-Superman dead
-Batman’s back broken

Yes, but those weren't actual "developments" meant to "progress" a character - they were parts of a story. They were planned that way. No one sat down to write Batman getting his back broken, thinking it would stay that way. The Superman writers didn't expect that they'd actually be ending Superman's story.

The Mary Jane example is a good one, because that was just a move of desperation. And Hal Jordan going nuts was just a bad way to get to a good end: the change to Parallax was bad, but the original idea for the character was good...

Notice each 'development' by a writer used to 'progess' characters is reversed as soon as a better writer has a shot at he character?

-Superman dead
-Batman's back broken
-Green Lantern going crazy
-Mary Jane getting pregnant

Other than going from high school to college, Spider-man didn't really age from 1962-1988. Are you saying that the stories by Michelinie, Mackie and Stracynzski are better than the ones by Stan Lee, Gerry Conway, Roger Stern and Tom DeFalco?
What about the million copies a month that Superman sold from the 1930s to the 1960s?

Now, can you list some examples where any good writers have stooped to these soap opera-level melodrama of 'aging' characters that have actually been successul?

Here's a random list for you:

Alan Moore, Grant Morrison, Ed Brubaker, Warren Ellis. All pretty much universally acclaimed superhero writers. These writers do something else besides using hackneyed devices like killing off characters or marrying them off (the stuff of Dallas and Dynasty), they tell STORIES.

As long as a writer can tell stories, he doesn't need to take a character created to be a teenager and age him.

Other examples: Sherlock Holmes, James Bond, Charlie Brown, the Simpsons. All maintained YEARS of continuing stories, without resorting to soap opera cliches that contradict the purpose of the characters.

So, in other words, your philosophy is to allow concepts to stagnate in order to please the fanboys afflicted with severe arrested development?

Well, god forbid characters should violate the concept of their creation. I don’t think ‘a group of brooding adults lamenting about former glories” was what they had in mind when they created the Legion; and it wasn’t the concept that Legion fandom was founded on. So, anything that violates the orginal concept can be conveniently disregarded. And history shows that it always is (Legion of Three Worlds, Brand New Day, Superman: Birthright, on and on and on….)

As for the Kara story: who cares what they promised John Byrne? Why does one million dollar business deal (ie: the luring of Byrne away from Marvel) have to violate 48 years of beloved continuity?

The writers that came before Byrne (Binder, Hamilton, Shooter, Shuster) were more talented than him, so he had no right to violate their stories (nor did editorial).
With apologies to Jerry Ordway (a great artist), I think Mark Waid was doing the right thing by ‘winking’ at the audience with the Kara appearance, because he knew (as we all did) that she’d be back anyway, once DC came to their senses.

Well, god forbid characters should violate the concept of their creation. I don't think 'a group of brooding adults lament about former glories" was what they had in mind when they created the Legion; and it wasn't the concept that Legion fandom was founded on. So, anything that violates the orginal concept can be conveniently disregarded. And history shows that it always is (Legion of Three Worlds, Brand New Day, Superman: Birthright, on and on and on....)

As for the Kara story: who cares what they promised John Byrne? Why does one million dollar business deal (ie: the luring of Byrne away from Marvel) have to violate 48 years of belobed continuity?

The writers that came before Byrne (Binder, Hamilton, Shooter, Shuster) were more talented than him, so he had no right to violate their stories (nor did editorial).
With apologies to Jerry Ordway (a great artist), I think Mark Waid was doing the right thing by 'winking' at the audience with the Kara appearance, because he knew (as we all did) that she'd be back anyway, once DC came to their senses.

Didn't Morrison's Magneto (Xorneto?) threaten to pull the same stunt?

Oh, and that Mike Something guy. ``

(totally squee-ing at the presence of both)

Then, once the Pocket Universe story had been done in LSH, it would have been okay if it had been left there as the source of all Crisis-invalidated material (not just Superboy and Mon-El). However, the way Byrne used it in Superman raised more questions than it answered, because it made it impossible to connect Pocket Universe Superboy to the pre-Crisis Superboy. If the Pocket Universe didn't have inhabited planets other than Earth and Krypton, and its Earth didn't have any other superheroes and its Luthor wasn't evil, then half the pre-Crisis Superboy stories couldn't have happened...and the story where young Luthor met the Legion couldn't have happened...and the question of Mon-El becomes a mess...and Supergirl couldn't have been in the LSH, which goes against the whole point of having the Pocket Universe in the first place.

Then, to top it off, shortly after the Five Year Gap series began, there was an editorial decision to eradicate the legacy of the Pocket Universe altogether...which led to the series having to interrupt its momentum early on to rewrite continuity, thus rendering all the previous efforts moot anyway...

And, I think that the "film" versions mentioned were supposed to be referencing the cartoons. The statement doesn't make sense if he is talking about the movies. And, off the top of my head, I think that the statement is correct in that all of the cartoon rosters only had the three members in common: Wolverine, Cyclops, and Storm.

Theno

It couched its subversion by implying that the rocket, like Superboy, had come from the pocket universe, but even that explanation reads, "a dimension far more colorful than their own, yet one which (at least, according to current theories) existed only in a tiny pocket of time."

Personally, I love the story (I have a photocopied version), but I will freely admit to a great degree of ambivalence about Byrne's reboot: there's a lot of it that I think is brilliant, but I wish he had been willing and able to incorporate Superboy and the LSH into his new vision without the pocket universe nonsense. I really hope that Geoff Johns current storyline in Action doesn't get driven into incomprehensibility by Editorial Policy.

And about that Secret Origins story...there was an entirely other version of the Legion headquarters story that the Fortress Lad story replaced. According to Mark Waid in the Legion Companion, the Superman editorial office vetoed the original version of that story (with art by Kurt Schaffenberger) because it made reference to the pocket universe Superboy.

See if this gets you to page 212 of that book for that story: http://books.google.com/books?id=lEWHfXUwUAwC&pg=PA212&lpg=PA212&dq=secret+origins+legion+fortress+lad&source=web&ots=nBUnjUfFIJ&sig=Y9ngiUnqxVhr0f1dMuLZqMntKko#PPA212,M1

BTW, jeffhamlin, I don't even think that Kara is that unusual a name: I dated a Kara a few years back. Of course, now I'm engaged to a Linda. You know, until just now I didn't realize I had that much of a Supergirl fetish...

I seem to remember a rumor that Mark Waid got fired from DC over a story he wrote (or approved) for Secret Origins about the origin of the Legion Clubhouse that did an end-run around the post-Crisis Superman/LSH reboot.

"Once upon a time, I had a spectacularly unpleasant encounter with one of Mark Waid’s co-workers at Amazing Heroes.

If I had to work with this person like he did, I would be throwing typewriters too. I’d be throwing myself out a window."

Me. too; got an article rushed out that really shouldn't have seen print and needed drastic edited, but...

Ironically, there was a red-bearded editor who worked for them who did magic with another article I wrote. Absolutely coated the manuscript with corrections and recommendations. Gotta love a good editor, who can make your work into something a lot better.