Problems in storytelling- time travel

My naming of Extant as the #1 Painful Villain brought to mind one of the problems that Time Travel can bring into writing comic books.

Now, there are a few different types of time travel.
1) Distant Past travel. Basically, this is going back to any time before the grandfather of the character was bone (for the sake of argument). This can make for an interesting story. Imagine dumping Jade into a Ducal court in Medieval Germany for instance. However, this type isn't really want I want to focus in.
2) Recent past time Travel. As it sounds, basically any time since the grandfather of the character involved was born. Now, in this you can play all sorts of games. Anything from a Back to the Future inspired "you cannot meet your counterpart" idea, to actually working with them, as we saw in the recent Degaton arc in JSA. Also interesting, but not really want I'm interested in.
3) Distant Future travel. Pretty obvious, duck into the far future and look around. Nifty, but not my concern either.

4) Near Future Travel. By this, I mean any future where the overall shape of the world is recognizible. This is what I want to focus on a little bit.

It seems that most books have done some form of a "near future" storyline at one point or another. They can range from the Brilliant (Future Imperfect in the Incredible Hulk, or Days of Future Past in X-Men), to somewhat less than brilliant (The Adventures of Cyclops and Phoenix).

The problem with writing these kinds of stories is that they can begin to "limit" the future shape of the book. If you plot a future story, you are almost forced to push your story in that direction, even if better ideas come to the fore.

Yet, the bigger problem I've seen isn't so much of "handcuffing" writers, but that any future story you may see, you can write off as "well, in a year or so it will be forgotten." The characters who got the glimpse of it will obsess over it for a time (as the Teen Titans are now), but then as the writer moves on to new interests, it gets left behind.

Take X-Men for instance. When I quit reading X-Men five years ago or so, there were at least three major "future" timelines floating about,that were at least somewhat contradictory. There was the one all the way back from X-Men 137, which is one of the classic stories in comic history. Then you had the Bishop inspired XSE future, and finally the Apocalypse inspired stuff we see with Cable, Stryfe and the Adventures of Cyclops and Phoenix. Which of them are we supposed to pay attention to? Or are we supposed to try to shoehorn all of them together?

Writing a "future" story for a book can be a very exciting idea, but it is also a dangerous one. Too many of these stories have been left behind over the years for us take them seriously. It can leave us more than a bit jaded. I'm not sure what needs to be done, but I think a bit more care and thought needs to be spent before writers go digging into that well.