From what I understand, the SW6 batch was conceived of by the creative team as a way to recapture the original spirit of the Legion while also having a new mystery.Jabroniville wrote: ↑Sun Apr 22, 2018 4:59 am Hey- question:
Has anyone here read interviews regarding the reboots and the decision making processes for them? Like why the obvious "Soft Reboot" of the SW6 kids was just dumped and they got rebooted fully? I mean, the reasons are easy to guess, but I'd like to get takes from the writers.
Giffen eventually revealed his plan: The SW6 kids were suppose to be the original Legionnaires, who the Dominators had kidnapped during their early years and kept in stasis tanks, while the Legion we'd been reading about from the point after Nemesis Kid joined and betrayed the team were clones created by the Dominators. The clones had allowed things to get so bad and allow for the Dominators to get to the point they were at due to programming by the Dominators. The SW6 kids return would cause the Dominators to activate a failsafe that would cause the clones to attack the Legionnaires, and during the fight, who would live and who would die would be determined by names being pulled out of a hat. The surviving adults would be freed from their programming and stay on Earth to help re-build things, while the surviving SW6/Original Legionnaires would have a new outpost in space where they could protect against future Dominator attacks and be able to go on more classic Legion style adventures.
The editors told Giffen "No", so Giffen decided to just quit the book entirely. However, before he left, he blew up the Earth because he knew his editors wouldn't be paying too much attention to his departure issue. I repeat, HE BLEW UP THE PLANET EARTH and screwed over any writers that would come after him solely out of spite and because he knew he could get away with it.
After Giffen left, what they instead did was turn Earth into this huge space station composed of different domes that contained famous cities and locations, with the SW6 kids acting as the Legionnaires to protect what was left of Earth. That lasted about 17-18 issues, but by about issue 14 or 15 plans were made for the Zero Hour event. The relative popularity of the Legionnaires book and the mess that had become the original Legion of Superheroes series convinced them to use Zero Hour as a fresh start.