Fan reaction to the saga finale's "Ultimate Battle" was mostly favorable, but one gets the sense after reading these letters that those same fans would wind up feeling cheated in the months to come. They all anticipated the saga was the prelude of ... well, something, but what exactly nobody could articulate. And then there's the obsession about what portion of Superman's powers were taken away, which ENB tried to evade here:
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As it turned out though, our friend Matthew Graham wouldn't let Bridwell off the hook. He wrote yet another letter which was printed in #251's LC, so ENB had to make with the math, and finally a verdict was rendered:
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As it turned out, it didn't really matter, as Superman's depowering was largely ignored almost immediately after this story. As Charles Meyerson had pointed out, what's half of infinity? Denny O'Neil in his afterword bemoaned the fact that the next issue, Superman was shown towing a planet on the cover. I think he was actually talking about World's Finest #208, but we get the drift - the power loss didn't take. Mr. O'Neil also made it sound like he abdicated writing Superman right after the saga's completion, but unfortunately for him that was not accurate either. A few months later, he tried to reprise the saga using a boy and a lynx in place of the sand-creature, and he didn't even have the heart to finish that story - the less said about it the better!

In the end, the legacy of the saga wasn't to be the power loss, or even the eradication of kryptonite, which would soon turn up again... it was the depth of characterization, and sophisticated style that Denny brought to the table. It was to be the foundation on which Bates, Maggin, Pasko et al would later build on.

It was also the crown jewel of the super-team supreme, Swan & Anderson - no one else could quite capture the range of Superman's emotions like those two did. There are panels from the saga that remain seared in my memory to this day.

That's all folks - hope you enjoyed this little retrospective as much as I did!




Last Edited By: Osgood Peabody 02/13/09 10:41 AM. Edited 2 times.