They can reject it as much as they want, even the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and the videogames have started assigning each other numbers. DC's not doing so well either. I don't even know what their mainstream continuity designation is, but they have letters and numbers for each Earth.
Yeah, I think it's a case of Quesada, Brevoort and their editorial staff being the older generation (about the same age as me), and therefore resistant to the whole "Earth 616" thing.
Whereas the newer generation of Marvel editors, and readers, and Marvel movie fans, maybe were introduced to Marvel with the "616" thing, and so are not resistant to it.
If you grow up with dumb stuff, I guess it seems less dumb.
And that's probably true of a lot of the stuff I grew up with too.
