Excellent candidate story, Kurt. But I seriously doubt any subsequent tales were dependent on that clunker nor were any references made to it ever again.
I guess I just don't consider that a measure of whether it belongs in continuity or not. Plus, of course, a reference was made to "The Computers That Saved Metropolis," albeit not to the computer part.
I'm happier with a solid explanation like that one than just shrugging my shoulders and just saying lotsa other nutty stuff goes on. IMHO, that's a bit of a copout.
Whereas to me, it's practically a sacrament. I like the nutty stuff.
But then, I don't look at continuity as a way of nailing down exact power levels -- almost anyone's fluctuate so much that you gotta (or at least, I gotta) figure that there's some sort of weird super-biorhythms involved, and when they're at a low ebb, snakes can beat the Hulk, but when they're at a peak, atom bombs can't. I'm far more interested in character and history -- who have they met, how did they feel about it, what would they feel if they met those characters again?
Plus, I never thought that Radio Shack story established anything about Superman's powers that would need to affect any other story. A couple of kids claiming something's as fast as Superman is no more a fact than Wolverine saying that he's the best there is at what he does nine million times means that he in fact is. [Mainly, it means he feels a need to brag about himself in his own internal narrative, but remain fairly taciturn vocally, which suggests he's so messed up emotionally that he's trying to convince himself of his own worth even while he refuses to try to convince anyone else, like Sawyer on LOST...]
kdb