Originally Posted by
Sutekh
And Dawnstar can be a Thanagarian and White Witch can be descended from Etrigan and, Imsk can be a former 'bottle city' captured by Brainiac, and, and, we could easily ruin anything unique and interesting about the Legion, tying it to 'present-day' stuff, which changes so bewilderingly fast that it destroyed the book back in the 80s.
"Oh, you based the team around a teenaged Clark? Sorry, he no longer exists. Gonna have to Reboot!"
This happens all the time when the Legion ties to a modern property. "Oh, all the Green Lanterns are dead and the Corps has been destroyed *1000 years ago* so we *have* to get rid of Rond Vidar and make Sodam Yot the only Green Lantern!" <Two years later.> "Oh, the Corps is back. Ha ha. And so is a teen Superman. And Supergirl. And all the other crap we said you have to Reboot and get rid of..."
The past should either be ignored completely, or referenced in oddly inaccurate ways, "Tamaran? Nope, was never destroyed, I went there on a field trip, actually." hinting that with all the retcons and reboots that happen in the past, no 'past continuity' that exists on the newstands *today* is going to be relevant this same time next year, let alone 1000 years in the future!
But I'd definitely shy away from using immortal 21st century villains. It was done once, to great effect, with Darkseid, revitalizing a mostly abandoned major villain that now shows up all over the modern day continuity, as everyone and their dog attempts to ride on the coattails of a great story and re-bottle that lightning, but attempting to do it *again* with R'as al-Ghul, IMO, was a spectacular let-down. I do not want to see Brainiac and Vandal Savage and Circe and Wotan and Anti-Monitor and every other immortal villain out there show up 1000 years later to fight the Legion, trying and, most likely, failing to do anything but show how much better the Great Darkness Saga was than attempts to copy it.