ACTION COMICS #679

Cover shows strong gloss and sharp corners with no visible creasing or color breaks. Spine appears tight with no stress lines visible in this view. Slight softness at bottom corner edges is present but minor. Book is in a protective sleeve; back cover and interior pages were not assessed.

Action Comics #679 falls in the middle of the tightly serialized triangle-numbered Superman era, written by Roger Stern with pencils by Jackson Guice, inks by Denis Rodier, color by Glenn Whitmore, and a cover by Art Thibert. The story, "Shellshocked," sends Superman to Washington, D.C., where the Special Crimes Unit is still clearing away the fallout of the Sons of Liberty affair and Pete Ross weighs a run for the Senate; the antagonist, the detonating-and-reforming Shellshock, arrives chasing Ruth Spencer, a thread carried over from the cancelled Hawk and Dove title. The issue also advances the Lex Luthor II subplot and the Lana Lang and Smallville material Stern was running at the time, placing it a few months ahead of the Doomsday storyline that would reshape the whole line.

Commercially this is a high-print-run 1992 DC book from the peak of the speculator boom, and it carries the market profile that implies. Copies are abundant in high grade because the issue was bought new and stored, so dealer inventories carry near-mint examples at bin prices and mid-grade copies attract essentially no premium over them. What demand exists comes from readers assembling the complete triangle-era run in order rather than from key-issue buyers, and that demand is satisfied cheaply through set lots and dollar boxes. Certified examples are scarce simply because nobody submits a book of this profile; the few that exist are worth roughly what it costs to grade one, which is the honest basis for the top bracket.

Buyers here divide into two narrow groups: run collectors filling a gap in the 1991-1993 Superman continuity, and completists chasing Guice or Stern credits. Across grades the spread is almost flat, since condition-sensitivity requires scarcity and there is none in the 8.0-9.4 range, so the practical acquisition strategy is to buy the nicest available raw copy rather than pay for certification. For a dealer archive the book functions as run filler and as a supporting piece in Death of Superman lead-up lots, where bundling with the surrounding issues realizes more than selling it singly.