Levitz used to use highly detailed charts and graphs to map out his storylines and keep track of which character was doing what etc. There are photos out there taken during Hickmans run on Fantastic Four and it was revealed he was incorporating the method in his work on the title. He has used it in all his works. Not surprising since he has gone on record as being an ardent fan of Levitz run on the Legion.
That's your opinion and it's cool if you believe that. But I have to respectfully disagree. The Legion, especially during the late 70s and early 80s when Levitz and Giffen were on it, sold gangbusters. Both it and New Teen Titans were the only franchises from DC that truly gave Marvel a run for their money. They were so strong they actually rivalled Uncanny X-Men.
The Legion have only really suffered since Crisis when Superboy was retconned as never having existed. Geoff Johns had successfully "fixed" that prior to the New 52. Then, once the New 52 hit, the Legion got screwed over again.
Its like breaking a priceless vase and spending countless hours gluing it back together again. Except in DC's case they've immediately turned around after its dried and proceeded to smash it again. Its total insanity.
It was no coincidence in the early '80s that DC selected the Titans and the Legion for their new Baxter books (direct sales, comic shop editions), in what Levitz called a hardcover/softcover strategy--with the Baxter paper stock stories being reprinted in the regular format (newsstand, newsprint) the following year. For the gap year the two series made up the difference in the regular format TALES OF comics by doing all-new stories in addition to what was appearing in the Baxter format. DC chose those two team titles because they had the highest sales in the comic shop market. Their success led the way for many other DC titles to follow in the higher quality format.
Those were the days. Wolfman/Perez were coming off a stellar run on the Teen Titans, and the Legion team (Levitz and some combination of Giffen, Laroque and Lightle, IIRC) was at the top of their game. Some innovative new characters were introduced, like Sensor Girl and Tellus, and some I was less thrilled with, like Quislet (but then again, not every character has to be *my* favorite, and the little guy has his fans!).
I feel like neither title or team has really ever fully recaptured the magic of those runs, although there've been some good stories along the way.
(My favorite post-Baxter-era Legion story being the AU Superboy's Legion, at present.)
I found this.
It's amazing how the Levitz Paradigm has reached out beyond comics.
I think Dennis O'Neil and Stan Lee's book on writing comics really helped spread the word to more modern readers.
"There's magic in the sound of analog audio." - CNET.
This plot structure--where you have a main plot in one issue and several subplots, then in the next issue one subplot becomes the main plot and so on--is something I admired in the seventies Marvel books. Although the first comic I saw it was Mike Friedrich's JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA, in 1971. where he'd keep one subplot going for a couple of issue before it took over as the main plot. It becomes harder to keep this going if a book keeps changing writers.