making "everything count"

[carmine]

We have yet another Reboot for superman (yawn!)
I wonder if it was possible to make "everything count" in continuity? or at least 95 % of it.
This topic comes up once in awhile on other boards so I figure I'd throw it out there to some experts!

for example
it seems like it would be easy enough to go from Lex in smallvile to Lex with red hair (just say it was a disguise that Lex was wearing while in Europe)
and then from that to Mad Scientist Lex (hey he's a genius)
to Battle suit lex
and then to Businessman lex. (he blames the chemicals that caused his baldness also caused him to be "evil" and everyone believes him. "regular humans" are generally shown to be very easily fooled in superman comics)
and then he becomes the richest man in Metropolis
then he becomes president

that basically covers everything for the character. (ya i know he had a son...just say it was time travel)

Sure its rather complex but the history would be just for super fans anyways

[India Ink]

You know the version of Superman for whom "everything counts" works best is the Weisinger Era Superman. I don't just say that as an attempt to establish the supremacy of the Weisinger Era--but really for the Silver Age, Luthor becoming a Rasputin like figure in Europe, or getting himself made President, or pretending to go straight and start up his own business, are all stories that could easily have been told in that period.

Mind you none of those stories would have taken anymore than 26 pages to resolve. And Lex would have only been President for a week, his business would fail in a month, and Superman would have him out of his monk robes and into a prison so fast it would make your head spin.

Just about any scenario could work for the Weisinger Superman. The life, death, life, and death of Jonathan Kent would be no problem. Superman's up and down powers were the subject of many Silver Age tales. The marriage? It was Van-Zee and Sylvia all along.

[carmine]

It did help that Superman stories always went "back to normal" before they ran out of pages.
and most stories never referenced previous stories  (well they did occasionally I guess)

the problem with modern stories is that they don't know when to end them