As someone who never really followed The Legion of Super-Heroes, I've never understood the absolute necessity of their origin having to tie in with Superboy so much so that after the Crisis, DC couldn't have just said that the team was inspired by some other 20th century superhero (even Superman as an adult). 

Sure, Superboy was a prominent member of the team for most of its history and his removal altered a lot of The Legion's history, but I mean, what was so sacrosanct about Superboy?  Why did DC feel that they could weather the storm drastically altering Superman or Wonder Woman's history would create but apparently went into a panic when they realized that John Byrne's reboot meant that Superboy couldn't be a part of Legion's history?  

I wrote about it elsewhere, but the main point is this: LoS was one of the very few DC series to sell well before Crisis, so they didn't want to change anything about it (the other series was Teen Titans and that too was practically untouched by COIE). Unfortunately Superboy was a huge part of the Legion Continuity, he had participated in a lot of stories, he had not simply been "the inspiration".

It continues to irk me when fans refer to this as having been "Byrne's reboot". He was brought on long after the plan had been worked out because DC wanted a high profile creator attached to the relaunch. He then went on to disrupt and violate the plan as much as possible, sending Helfer and Wolfman packing, both of whom had been far more involved in the relaunch plan than he.

As for the OP question, I adore the original Superboy for its wholesome campiness, but DC doesn't seem to understand how to write wholesome campy anymore, and fans don't seem to appreciate it. It wouldn't have worked in '87, but I would love for DC to bring back a line of books today specifically targeted at kids and available in big box stores, featuring DC's more wholesome properties: Superboy, Superman, Supergirl, Captain Marvel/Shazam family, Batgirl, Robin, Teen Titans, maybe even a Hal Jordan GL and Barry Allen Flash. Heck, if the line did well enough, you could work in more obscure stuff like Dial H for Hero, Amethyst, Kamandi, etc.

I thought Marvel owned Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur.

From your link (which I believe are the relevant parts):


The original concept for the Superman reboot came from Frank Miller and Steve Gerber and envisioned a depowered Superman, some of the more fantastic elements of the mythos (for example: Superboy) being removed from continuity, and Lex Luthor as a business tycoon. Marv Wolfman fought hard to get on the project but knew that DC wanted a bigger powerhouse creative talent on the book, so he recommended John Byrne. Wolfman and editor Andrew Helfer shared the original pitched vision for a Superman reboot, but Byrne, a longtime Superman fan, wanted the campier/more fantastic elements back in continuity. Thus, while the initial emphasis is on a depowered/less perfect Superman facing depowered, less fantastic enemies, Byrne begins reintroducing those more fantastic elements (including Mxyzptlk and a Pocket Universe Superboy) by the fall of 1987.

At this point, Superman is the core title, written and drawn by Byrne, while Wolfman and Jerry Ordway control Adventures of Superman, and Action Comics is a Byrne-controlled team-up title. Wolfman does not seem allowed to utilize Lex Luthor in his stories.

A drastic ideological difference develops between Byrne's and Wolfman's handling of Superman. Wolfman tries to "depower" Superman by placing him in morally and existentially difficult circumstances, where Byrne tries more to "depower" him by depicting Superman as having the personality of an average person -- quick to anger, succumb to temptations, and make mistakes, and also falling into decidedly un-heroic situations. The Action Comics storyline in which Superman and Barda fall under the hypnotic spell of a pornographer is practically infamous today and turned many fans away from the Post-Crisis Superman that Byrne was writing.



I've heard you mention this before, but I had never heard the bit about Miller and Gerber coming up with businessman Luthor - a creation which Byrne has always assigned credit to (and whose credit has always been accepted by) Marv Wolfman. 

From Byrne's website (in response to a member's question about Luthor's origin):


Wasn't the Luthor as businessman Marv Wolfman's idea?
••


The cornerstone.

Wolfman called, shortly before I started on MAN OF STEEL, and said he'd been offered the second seat. But before he accepted, he wanted to tell me what he had worked out for Luthor. If I liked it, and wanted to use it, he would come aboard. If I didn't like any part of it, however, he would decline the co-pilot job, and he wanted my promise I would not use any part of his idea. This I was happy to agree to.

He then said this: "Outside Metropolis there is a mountain. On top of that mountain, in his fabulous Xanadu-like estate, lives Lex Luthor, the world's richest man, and his mistress, Lois Lane."

Immediately, I said no. I had not thought too much about what I was going to be doing with Lois, but that was definitely NOT the way I wanted to go with her. In fact, I said, Wolfman's idea seemed more like a reinvention of Lois than a reinvention of Lex. So, politely, thanks but no thanks.

"Oh, you don't have to use that part!" Wolfman said. Which confused me a bit, since just moments before I had agreed to an "all or nothing" scenario.

In any case, I said I liked the World's Richest Man part -- if I could use just that we might have a starting point. Wolfman agreed. He came aboard and pretty much went off in his own direction, with Luthor AND Superman. (Early in the run, I gave a newspaper interview. The interviewer, having read my first few issues and Wolfman's, asked why there were TWO Supermen now.)

Later, as I went along, I discussed various plans with a lot of people, and Luthor pretty soon had many fathers, including Roger Stern and Mark Gruenwald, who contributed ideas. Luthor's Legion of Lovelies, of course, I borrowed from Heinlein's STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND.

Years later, long after I left Superman, I found out, almost by accident, that DC had paid Wolfman a big bonus for his "creation" of the new Luthor. Ah, well!


I know that many creators applied for the job of rebooting Superman (an idea which certainly wasn't Byrne's) and many more surely would have been asked to submit ideas, but I've never doubted the notion that the changes made - for the most part - were's Bryne's ideas.  Byrne has remarked that when he provided a list of "10 unreasonable demands" (his terminology) to DC when outlining his vision for his Superman, only one of those demands was rejected (Byrne wanted Lara to come to Earth with Kal-El and die of Kryptonite poisoning to prove that Kryptonite does kill Kryptonians).  The Kents surviving into the present day, Clark Kent no longer having a separate personality from Superman and being the real identity, Superman being the only survivor of Krypton's destruction etc. were all accepted and all were presented to DC as Byrne's ideas.  

Again, from his site (when asked what the 10 unreasonable ideas were):

Don't recall what they were specifically. None of them were truly "unreasonable" -- it was stuff life "No Superboy", "Superman restored to Sole Survivor" status -- and all but one ended up in the series.  The one that didn't make it, as most of you already know, was an idea I played with of having the pregnant Lara be the one who comes to Earth. I considered this as a way to have someone who could encounter and be killed by kryptonite, to prove its potential danger to Superman. It was Jenette Kahn who suggested the alternative I ended up using.


Byrne being a longtime Superman fan who wanted the campier/more fantastic elements brought back...

I just don't see it.  Byrne was a fan of the George Reeves tv series (it's where he got the basis for his Clark Kent) and his Superboy storyline certainly suggests a love for that character (even if it was written not because he loved the character but instead because he needed to explain The Legion's backstory) but he's also given interviews and written introductions for various publications (ie. The Greatest Superman Stories Ever Told collection released in 1987) which belies the fact that, by his own admission, there was a lot about Superman he didn't like.  "When was Superman stupid enough to tell people he had a secret identity?", he asked; the addition of other survivors from Krypton's destruction acted as "barnacles" which "de-uniquified" the character, he has claimed; even suggesting that Siegel and Shuster "may have been two little dumb hicks from the midwest, unfamiliar with the machinations of the publishing industry of the late 1930's:" (https://ohdannyboy.blogspot.com/2012/09/when-i-am-working-for-marvel-i-am-loyal.html) doesn't indicate the level of reverence Byrne would have for the creators of a character he liked (to put it another way, would even John Byrne describe Jack Kirby as a "dumb hick"?  Well, it is Byrne, so maybe he would, but I'd have to think about that one).

I would have loved it if Byrne was a fan of the "more fantastic" stuff, but his overabundant usage of pseudoscience such as using telekinesis to explain how Superman can fly, a bioelectrical aura to rationalize his invulnerability, a hesitation to retain Superman's X-Ray for his character until he decided that he'd attribute such an outlandish power to Superman being able to combine his microscopic and telescopic vision all suggests an anal retentiveness which goes against the entire spirit of the Silver Age.

Now, I'll readily admit that Byrne did embrace a number of Silver Age ideas - Lori Lemaris, Mxyzptlk, Titano - but the big changes he made (Krypton being a cold, sterile world which deserved to blow up; Superman losing his grandeur in favour of being Joe Average albeit with powers; secret identity hi-jinks no longer a part of the package; Clark Kent being inseparable personality wise from Superman) all seemed designed to avoid that type of fun.

Byrne may have realized that he backed himself into a corner by eliminating so many parts of Superman's history without coming up with enough substitutions to fill the void which in turn, may have resulted in him feeling that he had to go back to the well, but I never got the sense that this was out of love but necessity.  As for the changes which defined the post-Crisis Superman, I'm not aware of anyone ever coming forward and accusing Byrne of taking credit for things he didn't do there and I certainly can't see any reason why someone like Marv Wolfman (who described Byrne's activities in the courtroom when he was brought in to testify for Marvel against Wolfman as "the most hurtful thing that has ever happened to me" - same link as the "dumb hicks" quote) would cover for him.

So, in short, while I know that Miller and Gerber and Wolfman (and many others) talked to DC about rebooting Superman, I can't see why Byrne doesn't deserve the blame for blueprint which was used. 

Incidentally, I'd be curious to read a behind-the-scenes interview about what happened from someone other than Byrne, because according to him he was the only intelligent person in the room and everyone else was a bunch of clueless people.

Here is Byrne's description of the creation of the Pocket Universe (from Comic Buyers' Guide #997, found here)