- Joined
- Aug 7, 2018
Crisis was a major catalyst in the Legion's decline because the rampant retcons Levitz and future creative teams made would render the title near-incomprehensible for readers. For example, John Byrne's Man of Steel established that Clark Kent did not start his super heroic career as an adult and was thus never Superboy. The first crack appears because Superboy was both the team's inspiration and participated in most--if not all--of their adventures in the Silver Age and into the Bronze. Similarly, the character Mon-El could not exist because his origin was tied to Superboy as well. Levitz painted over the crack with the Pocket Universe Superboy and it worked for a little while...
...and then the Superman office demanded that Legion remove any reference to Superboy, and thus the soft-reboot we got in the TMK run. Mon-El gets the new moniker of Valor and takes Superboy's place as the Legion's inspiration and Supergirl gets a replacement in the form of Laurel Gand, later known as Andromeda. Another crack in appears in continuity, and more appear as TMK fuck up the Bronze Age Legionnaires (despite Timber Wolf joining the team in the Silver Age.) Things get worse when they introduce Batch SW6, and then things get so fucked up that DC reboots the team in Zero Hour.
Of course, the base is so broken after that that there are fans who incessantly complain about the postboot "Archie" Legion. DnA come on board--and surprise--more fans complain. Mark Waid reboots the Legion to wank the Silver Age again. Jim Shooter returns to the consternation of some of the fanbase. Geoff Johns brings back the "retroboot" Legion and fans complain that he is wanking his childhood Legion (again!) and the cycle never ends, so excuse me if I don't give a flying fuck if the "fanbase" reviles Legion Lost or not. The fanbase is a broken mess regardless of that fact.
The downright hilariousness of the fandom as a whole is that is will always be made up of bickering tribes and that every new iteration of a property is going to fracture it even more. Yet the powers that be at both Marvel and DC believe that inserting more characters or replacing existing ones with new ones will strengthen their brands. Most evidence points to "no" because it just encourage longtime fans to abandon ship and there are not enough new ones to replace them.
The initial Band-Aid didn't cause much problems. The continuity lock-out was entirely started do to the TMK run being so dark and edgy, made worse by Mark Waid (back when he worked as an editor) getting in a pissing match with the Superman editorial by greenlighting a Christmas special story with pre-Crisis Supergirl still in the DC Universe (granted, forgotten) that went against strict editorial edict that Supergirl (at least in her original form) was 100% off-limits. The later cost Waid his position as editor at DC and while everyone involved with V4 deny it, most likely was the catalyst for Superman editorial yanking Superman from the Legion canon.

