ACTION COMICS #681

Cover shows sharp corners, glossy unmarred surface, and no visible spine stress or ticks. No creases, tears, or color breaks are apparent, though the comic is in a protective sleeve which limits close inspection of edges. Interior and back cover were not assessed, so grade is based solely on the front cover's visible condition.

Action Comics #681, cover-dated September 1992, carries the story "On Another Rampage!" by Roger Stern with pencils by Butch Guice, inks by Denis Rodier, colors by Glenn Whitmore, and a cover by Art Thibert. It falls squarely inside the tightly interlocked weekly Superman publishing program of the early 1990s, in which Action Comics, Adventures of Superman, Superman, and Superman: The Man of Steel functioned as a single rotating serial under editor Mike Carlin. The issue returns Kitty Faulkner's Rampage to conflict with Superman while advancing subplots involving the Matrix Supergirl, Lex Luthor's second identity, the Daily Planet staff, and the Metropolis Special Crimes Unit, with the narrative continuing directly into Superman: The Man of Steel #16.

Market profile is that of a common Modern Age reader issue. Print runs across the Superman line in 1992 were high, speculation-era buying left large numbers of unread copies in the market, and no first appearance, origin, or death anchors the issue. Demand is essentially run-completion demand: collectors assembling the Stern-era Action Comics stretch or the full lead-in to the Death of Superman storyline, which does not properly begin until the Doomsday material a few issues later. High-grade raw copies are abundant, so certification cost exceeds the book's raw value by a wide margin, which is why the census is sparse at the top and why almost all of the value in a 9.8 slab is the slab itself rather than scarcity of the underlying comic.

Buyers are run collectors, Superman completists, and dealers filling cheap-box inventory; the issue also moves as part of multi-issue lots covering the 1992 Superman titles rather than as a standalone purchase. Low-grade copies are functionally bulk material and trade only as filler, while mid-grade copies command little premium because near-mint examples remain easy to source. The one place a meaningful spread exists is certified 9.8, where the pool of submitted copies is small enough that pricing tracks the general market for slabbed non-key Copper/early-Modern DC books rather than any issue-specific demand. Anyone pursuing this book for investment should look instead to the Doomsday issues that follow; #681 is best understood as an inexpensive, well-drawn piece of the connective tissue leading into that storyline.