Well, I for one see nothing wrong in 'starting over' every couple of decades. It's healthy for the character if the reboot retains the essence of what the charcater work in the first place and jettisons the continuity baggage that makes almost any storyline too convoluted to follow.

It's happened naturally, really -- Superman suddenly begins to fly in the 40s, kryptonite is introduced and then a life as Superboy. Then things got fun and family in the 50s/60s in the Weisinger era. Earth-1 and Earth-2. Batman's 'New Look' in the 60s. Then the Crisis and things starting again -- Year One, Byrne's remodeling, Wonder Woman born again. No, noty everything worked but amid the howls of protest at least there was an integrity to simply starting again.

The Marvel notion of one perpetual storyline -- where Nick Fury would be in his 90s, Peter Parker has taken 46 years to age four years, etc., just has to collapse of its own weight at some point. And that's what led, I think, to the Spider-Man 'magic' bullet to retrocon so much out of existence. It MIGHT have made more sense to actually end the 'origina; Spidey and adopt the Ultimate character as the new web-spinner.

This is a new phenomenom for sure, and it's caused by older readers like me who remember everything. In the old days, kids read comics for a few years and then were replaced by new kids. Now it's as if a TV show has been on for 40, 50, and in Superman's case, soon to be 70 years! Hard to explain away all that, and the more they TRY, the less sense it makes.

Batman lives in Gotham and fights crime. Include a few nods to the past -- a giant penny in the Bat-Cave for instance -- and that's really all you need.