As stories go on it's only natural that they build up a history. New milestones will come, a persons path changes course, new things will always come about. As years go by and a character's story continues it can become difficult to keep everything straight. This problem can become even more difficult in comics when we have characters that are handled by different writers.
Its hard to find a final answer when it comes to things like continuity and how it should be handled. DC comics has found ways to undo or rearrange the very universe every few years. The 'Crisis on Infinite Earths' allowed them to reorder all of reality so that things were easier to handle. The can also re-write a characters personal history like in 'Superman: Secret Origins' which is currently updating and making minor changes in Superman's past so it all makes more sense for readers today.
On the other hand Marvel Comics has stood by whatever happens in their universe. This can lead to some difficult questions after a enough time, such as the Punisher. He's a Vietnam war veteran eventually they are going to have to deal with his age or face him fighting organized crime with a walker. You also encounter some very bizarre explanations such as how Nick Fury hasn't aged in decades because he drank the Infinity Serum. No joke. What Marvel seems to be worse at is just hoping the fans forget about things instead of resetting them. To the best of my knowledge there should still be a ship worth of alien refugees that came back with Dr. Banner at the end of 'World War Hulk'.
In these situation the burden truly falls on the shoulders of the writers and editorial staff. Those taking the responsibility for telling the story have an obligation to keep the facts straight and even try to work around the difficult bits of history. In the beginning of Garth Ennis' run on the Punisher he addressed that Frank Castle had been offered a chance to become a Angel. He quickly dealt with it and moved past it so he could tell the story he wanted.
What should really matter is the quality of the storytelling. If the story is entertaining it shouldn't matter that Poison Ivy had mentioned she likes lilies more than violets 40 years ago. Just try to keep it straight that she's a killer plant lady.
There is a very specific trick the major comic publishers like to pull and no matter how hard I try I inevitably fall for it. I'm referring to trick where they take a comic title I very much enjoy and place a story arc in order to get people to purchase a new or less popular title.
I fell for this hard a few years ago when DC had a story arc called "Checkout" that crossed "Checkmate" (which I loved) and "Outsiders" (which I've never been on the boat for no matter how hard I try). Again later DC got me with an even worse attempt when they crossed not two but three titles ("Titans", "Teen Titans" and "Vigilante") in the story arc "Death Trap". Most recently Marvel even got me by cross the "Dark Avengers" with the "Uncanny X-Men" for the "Utopia" story.
Marvels attempt got to me a little more than DC primarily because they used this one on me and it worked. I've never really bought any X-Men books before but I thought I would give it a few issues since "Utopia" does leave many questions open after the end. The problem can a few issues later when I realized that they were leading right into another title crossover with "Second Coming" in almost all of the X titles. So after being sucked into one crossover story to know whats going on I was in the line for another on in books I've avoided before.
There really are two ways to take all of this. The first is that both companies are just telling stories to entertain the fans. I like to think these story ideas were proposed and done specifically because writers thought the fans would enjoy them. The second, and more likely, reason if that this is just done to get more fans onto new or unpopular titles by involving them with better known titles. I understand that at the end of the day these companies want us to buy books to make money, but making us watch every super team out there fight the "Agents of Atlas" isn't going to make up think we should be reading them to.
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