ACTION COMICS #678

Cover shows sharp corners, strong gloss, and vibrant unfaded colors with clean, bright inks. No visible spine stress lines, creases, or color breaks are apparent along the spine edge in this image. Minor handling wear cannot be ruled out due to the protective sleeve's glare, and the interior and back cover were not assessed.

Action Comics #678 lands in the stretch of the Superman titles between "Panic in the Sky" and the Doomsday storyline, a period when the four interlocking books were running a tight weekly continuity. Roger Stern scripts, with pencils from Jackson Guice and Art Thibert, inks by Thibert and Ande Parks, colors by Glenn Whitmore, and lettering by Bill Oakley; Thibert and Whitmore supply the cover. The chapter, "Talking Heads," pulls back the curtain on Lex Luthor II, the young Australian "son" whose true nature had been teased since 1991, and moves the Luthor plot toward the reckoning that plays out over the following year. Supporting players include Jimmy Olsen, Lana Lang, the Guardian, Dabney Donovan, Dan Turpin, and Maggie Sawyer, placing the issue firmly in the Metropolis ensemble that defined the Stern-Ordway-Jurgens era.

Commercially this is a run book. It was printed in large numbers, distributed heavily through both direct and newsstand channels, and never carried a first appearance, origin, or death to anchor speculative demand. Consequently raw copies trade as inexpensive back-issue stock, with almost no spread between a beaten reader and a presentable mid-grade copy, since buyers at that level are filling holes rather than chasing condition. Certified activity is sporadic: the census is thin because grading costs exceed the book's raw value, and the slabs that do appear sell to run completists and to Superman collectors assembling high-grade sets of the pre-Death continuity rather than to investors.

The realistic audience is narrow and specific. Dealers move these in bulk lots or as fill for Superman-title runs; the only meaningful upside sits at the very top of the grade scale, where scarcity of certified copies rather than the story creates the price. Buyers who want the Luthor II reveal for reading or for a bound run should expect to pay pennies above cover in almost any condition, while anyone pursuing a registry-quality set should plan on hunting untouched newsstand copies, which suffered more handling at point of sale and therefore surface less often in top condition than their direct-market counterparts.