"The CASE Of The LETHAL LETTERS!" FAVOURITE COMICS Of The PAST - PART TWENTY-FOUR...

Images copyright DC COMICS

The way I remember it, I'd just arrived back home after a school trip to CULZEAN CASTLE and decided to trot along to CORSON'S to see what new comics they had.  I came back with the very issue above - SUPERMAN #204 - to add to my collection.  Of course, I could be inadvertently combining two completely separate occasions because of the similar impressions they left on me and the trip to Culzean Castle may have been on another day, but that's the way I seem to recall it and, as I'm writing this piece, I get the final say.

I believe this was the first time I'd seen ROSS ANDRU's art on Superman, although I didn't know his name or that it was he who'd drawn the strip until many years later, but I recall the pages with startling clarity as if I'd seen them only yesterday.  Perhaps my memory of them was reinforced when I saw the tale reprinted in SUPER DC two or three years later, and that helped embed the artwork in my consciousness, who knows?  The fact remains, however, that they're certainly Dynamically-Composed pages in contrast to what CURT SWAN was doing at the time.  (Whose finest hour was surely when he was paired with MURPHY ANDERSON a couple of years later.)

The issue contained a reprint entitled "The DUPLICATE SUPERMAN!" (a gimmick that was used a number of times in subsequent years - was this the first?), but see how it was labelled - "A DEMAND CLASSIC".  Surely a case of the editor 'demanding' its inclusion as a cost-cutting exercise, because I can't see too many readers (if any) writing in to demand specific stories they'd never seen before.  Or am I being too cynical?

Anyway, that's surely enough waffle from me - I'll leave you to get on with looking at the pretty pictures.  After all, that's what you're here for, isn't it?