ACTION COMICS #680

Cover shows sharp corners, strong gloss, and vibrant color with no visible spine stress lines, ticks, or creases. Edges appear clean with no chipping; the book is protected in a plastic sleeve which slightly obscures fine surface detail. No fading or staining is visible on the front cover; back cover and interior pages were not assessed.

Action Comics #680 carries the second chapter of the four-part Blaze/Satanus War, written by Roger Stern with pencils by Jackson Butch Guice, inks by Denis Rodier, and a cover penciled and inked by Art Thibert over Glenn Whitmore colors. The story pits Superman against a demonic incursion into Metropolis, with Lady Blaze manipulating former Daily Planet editor Sam Foswell against her brother Lord Satanus; Foswell's transformation into the creature Fosgoyle occurs here. Supporting cast is deep for a single issue, taking in Lois Lane, Jimmy Olsen, Matrix as Supergirl, Maggie Sawyer, Dan Turpin, and a Lex Luthor subplot, and the issue sits four months in front of the Doomsday arc that reshaped the Superman titles at the end of 1992.

Market-wise this is a run book rather than a key, and it trades accordingly. Raw copies move as singles at close to bulk pricing or inside multi-issue Superman lots, with little separation between a well-read low-grade copy and a clean mid-grade one, because supply from the 1992 print run remains abundant and demand is driven by set builders rather than speculators. The one place scarcity asserts itself is at the top of the market: certified copies are almost nonexistent, since no one submitted this issue in volume, and the handful of 9.8s that exist are competed for by registry-style collectors assembling complete high-grade Action Comics runs. Newsstand provenance matters in that context more than in raw grades, as newsstand copies from this period were handled harder and survive less often without spine and edge wear.

The buyer profile splits cleanly. At the bottom two brackets the audience is readers and run fillers, and the practical route to sale is a lot or a dollar box rather than a standalone listing. At the certified end the audience is the small group chasing high-grade Action Comics continuity through the Death of Superman period, where a thin census supports pricing well out of proportion to the raw book. Expect the low and mid brackets to stay flat with general modern-age run pricing, while the certified figure remains volatile in both directions given how few graded copies define it.