Once, the Justice League was Aquaman, Batman, Flash, Green Lantern, Manhunter from Mars, Superman, and Wonder Woman.

The Avengers were Captain America, Giant-Man, Iron Man, Thor, and the Wasp.

The Legion of Super-Heroes was Cosmic Boy, Lightning Lad, and Saturn Girl.

As time passed, their memberships grew - a fairly reasonable concept for an ongoing series.

But more time passed, and suddenly, there were 13 X-Men. Then 15 JLA'ers. Then a whole meeting room full of Avengers.

Which franchises or universes went too far? Or which ones haven't gone far enough? What teams got too many members, and where should they have stopped? Should every member appear in each issue (e.g., Teen Titans) or just a few, with the entire team almost NEVER appearing all together (a la the Legion of Super-Heroes.)

For myself, I think the proliferation of mutants at Marvel went way too far out of hand. X-Men - sure. Add Polaris and Havok - okay. New X-Men - all right. New Mutants... that worked for me in the concept of Xavier's being a school again, with supervised activities and adventures - but not the way it seemed that they somehow so frequently managed to get out on their own and basically become just another mutant team. After that... it was mutants everywhere! It seemed as if every Dick and Jane were SOME type of mutations. I am certain that there were writers on the X books who very literally couldn't tell all the mutants without a scorecard.

To me, it was a taint on the concept... they just went too far.

What do you think? Who had too many members? Who didn't have enough?

I think you just end up diluting something.

I don't necessarily mind spin-off teams, e.g. X-Force being like a black ops/proactive version of the X-Men (I hope I have that description right!) or the West Coast needing its own Avengers team.

But in many areas of life, less is more! 

I know it's not the perfect parallel, but, again, wrestling! A villainous group called the Four Horsemen (NWA/WCW) seemed to have been diluted over time with quite a few top stars being part of it; and WCW also did the New World Order faction, but it expanded so much that wrestlers I'd forgotten existed were part of it.

Keep it special, I say!

These groups went through the 60's and 70's with onesy-twosey additions, but once it got to the mid-80's, that's when the spinoff groups essentially doubled the rosters overnight. Avengers, JLA, X-Men... the 'flagship' teams of the Big Two, and suddenly, nearly everyone had to have been a member, even if only briefly. "Quick... let's rush out an update to the previous Who's Who or OHOTMU to catalogue the changes!"

And then only a few years later did it become so blatantly obvious that the rosters were 'rigged' based off of individual member's titles sales instead of the concept of 'group dynamic'.

An important point, Mr Casselman!

One could ask, was Deadpool a member of the Avengers because it felt right storyline-wise or was it done because he's a hot property?

I fully expect Harley Quinn to join the Justice League one day (for the love of Odin, please don't tell me that has happened!).

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Crusader was retconned into being a Uranian spy surgically altered and programmed into believing he was Robert Grayson. The original Marvel Boy was brought back in AGENTS OF ATLAS, which teamed up the characters from the “1950s Avengers” from the WHAT IF story.

The Legion has similar issues, especially once we start to ladle in members from all three* continuities and having them all fight side-by-side. It's become a cluster**** for the simple sake of having it become one. We could bring everyone on-panel, so why not do that? 

Accretion is an all-but inevitable downside of serial fiction. Things pile up. What makes it particularly unpleasant is that writers lean into the failing and celebrate it with ever-increasing crowd scenes. 

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Kurt Busiek’s character Triathlon discovered that the Church of Scientology-pastiche that granted him powers actually stole them from the 3-D Man. After freeing the Chandler Brothers, they gave him 3-D Man’s old uniform and he took on that identity. At some point he ended up joining Agents of Atlas.