QUOTE: In hindsight, I'm not sure it was CRISIS or MAN OF STEEL that dealt the gravest blow to the Legion, but rather Paul Levitz leaving the book.  His presence protected the book from the editorial whim that eventually crippled the book.  After all no-one's going to tell the vice president of the company that he can't use Superboy...

Yeah, I can agree with this. 

The thing about Legion is that the books became a mess for reasons that had nothing to do with Superboy's absense from the history.  The "5 Years Later" was incredibly convoluted (complete with a mysterious "young version of the Legion") and the Bierbaums were the epitome of why "being a huge fan of a series" isn't always a good thing.  I'll admit that I liked a lot of that run, but by the end you had two different Legions running around, Earth was destroyed, etc.  It was very dark time for the books; not really keeping with the "hopeful" future the series was built upon.

Apparently the root cause of the "mini reboot" in #5 was the Bierbaum's wanting to use Mon-El and being told they couldn't because of the Superboy connection.  (Paul Levitz had basically killed him off in his final Legion storyline.)  So all they really had to do was... not use him!  Stick with the other characters; not like the Legion was lacking any.  Valor was an interesting concept, but it's not like a new Daxamite couldn't have been picked for that role.  Done.  As to the origin, the only thing needed was a gentle tweak to have the team being inspired by the Teen Titans (with maybe a nod to the old inspiration by saying "Some records even say that Superman used to fight crime as a teenager!").

Ah well.  Water longggg under the bridge.

A reboot never would have worked.  For one thing, some of their most popular books at the time (Teen Titans and Legion) would have been completely discombobulated by tossing out the history.  For another, it wasn't really necessary.  Three characters got their history messed with.  While there were some impacts to the histories of other characters, in the context of the modern day not that much changed.  (Stuff like Hawkworld came a few years later so I don't really count him as a "Post Crisis" thing.) 

Also, you figure that doing so would have meant that every character was starting from scratch.  So you'd have a situation where Booster Gold is just as much a veteran as Hal Jordan.  Can't see anyone going for that.  (Don't think the split timelines for the various characters would have gone over well.)

Legion - 2000 years from now. (Occasional time travel story aside.)

L.E.G.I.O.N. - present day.

See? Piece of cake. :-)

Legion - 2000 years from now. (Occasional time travel story aside.)

L.E.G.I.O.N. - present day.

See? Piece of cake. :-)

****

Except that Legion is only 1000 years from now.