ACTION COMICS #591

Cover shows strong gloss and bright, unfaded color with sharp corners visible; no major creases, tears, or spine stress evident from this angle. There is a faint scuff/mark near the upper right cover edge and the comic is housed in a protective plastic sleeve, which limits full assessment of the spine and edges. No back cover or interior pages were visible for inspection, so overall grade is estimated conservatively from the front cover alone.

Action Comics #591 appeared in August 1987, part of John Byrne's post-Crisis stewardship of the Superman titles, and forms a chapter in a multi-issue team-up arc pairing Superman with Batman against the Joker. Byrne, fresh off his influential Man of Steel miniseries relaunch, continued to script and draw much of the Action Comics run through this period, giving the issue a pedigree tied to one of the era's most consequential Superman creative runs, though the issue itself introduces no new characters, deaths, or origin material that would elevate it beyond a solid genre entry.

Market data shows a thin but consistent certification base of 37-38 Universal copies, with sales concentrated at the high end of the grading scale; CGC 9.8 copies have traded steadily around the mid-$60s over the past year, while mid- and low-grade material sees little to no dedicated sales activity, reflecting the issue's status as a bulk-bin Copper Age book rather than a sought-after key. The gap in the FMV table between 9.4 and 8.5 grades, both hovering near $18-20, suggests collector interest is almost entirely concentrated on pristine census-top copies rather than reading or mid-grade collector copies.

This book primarily interests Superman and Byrne-run completists building out the late-1980s Action Comics sequence, along with Joker crossover-appearance collectors assembling all issues featuring the character regardless of significance. Raw copies in low and mid grades remain inexpensive and plentiful, suited to reading copies or run-fillers, while the CGC 9.8 tier carries a modest premium driven by the low census population at the top grade rather than any narrative importance, making this a book that trades on condition scarcity more than story content.