First, you mentioned the two new Bond movies as examples of changing continuity without patching it. The Bond movies are an example of a soft reboot, similar to what the Superman Returns and The Incredible Hulk movies did. They don’t expressly contradict previous continuity and they allow a tonal shift in the series. In my eyes, Green Lantern: Rebirth, One More Day and the current Final Crisis are also examples of soft reboots, where there is a tonal shift in the continuity without contracting it. The difference between the movie examples and the comics examples is medium, where you don’t have time in a 2hr movie to explain the changes, in comics with hundreds of issues in an ongoing series, it isn’t unreasonable to spend 6 issues explaining the transition.

Second, if the purpose is to make better stories, I argue that sometimes explaining these continuity changes in order to change the tone is a good thing to do in comics. Without Rebirth we wouldn’t have the amazing Geoff Johns run on Green Lantern which has used many of the elements of Rebirth in the Sinestro War and the current Secret Origin arcs. Brand New Day has been uneven but there is general agreement that stronger stories are now being told post marriage, not necessarily because of the marriage, but because of the tonalshift. If we were to no longer have these explanation/continuity patch stories, some potentially great stories are left on the table.

Using the Bond example, what if a continuity patch movie was made explaining that James Bond is an assignment, where each iteration of Bond actors is a different person being assigned the Bond alias. How great would it be to see the assention of a rookie agent to the James Bond role, to see what has happened the retired Bond agents, to see what happens when one of them goes bad, what happens when a Bond is killed in the line of duty, who the original James Bond was, explain how an agent known to every intelligence agency in the world is capable of being public with his ‘real’ name. It may sound cloogy to some, but such a theory has been put forward by comics’ own Greg Rucka. Its the type that path that tells a great and interest story, while allowing the base concepts of the series to move forward.

And that Superman/Batman thing is going to be forgotten or explained away within the year, I bet.