J.M. DeMatteis wrote the comedy that made a generation love the Justice League, and he wrote the story where Spider-Man is buried alive and left there for two weeks. Both in the same period. His shelf is the widest tonal range of any writer we stock, and the reason both halves work is the same: he takes the emotional situation completely seriously, whatever the register.
What defines his writing
Character comedy, never joke comedy. The humour comes from people who know each other too well and are stuck in a room. Nothing is played for a gag at the expense of who someone is.
Obsession as a subject. His serious work is about people who cannot let something go: grief, guilt, a rivalry that stopped making sense years ago. That is the engine of everything on the dramatic half of the shelf.
Spiritual questions asked plainly. He writes about death, meaning and forgiveness without embarrassment, in a genre that usually deflects. It is why the sad books are genuinely sad rather than merely dark.
Long collaborations. The Justice League work with Keith Giffen and the Spider-Man work with Sal Buscema are partnerships that developed a shared shorthand over years.
The comedy: Justice League International
Justice League International Omnibus Vol. 1 at 1,080 pages opens the run, continuing across volumes of 1,192 and 1,448 pages.
The premise is a superhero team run as a dysfunctional office: a UN-sponsored League staffed by second-tier characters who resent each other, argue about expenses and occasionally save the world by accident. It is the funniest sustained run in mainstream superhero comics and it has aged remarkably well, because the jokes come from character rather than from references.
What people forget is how often it turns serious without warning. The comedy earns the drama.
The tragedy: Spider-Man
Spectacular Spider-Man by DeMatteis & Buscema Omnibus at 1,200 pages is the other half of the shelf, and it contains Kraven's Last Hunt.
That story — a hunter defeats Spider-Man, buries him, takes his identity for two weeks and then finds that winning has not fixed anything — is routinely named the best Spider-Man story ever published, and it is genuinely unlike anything else in the character's history. The rest of the run works the same territory: villains as people who are unwell rather than as obstacles.
The art is by the artist covered in our Sal Buscema guide, and it is the run that most demonstrates what that partnership could do.
The rest of the shelf
Justice League Dark: The New 52 Omnibus at 1,648 pages is the later occult team book, and Daredevil Omnibus Vol. 4 at 976 pages and The Avengers Omnibus Vol. 5 and Vol. 6 carry his earlier Marvel work alongside other writers.
Spider-Man: Clone Saga Omnibus Vol. 2 at 1,288 pages and Spider-Man: Ben Reilly Omnibus Vol. 2 at 1,304 pages are multi-writer collections from the 1990s: era purchases rather than author ones.
The whole shelf is on the J.M. DeMatteis page.
Where to start
One recommendation depends entirely on what you want. For the comedy, Justice League International Vol. 1, which needs nothing and is the easiest book on these shelves to hand to a lapsed reader.
For the drama, Spectacular Spider-Man by DeMatteis & Buscema, which contains Kraven's Last Hunt and is the more important book by some distance.
Who should skip this shelf
The two halves genuinely do not resemble each other, and buying one expecting the other is the standard disappointment here. The Justice League material is light, dialogue-driven and low-stakes by design; readers who want superheroic scale will find it slight.
The Spider-Man material goes the other way and is heavier than most superhero comics attempt: Kraven's Last Hunt deals with suicide directly and at length. It is not a comfortable read and it is not meant to be.
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