When was the "when it all went wrong" moment for the Legion of Superheroes comics, that fatal creative decision that the various subsequent writers have been trying to recover from ever since?

Just to add, there were aftershocks after the Crisis/Byrne revision to Superman, but that was the main one.

Creatively, the problems really happened when Paul Levitz got kicked upstairs to run the company. Usually a mediocre writer, the only thing Levitz ever did that was superb was his extended LSH run, and half of that with Keith Giffen.

When Levitz left, in the wake of rather poor stories involving a conspiracy to kill the Time Trapper, the "mystery" of Sensor Girl, an endlessly boring Starfinger revamp plotline, the poorly conceived "Magic Wars" and something about Blok's shoulders turning into volcanoes, the book was given to Giffen and Tom & Mary Bierbaum.

The new series started over five years later with a bunch of changes and a few fanon retcons which were controversial but not really extraordinarily bad.

The next problem came along when the Superman team decreed that there could be no mention of Superboy, not even Levitz's post-Crisis "pocket universe" patch. This spawned a great issue set in the "Mordruverse" alternate timeline where the Legion never formed and everything was under the control of the fez-wearing evil space wizard Mordru; at the end of the issue, the alternates of the Legion and their allies had set the timeline right by replacing the Time Trapper with Glorith, Superboy with Mon-El (renamed Valor), and Supergirl with Laurel Gand/Andromeda.

A good issue, but a messy patch.

Later, Giffen & the Bierbaums blew up Blok, introduced a young, teenage Legion (intended to be the "originals" with the ones we'd been reading for years as clones), blew up the moon, had a crossover with Superman, and blew up the Earth.

Then Giffen and the Bierbaums left, other people tried to write it, Stuart Immonen did some awesome art for a horrible story about the Legion on the Run, and sometime in all that Jamm showed up.

They turned writing the Legion over to Mark Waid, who had been the editor at the start of the Giffen/Bierbaum run, and as Waid recounts it, a meeting had them all gnashing their teeth and beating on the floor, wailing that "it's broke and we can't fix it!" So they decided to just start over, and got rid of the original Legion (and copycat Legion) in Zero Hour, DC's nonsensical crossover about Hal Jordan trying to fix the DC Universe by retconning away the stupid crap that had been written.

The LSH started over with a brand new teen Legion series that rebooted the concept; some people didn't like the cartoony art of (mostly) Jeff Moy and labeled it the "Archie Legion." Waid took off to go be Waid elsewhere, and they had some cute "establishing the foundations of the Legion" stories for a while. Then they made Sensor Girl into a giant snake, tossed half the team back in time to the 20th century for far too long, let Superboy (Kon-El/Connor Kent) join, tried to explain Valor as having the Martian name M'Onel, and messed around with the Emerald Eye.

That went on for a while with slashy subtext about Invisible Kid and Brainiac 5 until they scrapped it and brought in British writers. Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning (I think I got those names right) had the Earth invaded by something or other that was corrupting everything, then half the team get lost in another universe where Element Lad went nuts and Lightning Lad died, then had the Earth invaded by something or other that was mutating people, and then Ra's al Ghul shows up for no reason, then the Earth gets invaded by robots or something, then Superboy shows up for no reason (but gets a better costume!), then Darkseid shows up for no reason, then the Teen Titans cross over and reality ends for no reason.

And then DC goes "HAY MARK WAID" and Waid comes running back and starts the Legion all over again, as teenagers again, but this time they're not a superhero club as much as a youth movement who go around pissing off the authorities while having a huge skyscraper headquarters and a bunch of groupies and stuff.

Waid craps out a year or two of the least memorable Legion stories since Doctor Mayavale (okay, actually he was memorable but in the bad way), Star Boy becomes a black dude, Dream Girl dies or something, and Waid flounces off to go, I dunno, fuck up Flash or something.

Tony Bedard writes a few issues as filler until legendary Legion writer (and notoriously bad Marvel editor-in-chief) Jim Shooter shows up and takes over as Legion writer. And despite trying for a "return to basics" approach, all Shooter does is show us that just because you could do something well when you were a teenager -- he wrote the LSH when he was like 13, and created Princess Projectra, Karate Kid, and others -- doesn't mean you can do it again when you're an old guy.

Meanwhile, JSA writer Geoff Johns is a real Legion fanboy so he sticks Star Boy -- from Levitz's era, with a detour through Kingdom Come -- in the JSA, then puts together a JSA/JLA crossover that brings a team of Legionnaires back to the present and they run around being secretive and having lesbian affairs and getting someone unknown stuck in a magic wand, which somehow brings Wally West back from somewhere or other so he can be the Flash again.

Johns used the Levitz version of the Legion -- not the existing Waid-Shooter one, or the discarded "Archie" Legion -- but he ignored everything after Crisis on Infinite Earths, including the Death of Superboy and all the Giffen/Bierbaum stuff. Fans loved it and ignored Shooter's attempt to salvage Waid's Legion (probably for the best anyway); the "real" Legion was back (i.e. one mostly in continuity with the Legion's stories from 1958 to 1987). Johns wrote another multi-part story arc in Superman with this Legion, again to much acclaim, although he'd made some changes to the "Levitz" Legion that haven't really been explained well.

So then Grant Morrison got real stoned one weekend and took a massive shit called Final Crisis.

As a tie-in, Johns wrote a story that brings together all three versions of the Legion (really there are more than three), and they -- well, I dunno, stuff happens. It's got three Legions, what more do you want? Oh, and George Perez artwork. So even if the costumes on the Johns-version suck, the art is still Perez.

"Legion of Three Worlds" is going on right now, and I think it's only on issue 2 of 5. It's possible at the end that they will resolve the issue of which is the "real" Legion, or what Earth they're on, or if they're all parallel futures, or what, but who knows or cares?

The Waid-then-Shooter Legion series just finished its run this week with issue #50. And wow, was that a mercy killing.

To the best of my knowledge, no new LSH titles have been announced, but most people are expecting something based on the Levitz-a-la-Johns Legion. Wait -- did I hear something about a Mon-El and the Legion of Super-Heroes series?

(Oh yeah, and the animated LSH tv show was in its own continuity too, and they made a comic book for it in DC's "toony" line. And the Legion guest-starred on Smallville recently.)