese toylines (with their own backstory). So you already had the American and Japanese cartoons/toys having divergent stories. And then you have various cartoons that came out later with their own continuity like Beast Wars (which could fit with the original continuity but is set in a completely different time period), Armada, Dreamspark etc. There are about 10 different cartoon continuities spanning 40 years.

Keeping it to just comics:

The four major takes (and I'm taking major with a bit of salt here, because I included Dreamwave)
- You have Marvel (with Marvel UK being seen as a seperate continuity though when the writer of Marvel UK Transformers, Simon Furman, came over to do the general Marvel comics, he took a lot of those differences and incorporated them in that series).
- You have Dreamwave which had a reboot of the comics based on the American Cartoon from the 80s, but also published titles based on the then cartoons like Armada, but they were short-lived due to horrible mismanagement.
- And then you have IDW which had 2 seperate continuities: 2005-2019 and 2019-2022 (though this series takes a lot of ideas from the 2005-2019 series).

Upcoming:
Skybound (Robert Kirkman's imprint of Image Comics) will be putting out a Transformers comic this week (and Kirkman's Void Rivals is apparently part of this same universe. Haven't read it, so don't ask me how it fits into Transformers or G.I. Joe)

And those are just the major American publishers, not counting any manga, European or small publishers like 3H, Blackthorne, Panini, Fun Punlications. Nor the out-of-continuity limited series like various G.I. Joe crossovers (though some of them are in-continuity again) or the Shattered Glass mini-series (think Star Trek Mirror Universe take on the franchise).

If you want to do a deepdive, tfwiki.net goes into deep details on every single version of each character in all media.

I remember that crossover, wasn’t it a novel rather than a comic?

It’s a shame we’ll never get a Star Trek/Star Wars crossover. Who wouldn’t want to see Spock put the Vulcan nerve pinch on Vader?

Here's something I thought Marvel did that was rather brilliant when it came to not being trapped in continuity chaos.

In 2000 they had a notion to do a little thing called Ultimate Spider-Man. It was fresh, it got attention, it got sales.

But they knew they had an audience still with the traditional Spidey books (I was one of the them). No continuity-shattering event, no Crisis or Inferno/Heroes Reborn jarring reset of things. They just threw the Ultimate stuff out there in addition, and it did pretty well, expanded to more titles, had a nice run (gave us Miles Morales!).

As has been mentioned here, choice is certainly good.