“While I liked most of [Byrne’s] his Superman, what he did with Superboy, and consequentially the Legion, was horrible.”

Here’s a classic representation of what happens when Editorial really doesn’t know what it’s doing.

As I was building what I planned for Superman, including the removal of Superboy from the backstory, I repeatedly reminded everyone that this was going to have a major effect on the Legion of Superheroes. The Legion office responded with a contemptuous “We have it all under control.”

One of the earliest indications that DC really didn’t understand what they were unleashing by insisting on a “reboot”. (My initial plan had been to just take over with the next issue and do a three or four part story that would get the characters on the path I wanted to follow. But DC wanted an EVENT, and since newly acquired Macintosh computers had set editorial abuzz with computer terms, it became a “reboot”.)

Okay, said I, and set to work. A few issues in, there came a panicked call from my editor. “This messes up the Legion!” “I thought they had it ‘under control’,” I responded. “No, we have to FIX this!”

And so I was pressed into doing the Pocket Universe/Time Trapper story. Which was largely a mess, but which satisfied the Legion office.

sigh