ACTION COMICS #676

Cover shows sharp corners and strong color with no visible spine ticks or creases in this photo; the price box design (no barcode graphic replacement) indicates newsstand edition. There is a small crease/bend visible at the top right edge of the cover and a slight wrinkle near the top border. The book is in a protective sleeve which limits full assessment of edges and gloss; interior and back cover were not assessed.

Action Comics #676, cover-dated April 1992, is a Roger Stern chapter of the tightly interlocked weekly Superman rotation that ran between the Panic in the Sky crossover and the Death of Superman. Butch Guice and Art Thibert handle the art, with Denis Rodier inking, Glenn Whitmore on color and Bill Oakley lettering, under editors Mike Carlin and Dan Thorsland. The story pits Superman against Hellgrammite, who is hunting Lex Luthor II, while the supporting cast of Lois Lane, Jimmy Olsen, Cat Grant, Emil Hamilton and Dubbilex carries the Metropolis subplots and the Matrix Supergirl thread advances toward its entanglement with the second Luthor. It is a competent, continuity-dense installment rather than a first appearance or origin issue, and it is not cited as a key by the standard guides.

Market profile matches that status. Early-1990s Superman titles were printed in very large quantities and remain among the most widely available Modern Age books, so raw copies circulate constantly in dealer bins, multi-issue lots and run-completion listings, where per-issue realizations are effectively bin pricing regardless of whether the copy grades mid or high. Newsstand distribution was still the majority channel for DC in 1992, so the newsstand designation carries no meaningful premium here; the scarce-newsstand story for this period attaches to the Death of Superman issues, not to the surrounding run. Certified demand is minimal: submissions are rare because grading and shipping costs exceed the book's raw value, which means the occasional high-grade slab prices off comparable non-key Superman issues rather than off its own sales record.

Buyers for this issue are run collectors assembling Action Comics in sequence, readers filling the Stern/Guice stretch ahead of Doomsday, and Hellgrammite or Luthor II completists. Trading behavior is flat across the raw grade spectrum: the difference between a well-read copy and a sharp Very Fine is a couple of dollars, so condition sensitivity only begins to matter at the top of the scale, where a certified Near Mint/Mint example becomes a registry-set or shelf item rather than a value proposition. Sensible acquisition strategy is bulk purchase at lot pricing and patience on the high end, since census scarcity, not collector demand, sets the ceiling.