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I'm aware that comic book characters from each comic book company exist in the same universe
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Nope! Each published actually has several universes. For example, Marvel has the normal (classic) and the "Ultimate" universe. Most of the movies and cartoons in the 2000s are based on this one, not the classic.
Every decade, DC remakes it's universe, and several times that was to merge comics acquisitions. For example, Image Comics. Characters like Blue Beetle are not original to DC, and had to be added. They could have said "oh, he's here too" and kept going. But no, DC made it hard. Hard to keep track of who's who.
Some DC stories get downright weird. For example, as much as I like Kevin Smith, the Quiver storyline (Green Arrow comics, 10+ years ago) was weird, and therefore (to me) terrible. It had all this afterlife crap, because they wanted to revive their hero. DC is bad about this, be it Superman, Green Lantern, or Green Arrow. Batman wasn't quite as weird.
Marvel is MUCH better about this.
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From what I've seen in the cartoons and movies, mutants aren't even mentioned very much, if at all.
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The Ultimate universe is more myopic. For example, in the Ultimate-based Marvel movie universe, X-MEN and the Avengers are (thus far) not overlapping. Spiderman may have overlap with either, and cartoons have shown it's the Avengers.
There's a chance that the X-MEN are a future point in time, for that universe. Note that you MUST overlook current tech. Dating doesn't happen that way in comics! Wolverine and Deadpool are "safe" because they don't age the same, and can appear quite a few years before (and even after) X-MEN.
In both comics and animation, some things supersede time. Time is fluid -- a variable, not a constant. You're supposed to forget the past here. For example, Bart Simpson has been 11 years old for 25 years now, and has seen at least 6 presidential elections in-story. (He's been around for 7, but they didn't do politics yet in 1988.)
At some level, you have to use a conscious disconnect, in order to suspend disbelief.